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.
Have you noticed that Australians seem to have become a little more short-tempered lately? You see it in the supermarket queue when someone takes their frustration out on a teenager behind the checkout. You hear about parents abusing teachers, nurses dealing with aggressive patients and relatives, and even junior football umpires needing escorts to protect…
For most people who buy a home, a mortgage represents the single largest debt they will take on in their lives. But what happens if the market value of a property you’ve bought falls below the amount you still owe on your home loan? This situation is called “negative equity”. In Australia, decades of house…
As a property investor, you can get the timing wrong, overpay a bit, blow the reno budget, and still end up wealthier than the person who waited for “perfect.” I know that sounds like heresy, especially to newer investors who think every decision has to be flawless or they’ll be ruined. But after you’ve been…
Australia’s migration system is complicated. It’s heavily influenced by politics and global pressures, which can make it difficult to understand. This often results in lively debates across the dinner table. But given migration is dominating public discussion at the moment, it’s worth explaining how the system operates so we all have a better understanding of…
Australia’s labour market is beginning to show clearer signs of cooling, with unemployment rising slightly, employment falling and wage growth remaining subdued. This matters because the Reserve Bank has repeatedly highlighted the strength of the labour market and the risk of persistent wage and services inflation when explaining its cautious approach to interest rates. The…
Every property downturn since I started investing decades ago has brought the same prediction. Someone, somewhere, tells us this is the one that finally breaks the market. Higher rates, a cost of living crunch, gloomy headlines about mortgage stress. All the ingredients seem to be there for a proper collapse. And yet here we are…
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If you’re a first-time home-buyer or property investor, you might not have come across the term ‘conveyancing’ before. Likewise, terms such as unconditional, settlement, and ‘cooling-off’ period are also terms you may not be overly familiar with. And even if you’re a seasoned property investor, you would have employed a conveyancer or solicitor to assist…
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What if I told you that some of the worst financial decisions I’ve ever seen were made by some of the smartest people I know? Doctors. Lawyers. Business owners. Executives. People who are genuinely brilliant in their field, yet they’re making wealth mistakes that are quietly costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes more….
Australia’s property markets continue to cool, although the latest employment and wage figures suggest the Reserve Bank may have less reason to raise interest rates again in the near term. Cotality’s latest figures show combined capital city dwelling values fell 0.3% over the past week and 1.0% over the past month, although they remain 2.4%…
Australians are increasingly voting with their feet when it comes to choosing a home loan, with a growing number of borrowers turning to non-bank lenders. A non-bank lender provides credit products, like home loans, but doesn’t hold an authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI) licence, meaning it can’t take customer deposits. According to Money.com.au analysis of the latest…
