Sunday Blog - Expert property investment insights

There is a bit of talk in the media about the current conditions being opportune for home buyers who are upgrading, but the process of buying, selling, packing, moving, settling is a lot more challenging than the headlines suggest. Not all markets are equal, and the recent headlines generalise about the metropolitan Melbourne market in…

Many of us imagine this scene. We suddenly receive one million dollars….What would we do with it?  Generous recipients consider who they can help, which friends they can treat, and how they can all enjoy it. But what would a pragmatic Property Investment Advisor like me do? I’d model it out, combine it with considered…

Last week I met with a lovely couple who are struggling to find a well-located, nicely renovated, four-bedroom home in Yarraville. They said they’d been searching for many months and the right house just hadn’t come along. I explained to them, “Many inner-ring suburbs in Melbourne, particularly in the inner-north and inner-west are problematic for…

I get this question all the time. And I understand why. Buyer’s Advocate fees are a serious dent in some buyer’s pool of savings, and for those who need to see a tangible and guaranteed benefit, it can be a tough fee for an advocate to explain. But the thing is; it’s not measurable. For…

Yesterday I met a delightful young couple who were newly engaged, contemplating buying a property and saving for a (big) wedding. Their ability to save was strong, but their wedding guest numbers were larger than typical primary school student numbers. The cost would be significant. They justifiably had concerns about their additional savings capacity and…

This is a very common question we field, and the answer is simple.  “It depends on the situation.” Most buyers don’t like the thought of competing for a property in a public auction format. It’s intimidating, it’s fast, it requires emotional (and often some financial) investment in the process before being assured of a purchase, and…

When Bull markets turn Bear, the order of how people upgrade their home changes. This, in turn can impact stock levels, particularly when aspiring Sellers don’t like what they see. I was asked to comment for The Age’s Domain this week about the apparent concern that our State Revenue Office has expressed in relation to…

During the week I had the task of reviewing an investor’s portfolio. She had secured her properties without my help, but had a sizeable portfolio with mixed styles, locations and even had an interstate investment in the list. It’s important to note her work-timeline. She had held these properties for over a decade; one for…

That’s right…. some cashflow-neutral options (as pretty as they ain’t), are right here, under our noses in our very own city. Some are within the 7km radius. So firstly, what does cashflow-neutral really mean? When rent rolls in and expenses are drawn out, the net differential for a cash-flow neutral property is close to zero. The expenses, (or outgoings) include five things;…

As Buyers Agents, we mention Comparable Sales all the time.  But there are some that we should disregard altogether, because they are either significantly inferior based on an invisible feature, existent due to an anomaly sale, or they aren’t technically authentic. So how do buyers identify the reliable sales from the unreliable ones? The first category of unreliable comparable sales…

We’ve written extensively about finance clauses, when to use them, when they reduce the strength of the offer, why brokers like to use them as a safety blanket, and when a client is in a higher risk category.  But there are a lot of myths out there when it comes to finance clauses. This article…

With Saturday 2nd Feb signalling another tiny cluster of auctions (albeit with a slightly increased auction clearance rate of 55%), it is fair to note that we won’t see ‘normal’ auction volumes until next Saturday 9th Feb. While we’ll all be watching out for that magic number when it comes through that evening, we also…