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.
Every time the government tinkers with property tax settings, a wave of investors ends up making decisions they later regret. I’m worried we’re about to see it happen again, and on a fairly large scale. The 2026 federal budget has, quite deliberately, made new build properties the most tax-friendly residential option available to investors. If…
You’ve found the right property. The numbers stack up. The location ticks all the boxes. Then your solicitor comes back with a simple comment: “There’s a caveat on the title.” Most investors freeze at that point. Some walk away immediately. Others ignore it and hope for the best. But the truth is… neither response is particularly…
It feels like the year has barely begun, and already our housing markets are under pressure. An interest rate rise. Talk of tax reform. Political instability here and overseas. If you only listened to the headlines, you’d think the foundations of Australia’s property market were starting to crack. They’re not. In fact, we’ve just been…
Housing markets move because of behaviour. Who buys. Where they buy. How often they transact. Last year I examined the size and makeup of Australia’s investor cohort. That data cut through plenty of myth. Now I want to answer two related questions. Where are investors deploying capital? And how frequently are they adding to portfolios?…
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There’s a strange thing that happens to many property investors. They’ll spend hours worrying about tax, negative gearing, capital gains tax, trusts, land tax, and what the next government might change – yet they’ll give far less thought to the quality of the asset they’re buying, the level of debt they’re taking on, or whether…
A lot has happened in a fortnight, and if you’ve been watching the headlines, you could be forgiven for feeling like the ground has shifted beneath the property market. The RBA had already raised rates three times this year, taking the cash rate back to 4.35% – effectively unwinding every cut made in 2025. Two…
Before the federal budget lands, I think every Australian property investor needs to understand what happened across the Tasman over the last four years, because New Zealand didn’t just debate whether to remove negative gearing and interest deductibility from property investors. They actually did it! And then, after watching rents hit record highs, investors bail…
Build-to-rent is increasingly being positioned as the solution to Australia’s rental housing shortage. The concept sounds compelling: large institutions funding purpose-built rental housing, professionally managed, designed specifically for long-term tenants, and held in single ownership rather than sold off to individual buyers. And to be clear, in my mind build-to-rent (BTR) has a legitimate role…
Last time we talked about the rise of the solo household – the quiet surge of Australians who now live alone, and why one-third of all households could fit that description within twenty years. This time, we turn to the job side of the story. Because the way Australians work is changing just as fast…
Most people have a rough idea that their investments will grow over time, but very few can tell you how fast without reaching for a calculator. There’s a simple mental formula that’s been used by savvy investors for decades, and once you know it, you’ll find yourself using it all the time. It’s called the…
