Empower Blog Property & Financial Investment

Owner Occupier Appeal: Seven Overlooked Aspects

Hi, Ben here. In this how-to session I want to explore the concept of how we chase down capital growth. Now, if you've listened to Bryce's or my how-to videos before, or checked us out on our podcast The Property Couch, you would know we talk heavily about owner-occupier appeal. We believe owner-occupier appeal pushes the value of property higher s...

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How Do Mortgage Insiders Feel About The Market?

APRA’s approach to managing investor lending has raised some concerns and question marks for the property investment industry. But a new survey conducted by PIPA, as recently explained in Your Investment Property Magazine, proves that property professionals are rightfully optimistic. Ben, also Chair of PIPA, is excited about the level o...

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RBA Rate Decision – June 2017

The Reserve Board met today, and they kept the cash rate on hold for another month at 1.5%. Now we saw May 2017 being a very interesting month in regards to the Federal Budget. It came out, and we did see some surprises inside that Federal Budget. Firstly let's talk about the Bank Levy. This is all to do with what they call budget repair and it's ...

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Three Forces That Shape An Investor’s Character

If anyone’s interested in building a property portfolio, they usually focus on the mechanics and the doing. The asset selection, the finance and those sorts of critical things. But we need to have a think about the psychological side of it as well—because, quite often, not a lot of people who want to successfully build their portfolio, do it. S...

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The ‘flour jar’ method of saving for a house

Last week, you might have noticed a video of Bryce and Ben circulating around Facebook talking about the ‘flour jar’ method of saving for a house! Yup, that’s right! Our podcast, The Property Couch has partnered with Realestate.com.au to produce a series of videos and articles to help more Australians realise their true potential around money...

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Sky Business News – Your Money Your Call (May 2017)

Ben Kingsley returns to the SKY Business News Channel, Your Money Your Call (YMYC). Joining ‘temporary host’ Lisa Montgomery, Ben and Rich Harvey, discuss sustainable and sensible property investing in Australia. As well as diving into the current property market, the experts weigh in on: Is housing an economic uncertainty? Why do your obj...

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Four Essential Levers to Building Wealth

So, I previously spoke about the fact that it's really important you know the number that you need to retire on. The actual income figure for you to live a comfortable retirement lifestyle and, therefore, the worth of an income-producing asset you will need outside of family home. Today, I want to have an extension of this because once I know the ...

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Will You Remain Confident In A Changing Market?

I want to talk about confidence in a changing market. Now we've been very blessed to see property prices has grown significantly over the last several years with low-interest rates and a reasonably OK economy in terms of jobs. But we are going to see that potentially change. We are already seeing the regulators and the banks starting to see the co...

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First Home Super Saver Scheme – What is it?

In this How To session, I want to talk about the 2017 Federal Budget. Treasurer Scott Morrison has announced a First Home Super Saver Scheme. Now, this Saver Scheme is all about trying to help first home buyers save for a deposit. Let's look at how it works. Effectively what you can do is, you can salary sacrifice into your super a maximum of $15,0...

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RBA Rate Decision – May 2017

Today Governor Lowe and the Reserve board met, and the kept the cash rate on hold once again in May. That keeps the cash rate at 1.5%, so monetary policy remains on hold, but we now are coming to the month of federal budgets and state budgets. And this is where we start to look at fiscal policy. So what are our state governments and also our federa...

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Should deposits be waived for first-timers with good rental history?

Did you know, according to most recent First Time Buyers Deposit Report published by Bankwest, Australian couples need to save for an average of 4.4 years for a 20% deposit on a median-priced house. Now, would this changed if deposits are waived for first home owners and how will this affect the property market in general? Bryce Holdaway debated w...

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What Causes Property Prices To Fall?

In this how to session, we're going to get a little bit more serious, and talk about what causes property prices to fall. Now property prices are again, similar to any type of economic value setting mechanism where demand and supply plays a role. So when you get low supply and high demand, you usually see values increase. It's not different in ...

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New Initiatives for First Home Buyers (VIC)

In an effort to address housing affordability, and potentially the political pressure around this topic at the moment; the Victorian State Government has drafted some new initiatives to help first home buyers get into the marketplace. Let's have a look at what they are: If you're buying a property up to the value of $600,000, you will no longer pa...

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