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.
Let me start with a statement that might make you uncomfortable: Most wealthy people don’t become wealthy by working for money. Sure, they work hard – sometimes harder than anyone else – but they don’t trade hours for dollars the way the average employee does. And that’s the key difference. Because if your wealth depends…
There’s a lot going on in our property markets at the moment, and if you’re trying to make sense of it all, it’s easy to get pulled in different directions. On the one hand, we’re seeing rental markets tighten again, with vacancy rates continuing to fall across most capital cities, which is pushing rents higher…
This week is Part Three of our three part series on The Seasons of Life. In Part One of the series we discussed: a) That life is about constant, predictable patterns of change. b) For all of us, the only constant factor is our feelings and attitudes toward life. c) We as human beings have the…
![[PODCAST] The Population Ponzi Property Investors Must Understand with Ross Elliott](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/575_Ponzi_Property_Investors-RE-Youtube-cover-270x200.jpg)
Australia doesn’t just have a housing problem. We have a city problem. And it’s about to get a lot worse, according to my guest today, Ross Elliott. Everyone talks about housing shortages. Almost no one talks about hospitals, schools and services. So today, we’re asking the question policymakers avoid – how much infrastructure do our cities actually need for the people we’re adding? It’s all about capacity – not just…
Are you tired of the rat race and eager to discover the secrets of financial success? Have you wondered what the rich do differently to become…rich? As I was thinking about my presentations for Wealth Retreat this year, I looked back to see what common threads the successful property investors and business people who came…
Let me start with a simple thought experiment. Imagine you’ve done all the hard work. You’ve clarified your long-term financial goals. You’ve built a sensible, evidence-based property strategy. You’ve bought high-quality assets in the right locations, with the right finance structure. Now imagine this: You’re not allowed to touch, tweak, second-guess or interfere with your…
One of the great advantages of property investing and something most Australians still don’t fully understand is that you don’t have to sell a property to access its growth. In fact, if you do this right, you may never need to sell. Instead, you can “leapfrog” from one property to the next, using accumulated equity…
For decades, Australia’s housing debate has obsessed over the usual headline acts: soaring migration, slow approvals, rising costs, NIMBYism, and a construction sector that can’t catch a break. All true. All important. But beneath all that noise sits one of the quietest, most powerful forces reshaping housing demand – the surge in single-person households. Living…
Here’s something that might change the way you think about Australian property forever. The media keeps talking about “the property market” as if it’s one big, unified beast that either goes up or down. But that’s no longer how it works – in fact, arguably it never did work that way. What’s different now is…
If you’re a property developer, tax isn’t something you deal with at the end of the project. It’s something that quietly shapes your profit from day one. And this is where many smart developers still get caught out. The moment you buy property with the intention of developing and selling for profit, the ATO stops…
