If just one state of Australia, New South Wales, scrapped its stamp duty on real estate transactions, about 100,000 more Australians would move homes each year, according to our best estimates. Stamp duty is an unquestioned part of buying a home in Australia – you put your details in an online mortgage calculator, and stamp…
From granny flats to kitchen renovations and even new driveways, Aussies love to look for property upgrades that will increase the overall value of their property. After all, renovations are a great way to make your home more functional, comfortable and liveable. Have you ever wondered if adding a swimming pool is one of the…
It is a common misconception that insurance covers absolutely everything. Landlords may think they will be reimbursed by an insurer for any kind of rental loss or damage. But, this is not the case. Why? Because the overload in risk would make insurance unaffordable. Insurers need to strike a balance between providing cover for the…
Despite being one of the least dense countries, Australia has some of the highest home prices in the world. Domain’s latest Price Square Metre Report 2024 reveals that house prices per square metre (table 1) and unit prices per square metre (table 2) in capital cities have been trending upward over the past year and…
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…
It’s four years since the COVID lockdowns started. The pandemic ended when it morphed into the less deadly Omicron variant in late 2021, but just as a sound can reverberate around a room the effects of the pandemic continue to reverberate in economies. Putting aside the long-term health impacts this note looks at 7 key…
Do apartments still make good investments? During previous property cycles new and off-the-plan apartments were popular with many investors. However, I’ve always maintained that most new and virtually all off-the-plan units are not “investment grade” properties. That’s because of their cookie-cutter designs, lack of scarcity, poor owner-occupier appeal, and propensity to create oversupply problems during…
Treasurer Jim Chalmers is leading a push to get private investors to help build more social and affordable housing. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves about where the money will come from. The defining feature of social and affordable housing is a big rental subsidy for the tenant, which no private investor will ever volunteer to…
Record population growth will increase housing demand, both to buy and rent. Australia’s population growth has bounced back big time after the Covid restrictions and the country’s annual increase is currently close to 625,000. This likens to a 12,000 increase in the country’s population per week. This is twice the annual average population increase over…
One thing this latest buzz of investor activity in the property market has demonstrated yet again is that some newcomers to the real estate game still insist on going in blind. These first-timers operate under the assumption that any property makes a good investment and that if things don’t quite pan out, well you can…
