Empower Blog Property & Financial Investment

Scarcity Value – Not Just in the Land

Statistical evidence shows us that when it comes to property  the land portion is the portion that historically appreciates in value.  This is a result of the scarcity of the land combined with the demand for that land, as once a lot of land is allocated and built on , the amount of available land decreases and the lot of land can’t be re-used ...

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Reducing the ‘Fear Factor’ in property investing

Without a doubt, one of the biggest reasons people hold back from investing in property is fear of risk. This fear shows up in many different ways, from well thought out objections to procrastination itself. There are books on the shelves, magazines on the racks, shows about investing and presenters advertising the merits of investing. There are...

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Money Choices

In this month’s comment I’m putting my focus on discretionary and lifestyle spending decision with a goal of just making people contemplate a little harder before making such decisions or continuing with the money choices they currently make... Smoking: Based on research conducted by Galaxy for Pfizer in 2009, the average smoker spends $2,50...

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RBA Rates Decision – July 2011

Hmmmmm, just how well is the little Aussie Economy going? As expected the RBA remained in a holding pattern on the cash rate, pushing out their well versed message of “rates remain appropriate”, well for now anyway. Their people still remain hawkish on further interest rate rises as theirs and Treasuries GDP calculations have the economy gro...

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Financing for Cash flow

Cash flow is at the heart of any household or business and in almost all cases the lack of cash flows is their downfall, because they technically become insolvent. There are several ways in which structuring your financials/debt can help from a cashflow position for households. Here are a couple of examples that will assist in building your know...

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A Great Time to Start is NOW

As we begin the new Financial Year, most people can expect to receive some key information regarding their financial situation - employees will be receiving their PAYG Payment Summaries (Group Certificates) for the year and most people will also be receiving statements from their Superannuation Fund(s) which will give an insight into the wealth bas...

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Property Values – Where to from Here?

Avid readers of my commentary will know that I am a buy and hold investor, opting for long term passive income and capital growth. It’s this methodology that suits most of the strategies we design for our clients at Empower Wealth. Furthermore our investment analysis has over-weighting towards incomes as a core growth driver for property value...

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Please Keep Talking Up this ‘Property Bubble’!

This month’s comment is not going to focus too much on the hype surrounding property values and what they are worth today or the next 3 months, you can read my previous comments from other newsletters about how I have been predicting 10% or more correction in values in new housing areas where the majority of the market has mortgages, and also in ...

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RBA Rates Decision – June 2011

The RBA held off increasing the cash rate / interest rates once again this month, as it digests the March Quarter GDP data.  The numbers for the quarter weren’t good, driven by the natural disaster events in Queensland.  These events caused significant disruption to the mining industry, due to major infrastructure damage from these events. T...

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How do you Get Started?

In the previous Newsletter, we looked at the first step in Money Planning  -  knowing where you are now  -  and outlined the sort of information that you would need to collect to be able to prepare a picture of your current financial position. But that’s only the beginning - your financial position will be constantly changing over time, and ...

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Property Selection Myth

Location, Location, Location was and still is the catch cry from most Real Estate agents when it comes to which properties outperform and which properties don’t. When a property investor is looking to make a property selection for investment, maybe we should adopt this principal but with a little more creative license.   Location One: Id...

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Basic Rental Property Obligations

Although this would appear as common sense to all my landlords, it’s still important that one understands their obligations when it comes to letting out a property for rent. Under the act governing the letting of property the landlord has certain obligations, the most important of which is that the property being let is in a condition that would ...

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My Greatest Fear, Disappointment & Possible Regret

In taking a moment to reflect on what Jane (my wife) and I have been able to achieve financially over our 16 years of investing in residential property and amassing a multi-million dollar property portfolio before the age of 40, it once again highlights to me a couple of valuable lessons that have resulted in our household becoming financially inde...

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