Some buyers get so excited about buying a property they often make an emotional decision – which is usually a poor one – rather than a financial decision. First home owners and property investors don’t realise they have made a poor property purchase until they go to sell or have issues tenanting the property many years later.

A poor purchase may result in little or no capital growth or rental income for months at a time, thereby leaving the property investor out of pocket. It’s important to know the medium house price, capital growth rates and rental yields of your area if you are going to buy well – you must do your research. A purchase that will provide a capital growth of 7 – 10% and yields of about 5% is the key for investors that want to build long-term wealth.

Here are 10 points that will help you achieve high capital growth and yields in your own property investments. Read More→

The Housing Industry Association, Australia’s largest building industry organisation, said that building approvals fell slightly in October in a further sign that the new home building recovery may lack the scale required to plug Australia’s housing shortage.

HIA Chief Economist, Dr Harley Dale said that building approvals levels currently implied around 145,000 housing starts per year, well short of the new homes required to meet Australia’s rapidly growing population. Read More→

I listened to a report last night on the radio relating to comments from Glen Stevens, Governor of the RBA. The crux of this report was the Reserve Bank is concerned house prices are going to continue to rise due to an undersupply in housing and a large population increase on the way. Now property prices have generally risen for as long as the statistics on house prices go back. His concerns, however, are for a rapid increase.

The point the journalist was trying to explain was that if you have a house & it goes up in value; you’re really no better off. This theory has been thrown around by both property skeptics and property lovers (like Dolf Deroos) for many years, and if I take the skeptics side for just a moment, I agree that if you had a house worth $400,000 and it increased to $500,000 within any timeframe, then logic suggests that if you sell to upgrade, you’ll need to spend say $600,000 for the house that was worth $500,000 back when you bought your last purchase (for $400,000).  So the real loser in this instance is the renter who is forced to enter the market at a higher price.

BUT, the true winner is he or she who has multiple properties, the astute property investor.

Let’s say you had 4 properties Read More→

Lots of clients have asked us… ‘what does the end of the First Home Owner’s Grant means to property investors?’

Firstly, its important to understand what impact the FHOG had on the market since it was introduced. The FHOG was introduced to provide stimulus to the housing market to maintain confidence in the face of the GFC but all the positive press would leave many people surprised to find out that only 66,000 people have taken advantage of the grant. When you look at this compared to a shortfall of 180,000 properties across the country, its easy to see why rental properties still remain in undersupply. In fact, with ‘market balance’ being a 3% vacancy rate, many markets around Australia remain below Read More→

Why are so many non residents investing in Australia?

It surprised us this week when we did some research on our current clients and where they come from. It turns out that around 20% originate from overseas. So, what is it they that they see in our market that the rest of us might be missing?

Why are so many non residents investing in Australia?

Their reasons for investing are the strong fundamentals that underpin the Australian residential property market:

• Demand or the significant undersupply of rental property in many areas.
• Awareness of the Read More→