Sunday Blog - Expert property investment insights

In 2014 our prudential regulator, APRA issued a recommendation to our banks to slow down the rate of new investment loans being approved. Not until two years later did our lenders fully adopt the recommendations, but when they did; things got serious. The methodology adopted included; a reduction of the maximum Loan to Value Ratio…

This week I had the pleasure of presenting to a room of eighty-something property managers from around the country at the PM Reach Conference. Not only did I enjoy sharing my insights as a Buyer’s Advocacy business owner, I loved hearing the adventures and proud stories of some amazing industry professionals. Topics were varied and…

Dads… every professional bidder’s nightmare, and often a Buyer’s Agent’s challenge when it comes to overriding their best-intended (bad) advice. A father’s support always comes from a good place, but often it can threaten an inexperienced buyer’s chances of success. We see constant examples of this in our travels and it is one of the…

Two years ago I bid on a majestic block of land in Portarlington for a lovely client who was away on the day of the auction. I recall a huge crowd, flags flying in the strong breeze and a long line of onlookers queuing for their free bite at the Lion’s club sausage sizzle trailer.…

The property pundits have already put up their Saturday night reports, several with similar angles about the strength of our auction clearance rates, and more specifically, the fact that it hasn’t been this strong since 2017. Surely for anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the doom and gloom stories about our…

This is a very fair question for buyers to ask. They don’t always have the benefit of a long-standing professional relationship, or acquired trust. And they don’t always know the questions to ask or the ways to handle this doubting concept when the question arises. Buyers often ask us this question when they are faced…

Land to Asset Ratio is not a plentiful term in our industry, but it should be. It literally means ‘the ratio of the land content to the total asset value.’ The term has a few variants, but they all refer to the value of the land when benchmarked against the value of any dwelling plus improvements on this…

Our crazy ol’ market has indeed copped some changes in a short period of time. It’s hard to believe the sales that we were involved in from February to mid-May now that we’ve had two solid weekends of tough auction competition, fast-paced and competitive negotiations, and extraordinarily well-attended open for inspections. What do people point…

It’s never a dull day on a Saturday for us, but this weekend was life in technicolour for both of us. With a renewed level of energy and optimism, it was no surprise for Amy and I to see the auction clearance rate was immediately into the mid-sixties for Melbourne when the 7pm notification came…

In the wake of the election shock result, APRA’s recommendation to ease lender’s servicing buffers, and talk of further incentives for First Home Buyers, it should come as little shock to those watching Melbourne’s property market that a fresh sense of optimism now circles our market. The past two months in particular have been plagued…

Amidst the crazy election furor, annoying political ads and badly-thought-out vote grabs, one of the latest knee-jerk ideas of our politicians is to assist a limited number of eligible first home buyers into the market with a handy additional 15% deposit guarantee. What does this mean for buyers? It means that those who haven’t saved…