Granny flats seem like a smart investment idea, don’t they? You build a modest dwelling in your backyard, rent it out, and voilà — a little extra income stream. But before you dive into the idea of building a granny flat on your property, let’s take a closer look. The reality is that granny flats…
For years, young Australians have been told to work hard, save harder, sacrifice more and somehow find a way into a housing market that keeps moving faster than their wages. And many of them have done exactly that. They have stayed at home longer with their parents, taken second jobs, delayed having children, invested in…
House prices have always been a talking point in Australia, but lately the conversation has shifted from concern to alarm. And for good reason. Tom Crowley explained this well in a recent article on ABC. He said… Think back to 2001. A typical nurse-and-electrician couple could save for around six years and buy a modest…
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?…
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…
