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.
Here’s something that should concern every parent and grandparent in Australia. If you were born in the late 1940s, there was a 54% chance you owned a home by your late twenties. If you were born in the early 1990s, that figure has fallen to 36%. Now that’s a significant change in how wealth gets…
For the last few years, Australia’s rental market has followed a fairly predictable pattern. There haven’t been enough rental properties available, vacancy rates have fallen to extraordinarily low levels and rents have risen as tenants competed for the limited stock on offer. But something interesting is now happening. The rental shortage remains, vacancy rates in…
Earlier this month I had the pleasure of speaking at the Brisbane branch of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Australia. The organisers asked me a dozen or so questions covering everything from affordability and population growth through to construction costs, infrastructure and the Olympics. Looking back on the discussion, four themes seemed to emerge. 1….
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Right now, there are two types of property investors in Australia. Those who bought before 7:30pm on the 12th of May 2026, and those who bought after it. And depending on which camp you’re in, the entire economics of your next move just changed. If you already own an established investment property, you’re sitting on…
Every few months, another report lands telling us everything is about to change. Interest rates, artificial intelligence, migration, climate change, tax policy – take your pick. Some forecasts will prove correct, many will be exaggerated, and plenty will eventually be forgotten. The challenge is separating the structural changes that will genuinely reshape Australia from the…
With national property values down by 5.2% in September from their March peak, Australia’s housing market is in a distinct downturn. This has sparked concerns voiced by Opposition Leader Angus Taylor of a housing market “in freefall”. Translated into dollar terms, using the Domain property price series, the price of a typical home has dropped…
Most of the people I meet who are still waiting to become financially free aren’t lazy and they aren’t unlucky. They work hard, they earn a reasonable income, and they genuinely want to get ahead. Yet somehow the wealth never quite arrives, and after five decades of watching investors succeed and fail, I can tell…
For the last few years, Melbourne has been the forgotten child of Australia’s property market. While Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide enjoyed extraordinary price growth, Melbourne seemed stuck in neutral. Investors looked elsewhere, headlines focused on the city’s higher taxes and weaker short-term performance, and many concluded that Melbourne had simply lost its shine. I believe…
Australia has spent the last few years talking about its housing shortage as though the solution were relatively straightforward: release more land, speed up planning approvals, encourage higher density and build more homes. And, of course, we need to do all of those things. But there is another constraint that doesn’t receive nearly enough attention,…
I expect many participants in the property industry will spend the coming months devising ways to navigate the negative gearing and CGT changes, to maintain investor interest. As a business that is completely independent, with no vested interest in any asset class, including property, I wanted to examine some of these potential strategies. Remember: property is not the only game in…
