The federal government has handed down what Treasurer Jim Chalmers called “the most important and ambitious Budget in decades.” The term “intergenerational inequality” is a social construct dreamed up by Labor to create a an “us vs them” to encourage younger Australians to vote for them. Yes, young people have challenges including affordability, but in…
Every few years something happens in the property market that spooks investors into thinking the game has changed permanently. A new lending restriction. A stamp duty hike. A credit squeeze. And now, the most significant overhaul of property tax settings in decades – the removal of negative gearing for established dwellings and the replacement of…
Mistakes are part and parcel of life and I see them as opportunities to learn valuable lessons. However, when it comes to property investing, mistakes can prove to be very costly. So much so that they can often prevent investors from getting past owning one single property. I must admit it…in my early days of…
Do women really make better property investors? There seems to be mounting evidence that this could be the case. A while ago Kym Kiyosaki gave her opinion on 8 advantages that women have that make them better investors. Here’s what she said: 1. We’re not afraid to say, “I don’t know.” The person who has to…
There’s a troubling irony in the latest data on how Australians are feeling about their lives. We endured lockdowns, closed borders, business shutdowns, and genuine fear about a global pandemic, and apparently, we were happier then than we are right now. New research from the Australian National University found that life satisfaction has fallen to…
Something unusual is happening in Victoria’s rental market, and it has no historical precedent in over two decades of recorded data. For the first time since the Residential Tenancies Bond Authority began tracking bond lodgements, more rental bonds are being refunded than lodged. Put simply, rental properties are leaving the market faster than they’re entering…
There’s a saying in property circles that you make your money on a piece of real estate when you buy it. The gist of this is, that if you can negotiate really well and buy the property at the right time in the cycle, you’ll instantly manufacture some profits. This myth has caused people to…
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…
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…
