Empower Blog Property & Financial Investment

Principal and Interest Vs Interest Only Loans: Why and when should you pay more interest?

In this How To Session, we're going to get technical and start to talk about the pros and cons of interest-only lending when it comes to investment properties. Now, it's really important to understand why you would go interest-only. Because we have seen recently that there is an extra margin the banks are now charging us for the luxury of being in...

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Equity: The Power Within

What’s the power within your own home? Equity! As Bryce explains in Money Magazine’s Special Edition issue, using the equity in your existing property allows you to invest without chipping into your own savings and takes the time spent saving for a deposit. Basically, after you release the equity, you can use it to purchase an investment prope...

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Housing Affordability

The latest home price figures confirmed what many of us already know: Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra markets are going gangbusters. But if the dream of homeownership seems to slip further away, savvy investors are looking for a bit of the square to get a foothold on the property ladder. Angelique Donnellan reports. Every morning Rob Cooper checks...

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Bad Time for Property Investment?

Ben appears again in Money Magazine’s Special Edition issue, this time in a Q&A surrounding some hard questions about the current market climate for property investors. With the spotlight on changes to borrowing, Federal Budget restrictions and depreciation claims, a light shadow looms on certain investors. Is it a bad time for property inves...

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What was Ben and Bryce’s First Home Buy?

So, they’re both Qualified Property Investment Advisors and two of Australia’s top industry experts … but what was Ben Kingsley's and Bryce Holdaway’s first home buy? Money Magazine put the question to The Property Couch’s main men for their Special Edition issue and their responses were unexpected! Sneak Peek: “With very little know...

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RENTVESTING: The Best of Both Worlds

Want to live in an inner-city suburb, but simply can’t afford to buy in it? Hello, rentvesting! In this Money Magazine article, Ben explores the alternative strategy to tackle housing affordability: Rent in the location you want to live; but still invest property. Rentvesting is a shift from the baby boomer view of home ownership; but it is a wa...

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Be a Farmer, Not a Hunter

Bryce appears again in Money Magazine ... this time in their Special Edition issue! In this article, Bryce talks about the importance of being a farmer, not a hunter when it comes to a property investing. The theory behind it is that you need to play the investment game for the long term, planting tree seedlings now so that you will sit, cover...

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RBA Rate Decision – August 2017

Today Governor Lowe and the Reserve Board met and—no surprises here — cash rate remains on hold at 1.5%. We did see some interesting commentary come out of the RBA over the July period, and some of that commentary was around what they thought was an ideal cash rate — around 3.25%. Now, with the current cash rate sitting at 1.5%, the markets ...

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What Is The Biggest Expense A Property Investor Will Face?

As a property investor building a portfolio, the question often asked is, what is the biggest expense I will face when I build out the costs for the portfolio? For me, it's really clear that the biggest expense, bar none, is a vacancy. If you think about it, you're renting a property for $500 a week and it's vacant for four weeks; there's $2,000 g...

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The Three Hidden Mistakes That Property Investors Often Make

Today I want to talk about three hidden mistakes that property investors often make. The first one is wanting to settle on a Friday. This comes from the fact that when we're buying our own home if we settle on a Friday, we get the keys and we move in over the weekend. But the challenge is that 20% of settlements don't settle on the due date because...

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RBA Rate Decision – July 2017

FACT SHEET: Changes on Government Fees and First Home Initiatives (Effective since 1 July 2017) [gravityform id="23" title="false" description="false"] Today the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they've kept the cash rate on hold at 1.5% for the start of the new financial year. Let's have a look at some of the economic data that we've seen o...

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How to Protect your Portfolio from the Inevitable Storms?

Today what I want to talk about is How do you protect your portfolio from the inevitable storms that you will face if you want to play this game for the long term? We've just had a world record here in Australia—we've had over 25 years without a “technical” recession, which means that no other developed economy in the world has actually done...

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Growing number of one person households | What does it mean for asset selection?

I wonder if any investors ever thought about the fact that the number of people living alone in Australia is actually one in four people. So 25% of us actually live in a dwelling on our own. If you think about that internationally, though, it's actually pretty average. Because if you think about Scandinavia, which is 34%, and Sweden, which is 49% �...

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