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 are hardwired to be lazy. And we have our brains to thank for it. The human brain is lazy. Or, looking at it another way, the brain finds ways of doing things that enable it to work less. And that is exactly why we have habits. Habits use less brain fuel (glucose or ketones),…
There’s just too much to do and not enough time to get it all done! Sound familiar? If you ever feel this way at work, you’re not alone. Today’s demanding work environments and technology keep you hooked to work 24/7, and it has a large number of workers feeling overwhelmed. Most of the time, being…
A lot of people think they’re property investors, but they’re kidding themselves. Instead, they’re playing at being investors. I see this a lot with the self-employed, too. They like to think they’re in business, but again, their processes, their mindset, and their inability to scale their operations show they’re just ‘playing pretend’. Anyone who’s taken…
When your deposit is less than 20% of the value of the property you’re buying, a lender is going to charge you a hefty lender’s mortgage insurance (LMI) premium to reduce its risks. LMI is one of those extra costs that often catches home buyers by surprise, particularly first-home buyers. It can cost thousands of…
Every generation seems to think the next generation isn’t doing it right. They offer well-meaning “advice” based on their own experiences, which may no longer have any relevance in our fast-changing world. Over the past three decades, the rate of change has been enormous due to rapid technological advances. Plus, society as a whole is…
Your money habits can make you rich or put you in a poor house. According to a recent study by Brown University, in which nearly 50,000 families were surveyed, most of the habits we pick up in life come from our parents (Brown Study). This includes money habits. If your parents had bad money habits…
It’s the time of the year when many of us are looking back at 2023 to see what’s ahead for our housing markets in 2024. I was recently interviewed by Aaron Christie-David of Atelier Wealth for his Australian Property Investment Podcast. We had such a great discussion I asked Aaron if I could replay this…
If you’ve been following my blogs you’ll know I believe true wealth has nothing to do with how many properties you own or how much money you have – it’s what you’re left with after you take all that away – your family, your friends, your health, your spirituality your contribution to society. But…
Want to know which are the world’s most expensive cities? Well…the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has recently published its Worldwide Cost of Living Index for 2023. And believe it or not, there was no Australian city near the top of the list. Singapore and Zurich jointly top the ranking as the most expensive cities in the…
Do you know what statistical fallacies are? Well, these are common tricks data can play on you, which lead to mistakes in data interpretation and analysis. Here are some of the most common examples and how you can avoid them: Cherry picking This is the practice of selecting results that fit your claim and excluding…
