Empower Blog Property & Financial Investment

MPTV – Interest Rates and Home Loan Lending

Ben Kingsley talks about mortgage interest rates and home loans as a guest panelist on Melbourne Property TV (MPTV). In this session, Ben will be discussing about the role RBA plays in the Australian economy and the logic for their decision making. They will also be touching on historical trends of Australia's interest rates and how the current ...

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How Much Money is Enough?

If you stopped work today, how much money would you have to live off before it all ran out? If you stopped work today, how much income would your investments generate?  Would it be enough to live off?  Would you eventually have to sell down on your investments to ensure you had enough money to live off? How much is enough? If you have read s...

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Repayment Changes

With the RBA decreases in interest rates late last year and the recent lender increases it’s hard to know exactly what your repayment should be each month when it comes to your mortgage. Furthermore there are some lenders who when rates are reduced do not adjust your repayment levels so you don’t know where you stand and it’s easy to feel as ...

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Why are people so scared of auctions?

It’s true. Melbournians are scared of auctions. For some, the very idea of an auction sends adrenaline rushing, but for others it throws a great property listing onto the scrapheap before they have even seen it in real life. We constantly field questions about auctions and introduce ideas for clients to combat some of their auction concerns. ...

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RBA Rates Decision – March 2012

The cash rate has been left on hold this month as the RBA believes it has adequately priced the access of money in the economy to ensure the long term growth of the economy. Meanwhile many economists argue the cash rate is too high to stimulate the economic growth, as soft market conditions in the two largest states of NSW and Victoria, have been o...

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Cooling Off Changes in Victoria

Recently the Victorian government made changes to the Cooling off legislation regarding purchasing residential property. Prior to this change if you sought legal advice from a solicitor then you couldn’t cool off on your purchase contract within the designated cooling off period. Following the changes you can now seek legal advice and still ha...

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Property Market ‘Too Important to Fail’

Imagine a situation where what you’re investing in, is also so critical to the overall economy in which that investment is found, that if it failed it would severely cripple the economy and standard of living of its population. You don’t really have to imagine too hard, because that is exactly the situation we have in the Australian market. ...

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The Impact of Capital Growth

In an earlier newsletter, we identified that there are many different investment vehicles available to use in a strategy designed to deliver long term wealth creation, and that these different approaches differ in a number of key characteristics, including : their upfront and ongoing cost in terms of both time and money, the extent to which ...

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What makes a Buyer’s Market become a Seller’s market?

Without doubt, the defining aspect of 2011 for us was the rapid swing of the Melbourne Seller's market to a Buyer's market. To explain this, cast your mind back to 2009 when, after the full impact of the GFC first hit Australia, our government and RBA instigated some immediate moves to aid buoyancy in our market. We had one-off stimulus cheques ...

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RBA Rates Decision – February 2012

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) surprised the broader market this afternoon by leaving the cash rate at 4.25%. One would now expect a bit of media backlash towards the government and RBA for this decision in light of the recent media reports of major job losses in some sectors of the economy. Certainly expect to see the Retailer Association, Ma...

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Loan Structuring

If you are not familiar with the term then this article is for you..... What is the definition of loan structuring:  In very simple terms it’s the way in which the loan product is set up to accommodate the borrower’s best interest, either in short, medium or longer terms depending on the client’s end goal, because we have to remember the goa...

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Predictability in an Unpredictable Time

How does that saying go…"Change is the only certainty in our world”.  It’s true, all things change, some quicker than others, but over time change is inevitable. When you put your investor’s hat on the same thing rings true. Markets are constantly changing.  Investments that were nice earners over the past few years might now be stagna...

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The Cost of Spending

One of the fundamental principles of Empower Wealth’s Money Planning philosophy is that you should get your money to work as hard as possible for you.  In our previous newsletter, we looked at one approach to get your money working for you, by using an Offset Account to reduce the amount of Interest that you have to pay on your Mortgage. This a...

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