Empower Blog Property & Financial Investment

If You Can Measure It, You Can Manage It

You have heard me talk about treating your household as a business.  Those of you who are new to our newsletter, let me revisit this point. Your household, which could be you, you and your partner etc, generates income for the work you and potentially other members of your household do, just like a business generates income.  In fact if a hous...

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Lending Laws Now Consistent Across the Board

The start of the 2011-12 financial year saw the new National Consumer Credit Protection (NCCP) laws take effect for banks and other lending institutions along with brokers.  The laws for brokers came into effect 1st January 2011.  This now provides consumers with greater protection from unscrupulous lending practices that may have occurred in the...

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RBA Rates Decision – August 2011

For the first time in a while the RBA decision on interest rates was something worth watching.  Only two weeks before the inflation data was released last week, there was Bill Evans – Westpac’s chief Economist - on Sunday night TV talking about rates coming down.  Then stepping up to the plate is the Inflation Genie, which really put a spanne...

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Game plan: How to retire within 10 years on a 52k pa passive income

Tasmania-based Jo Worsfold and her husband Chris got in touch with Your Investment Property in search of some first-time investor advice. As Jo admitted, the couple really had no idea where to start but were keen to get their property portfolio off the ground as soon as possible - if they could afford it. "My husband and I have been wanting to get ...

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How can Property Zoning affect a Property?

“Oh. What does that mean?” is the response buyers often have when we make mention of a little piece of information that can have significant negative flow-on effects for a property purchase. So what sorts of pieces of information could adversely affect a property purchase? And even if the buyer never plans to sell, how could their purchase e...

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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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