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.
Playing monopoly was a tradition in our family for a long time. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t come out as often these days – I guess I don’t play board games much anymore. In the good old days, I played Monopoly with my parents when I was young, with my children when they were young, and…
Every now and then in life, we find ourselves nodding along, agreeing with decisions, following plans, or chasing goals that – if we’re brutally honest – we don’t actually want. Not because we’re weak. Not because we’re confused. But because we assume everyone else wants it. That’s the Abilene Paradox in action – a strange…
If a picture paints a thousand words, then this collection of charts should do a pretty good job of painting the landscape as it affects our economy and our property markets. Each month the RBA summarises macroeconomic and financial market trends in Australia by providing a detailed chart pack. World Economy Australia’s economy doesn’t operate in…
![Brisbane housing market update [video] | June 2026](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/brisbane-270x200.jpg)
Brisbane finds itself at an uncomfortable inflection point. Home values rose 0.9% in May 2026, and on paper that looks like a healthy result — but the number that matters more is the one it replaced. As recently as October last year, Brisbane was recording monthly growth of 2%. The May figure is less than…
There is a line doing the rounds in overseas journals and podcasts about the death of the first-time home buyer. In Australia, I would not call it death just yet. But it is certainly prolonged suffocation. The desire is still there. The aspiration is still there. The cultural pull of owning your own home remains…
![[PODCAST] The Forever Test – the one principle behind long-term property wealth with Stuart Wemyss](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/785_The_Forever_Test-SW-Youtube-cover-270x200.jpg)
Most investors say they’re long-term investors. But then they check auction clearance rates every weekend, worry about the next interest rate decision, chase the latest hotspot, and get distracted by whatever the media says is working right now. And that’s a problem, because real wealth rarely comes from the investment that looks exciting today. It…
There is more conflicting information about property right now than at almost any point I can remember. Turn on the news and you will find someone warning that prices are about to fall. Scroll a little further and you will find someone else forecasting another year of growth. Somewhere in the middle of all that…
You can spend all day debating interest rates, immigration, building approvals, auction clearance rates and what the RBA might do next. But if you want to understand what really drives capital growth in the medium term, you need to look past the property headlines and follow the money. And in a city or region, money…
![Sydney housing market update [video] | June 2026](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/sydney4-270x200.jpg)
Sydney’s housing market is firmly in a downswing, with home values falling 0.9% in May 2026 — the fifth month-on-month decline recorded in the past six months and a clear signal that the city’s correction is deepening rather than stabilising. Since reaching a cyclical peak in November last year, Sydney housing values have fallen 2.1%,…
As widely expected, the Reserve Bank of Australia has held the cash rate today at 4.35% at its June meeting. But in a move that was less expected, it explicitly signalled that further hikes remain on the table. The final sentence of the media release added the clause “including increasing the cash rate target further if…
