Michael has been once again voted Australia’s leading property investment advisor by the readers of ‘Your Investment Property Magazine’, but he’s not a theorist… He has been successfully investing in property since 1971 and is a leading property commentator and Australia’s most widely read property investment blogger. Join over 115,000 others who get their updates from Michael and his group of expert guest bloggers and benefit from their perspective.
For generations, Australians have responded to housing affordability pressures in a predictable way – when the home they wanted became too expensive, they moved further from the city. But something important is changing. Australia’s affordability problem has become so entrenched that many buyers are making a different compromise. Rather than simply changing where they live, they…
For the last 20 years, one of the defining stories of Australian housing has been the rise of the apartment. Look at the skylines of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and you can see the evidence everywhere. Cranes filled our CBDs, high-rise towers appeared around transport hubs and former industrial precincts were transformed into dense residential…
For years, the housing affordability debate has focused heavily on property prices, with the assumption that if home values fall, homes automatically become more affordable. But the latest figures from the Real Estate Institute of Australia remind us that affordability is much more complicated than the price on the contract. Australian house prices softened over…
![Sydney housing market update [video] | September 2026](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/sydney4-270x200.jpg)
Sydney’s August result was the steepest single month of this entire correction. Home values fell 1.8%, extending a decline that has now run six consecutive months and pushing the market 7.1% below its February record high. Across the three winter months alone, Sydney shed 4.7%. But the figure that captures how complete this has become…
You’ve heard every stereotype going around about property investors. Some commentators paint us as reckless speculators piling into debt we can’t handle, while others imagine a nation of mum-and-dad battlers gambling their super on a rental property they barely understand. The truth, according to the most comprehensive dataset the Reserve Bank has ever had access…
Australia desperately needs more homes, yet the latest building approval figures show how difficult it will be to deliver them. National dwelling approvals fell 2.7% in July, with approvals for detached houses dropping 4.2% and units declining 0.4%. At the same time, the cost of building a new home is rising again, placing further pressure…
![Melbourne housing market update [video] | September 2026](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/melbourne-1-270x200.jpg)
Melbourne has now recorded nine consecutive months of falling values — the longest unbroken decline of any Australian capital city in this cycle. August delivered a further 1.1% fall, leaving the market 6.5% below its November cyclical high and 6.8% below the March 2022 peak. Melbourne is not correcting from a recent high — it…
![[PODCAST] AI Won’t Make You Rich as a Property Investor – But This Mindset Might with Dr Noah St. John](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/794-AI_Wont_Make_You_Rich-N-Youtube-cover-270x200.jpg)
Most property investors don’t fail because they lack access to information. In fact, today they have more information, more data, more forecasts, more podcasts, more software, more AI tools, and more opinions than ever before. And that may be part of the problem. Because when your brain is wired for survival, uncertainty can feel like…
The Australian government is attempting to overcome a serious housing shortage by constructing 1.2 million new homes over five years. To be frank, the government won’t be building any houses, yet the industry responsible for building them is losing companies at an alarming rate. The problem is particularly severe in New South Wales, where a…
Before we get into this week’s numbers, it’s worth stepping back and looking at where we sit in the cycle. The Reserve Bank held the cash rate at 4.35% at its August meeting, and it won’t sit down again until the 29th of September. Underlying inflation is still running above the RBA’s target band, and…
