Marrickville, Gorokan and Toukley are among the busiest of Sydney’s cheapest suburbs, according to CoreLogic RP Data. For houses, Marsden Park is the cheapest Sydney suburb, with a median price of $119,310. However, the suburb only saw seven homes sold in the past year. Far busier was Gorokan, with 241 houses sold in 2014. With […]

If you’re considering buying a property as an investor, the listing agent will usually emphasise the fact that the property is tenanted. So that’s a good thing right? Well, yes and no.  Let’s explore the pros and cons of buying a property with existing tenants, and the questions you should ask to find out exactly […]

Setting your kids up with their first property or two is a wonderful gesture that (hopefully) they’ll appreciate and a decision that will certainly give them a financial head start in life. There are a number of ways to go about it, each with their pros and cons, and the age of your kids will […]

If you’re time poor (and let’s face it, who isn’t these days) you may not be able to dedicate the time needed to do a decent job of sourcing your investment properties.  This is where a buyers’ agent can be worth their weight in gold.  So in this post I wanted to start you off […]

The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story this week suggesting that investors are starting to look at selling their investment properties, following a year of red hot property gains – a kind of property market profit taking, so to speak.  So if you’re mulling over selling a property or two, here’s some advice for doing […]

People are pretty comfortable with the idea of residential property investment.  Most people (I’m guessing) have lived in a house or a unit before; many have also rented them.  So it’s a known quantity and having a few houses in our portfolio makes us feel pretty good. Now, maybe you’ve been to realestate.com.au on the […]

It seems like every other day you hear about the next ‘property hotspot’.  You know, the hot suburb to invest in – the one that’s blowing everything else out of the water.  The one if you miss jumping onto, you’ll be kicking yourself, living in poverty, unable to show your face to your property investor […]

Buying off the plan.  To some investors, that term conjures images of dodgy Gold Coast unit developments and poor quality suburban housing projects. But is that reputation really deserved?  When buying off the plan, it comes down to your personal financial situation and your appetite for taking a risk that might pay off enormously, or […]

More planners are becoming familiar with direct property investment and investors should shop around for balanced advice that feels right to them. It’s not an uncommon scenario.  An investor raises with their financial planner the idea of buying an investment property.  They’ve heard bits and pieces from friends or media about hikes in rental demand, […]

Investors must not take a ‘set and forget’ attitude if they wish to have a high performing property portfolio. New investors can end up with an underperforming portfolio inside 12 months if they don’t keep a close eye on their assets and on emerging opportunities in the market. People think property investment is simple stuff, […]

Friday the 27th was the “Choice Aggregation Services Professional Services Day”. I had a ball being a guest expert on a panel of Brokers and Lenders talking about buying a property using a SMSF (Self Managed Super Fund). As you know, that’s a subject I can talk all day about 😉 It was great talking […]

I recently had the pleasure of hosting around twenty clients and investors at an intimate boardroom briefing in the CBD.  With the Australian property market on the move, we took the opportunity to brief our guests on three of the best strategies for growing entry level property portfolios. Thanks to James Gerrard, Partner at PSK […]