Empower Blog Property & Financial Investment

Why is property investing so hard?

Hi Ben Kingsley here, today on our How to Session, I'm going to talk about why is property investing so hard. Now I'm here on the whiteboard but today we are using some cards. We are going to basically look at the whole complexity surrounding property. You've heard us talk before if you've watched some of our other videos about owner occupier appea...

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RBA Rate Decision – June 2016

Today the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they kept interest rates on hold. So the cash rate remained at 1.75% leading into the federal election on July 2. So there’s a couple of things that I want to talk about. Firstly is negative gearing. We know that the Liberal Party is not making any changes to negative gearing but the Labor Party i...

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Are strata properties always a bad idea?

I’m often asked the question about whether or not an investor should discount buying strata properties. And my answer is always, depends. Because there’s no one answer for that and to be honest, it’s always preferable to be able to buy a house on its own piece of land. But let’s be honest, in a lot of the investment grade suburbs, a lot of ...

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Plan ahead for the aged care you want

Early planning can take away a lot of the stress and uncertainty that can arise when considering aged care at home or a residential aged care facility. Know what your options are The first option that probably comes to mind is a residential aged care facility. These facilities provide accommodation and care depending on your personal needs. Care ca...

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Considerations for borderless investing

Anyone who’s a regular watcher of our videos will know that we’re proponents of borderless investing because not all of the states move in the same cycle. So whilst we think that time in the markets is a very good thing, we also think that an extension of that is actually timing the market to make sure that you’re in the state that’s got th...

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The property self assessment test

When we’re building property portfolio plans for our clients, there is a section we go through as part of learning about them. And that section is what we call the property self assessment test. We ask them whats their level of skill and what’s their level of experience in being able to do this themselves. So we ask them to rank that between 1 ...

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The $500,000 Mistake

Ben is often seen as the expert in the property investment industry and the fact is, he IS an expert. Not only is he one of the top Australia's property investment advisor, he's also a property investor himself and like everyone, he has gone through some ups and downs. In the May 2016 edition of the Australian Property Investor Magazine, Ben writes...

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RBA Rate Decision – May 2016

On this budget Tuesday, the Reserve Governor and the Board met and they’ve dropped interest rates. Now this is the first interest rate drop since May of last year. So it’s been 12 months but they've decided to pull the trigger on the cash rate and lower in that cash rate. Now what’s interesting about this is, if we actually go back two weeks...

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Five tips to get property advice

Its always an interesting discussion you have with someone who' s planning a wedding. They spend this huge amount of time in the lead up to the wedding. What they're going to have at the reception, what dress, what the groom is going to wear, where are they going for their honeymoon.. It's just so much planning that goes into this very one day but ...

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Rent and Invest

We've previously talked about Rentvesting before, what is it and how it'll work. This time on the Cover Story of the March 2016 Issue of Money Magazine, Ben Kingsley was invited to write about this investment strategy in more detail. It's definitely a growing trend but it is important to note that this rent and invest is not for everyone. Hence, i...

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Sky Business News – Your Money Your Call (April 2016)

This time on SKY Business News Channel, Your Money Your Call (YMYC), Ben Kingsley joins the panel to discuss what's making news in the property market and more. They answered a number of emails and calls from viewers and some of the topics are: How's the property market going in NSW and indicators to determine the health of the market such as ...

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Putting theory into practice in asset selection

One of the things that I think is really difficult for property investors is bringing the theory and then putting it into practice. We've always talked about the bigger picture of what we should be looking for in an asset selection. So you know, in terms of owner occupier appeal rather than investor only appeal. We've talked about it needing to be ...

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Rentvesting: Is it the right strategy for you?

So in this how to video, what I want to do is explore the idea of rentvesting and whether it is the right type of strategy for you. Now, every household is different in regards to their financial and personal goals. Rentvesting is the concept whereby you rent where you want to live but you invest the savings into a portfolio of properties, ultimate...

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