Empower Blog Property & Financial Investment

Powerful Strategies to Finding Properties

It's easy to think that once you have decided on an investment strategy and got your finances sorted, you have moved into the home strait. After all, the remaining step is simply to go out and buy a property, right? Wrong! While the buying stage is one that many investors look forward to with great excitement, it is in fact full of minefields that ...

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Finance Talk with Look At Property

In this episode of Finance Talk, Look At Property, Ben Kingsley joins host, Des Dowling and Walter Dobrowolski from Walter Financial Solutions to talk about property finance. After 12 months, the RBA interest rate is still on hold at 2.5% but the common question remained: how long is this going to last? Many media commentary is now saying that t...

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When should you do a Building and Pest inspection?

So the question is when should you get a building and pest inspection done on a property that you looking to purchase and in my view, you should always get it done prior to entering into a contract when you're actually in a position when you can do that. But I'm also aware that in some cases you just can't, so for example if it's a really fast movi...

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Top 5 Aspects to Look at during a Property Inspection

If you are in the process of finding a property and if you are attending inspections quite regularly, you need to know what to look for. A good inspection will lead to a better understanding on the property and hence, can save you a lot of time, energy and even money. But the question remains: what should you pay attention to? Here are the top 5 as...

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Improving Financial Literacy

In previous newsletter articles, we looked at the results of an international study which highlighted the high poverty rate amongst older Australians compared to other countries. In this newsletter, we look at a recent international study which casts Australia in a more favourable light. The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (P...

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A Piece of Cake

Creating a successful property investment portfolio is much like following a recipe - but get your ingredients wrong and your investment cake might sink, burn or crumble. In the August 2014 Issue of Smart Property Investment (SPI) Magazine, Ben Kingsley writes about the various experience he had with property investors and how they build their pro...

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Key Changes you need to know about your Retirement and Pension

So with the recent budget in May this year, the Federal Government announced a few changes in relation to Centrelink. In particular, the one that got a lot of media attention was increase in the age entitlement. It was recommended or suggested to increase the age pension entitlement from age 67 to 70. This would be phased out over the next few year...

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Finding the Right Investment Property

In this episode of Look At Property, Ben Kingsley joins host, Des Dowling and Elizabeth Jackson from Public Property to discuss about finding the right investment property. When you are buying your own home, you have a lot of aspects to look at but will it be different when you are buying your own investment property? The panel discussed about h...

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YIP TV – Property Investment Advice for the Year to Come

In this episode, Your Investment Property TV caught up with Australia's Property Investment Advisor of the Year, Ben Kingsley for his view on the market for the year ahead. Ben mentioned about the how the current market had react to the low interest rate and what's the general sentiment on property investment. Melbourne and Sydney, especially, had ...

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Emotional Problems

Property Investors who allow emotions to enter into the transaction make three key errors which can lead to long-term problems that could easily be avoided. In the August 2014 issue of Smart Property Investment Magazine (SPI), Empower Wealth, shares some of her own stories where investors faced with emotional problems and property investment tips ...

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The Top 3 Myths of Financial Planning

So one of the key myths of Financial Planning is that our role is to minimise your tax or reduce your tax bill. The reality is our job is certainly a lot larger than that. It's about looking at the long term objectives, how do we position your portfolio, your investments and your savings to achieve that. Tax is simply a by-product of that. And the ...

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RBA Rate Decision – August 2014

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) today kept interest rates on hold for another month and that's twelve months now since the RBA last reduced interest rates which they did by 25 basis points. So the cash rate as of today stands at 2.5 which is still at record low levels. Now what's happening in the economy at the moment is there's not a lot a ...

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One on One on PIPA’s Code of Conduct

In Season 7 of Look At Property, Ben Kingsley, as the current chair of Property Investment Professional of Australia (PIPA) appears on a One on One with Julie McBeth. In this episode, Ben talks about the spruikers in the Property Investment industry. With this industry unregulated, spruikers are allowed to roam free and provide tempting but unrelia...

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