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.
We all have a friend or know someone who is a bit unique. They’re the kind of person that other people describe as slightly eccentric and who don’t seem to care what others think. But it’s not that they’re different from other people. It’s that they just refuse to do what most of us do,…
With Australia’s population moving through the fastest rate of growth since the 1950s, our cities and towns are naturally densifying. At a national level, the population density of 3.5 people per square kilometre (sq. km) is among the lowest in the world, highlighting our highly urbanised population where half the populace lives in the three…
Australia’s inflation rate has fallen for the fifth successive quarter, and it’s now less than half of what it was back in late 2022. The annual rate peaked at 7.8% in the December quarter of 2022 and is now just 3.6%, in the March quarter figures released on Wednesday, leaving it within spitting distance of…
Earlier this month, a Hong Kong company lost HK$200 million (A$40 million) in a deepfake scam. An employee transferred funds following a video conference call with scammers who looked and sounded like senior company officials. Generative AI tools can create image, video and voice replicas of real people saying and doing things they never would…
You’d have to be living under a rock not to know that apartments have underperformed houses in the last decade or so, so today I explore the reasons behind this trend, its implications for investors, and what future trends we might anticipate with independent financial advisor, Stuart Wemyss. We also discuss what criteria you should…
What lies ahead for Australia in the next 10 years? Well, Simon Kuestenmacher highlighted a chart that is pivotal when forecasting the next ten years in Australia in his column in the New Daily. Its simplicity belies its significance in understanding our nation’s future housing demands and consumption shifts. It juxtaposed Australia’s current demographic profile…
One of the challenges our government is facing in handling the housing crisis is dealing with inaccurate population forecasts. HIA Chief Economist Tim Reardon recently highlighted a startling fact: “Australia’s population hit 26.8 million in September 2023, surpassing the Australian Government’s forecast by over a decade.” This revelation came as the ABS released its latest…
With our housing markets picking up around Australia there’s a whole young generation of first-home buyers getting onto the property ladder. The problem is, many of these First-time property buyers forget that the purchase price is not the end of their homeownership financial outgoings. There are a number of expenses that will continue for as…
Arranging for a property valuation prior to purchase, or a valuation on a property you already own for refinancing is relatively straightforward. That said, it’s important to understand potential pitfalls associated with a valuation so you can brace for a possibly unfavourable outcome. If you are applying for a loan from a bank, they will…
According to researchers from the University of Illinois, the more sleep a person gets, the more optimistic they are about life. Why is optimism, and thus sleep, so important? Reason #1 Optimists Are More Successful. Martin Seligman was a Psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. In the mid-1980s, he created a Style Questionnaire that MetLife’s…
