Empower Wealth Blog - Property & Financial Investment Tips

13/04/2010
Financial Planning

Why Property Over Salary Sacrifice

Most of you who have been following my monthly commentary and newsletters over the years understand I have a bias towards investing in residential property, because I have been successful at building a multi-million dollar property portfolio over the past 16 years of investing, yet my compulsory superannuation has grown to only a few hundred thou...

08/04/2010
Mortgage Broking

Lazy Borrowings – Are they costing you?

Recently we saw CUA (the largest Credit Union in Australia) reduce their standard variable rate by 0.25% to 6.62%. It was a marketing boon for them, as major media picked up on the story as part of what we will see as continued big bank bashing, given their recent profit results and also the overall market share they hold currently. The intere...

08/04/2010
Mortgage Broking

RBA Rates Decision – April 2010

Today the RBA announced it would increase interest rates a further 25 basis point to move the cash rate to 4.25%. They are trying to take the heat out of the booming housing market, as a threat of a bubble is forming due to the historical low rates implemented during the GFC. Yet our quick recovery out of the GFC to avoid recession has seen t...

03/04/2010
Property Investment Advice

Property Prices – Where to from here?

Those of us in the Melbourne and Sydney markets are seeing property values grow at an astonishing rate. So much so that at a very near point in time, they may be overvalued. I know the first question that’s coming to mind—”when will this be?” As those of you looking to get into the markets are thinking, I’ll just wait until the right t...

15/03/2010
Buyers Agents

Negotiation Tactics in a ‘Sellers’ Market – Part Two

3. Establish recent sales to justify your offer Recent sales of comparative properties can help in getting the estate agent to help support your price offer, but you must compare apples with apples, don’t compare weatherboard with Brick or vastly different land size blocks etc. 4. Start with a long term settlement When you put your...

15/03/2010
Investment Education

Showing the Way…

The most rewarding part of our job is helping our clients create wealth for financial independence through residential property. I’d like to introduce you to one such client. Renee, (name changed for privacy reasons) is in her early thirties, working as a professional woman. Since I have been working with her over the past 4 years, she has...

14/03/2010
Buyers Agents

Don’t Sell the Golden Egg Layer

Real estate agents across the land are complaining they don’t have enough stock to meet buyer demand at the moment. This limited supply is having a positive effect on property values growing quicker than usual. Agents are out there saying they have 10 buyers for every listing they get, especially in the established suburbs. So agents are going...

10/03/2010
Investment Education

Mistakes Borrowers Make

With finance the flavour of this month’s newsletter I thought I’d pen a list of borrower’s mistakes. This list is not specific to investors or owner occupiers; they are basic mistakes or assumptions that lead to mistakes that all borrowers can make..... So let's take a look at them (in no particular order): 1) Going straight to their c...

08/03/2010
Mortgage Broking

Banks Pigeon Hole Their Customers

From my years working in the advertising industry, our Bank clients have always tried to draw a picture of who their target market client is. You’d be surprised to know that it generally meant that many people were ‘Pigeon Holed’ into the same group and that there wasn’t enough distinctive information that could tell people apart. Have...

08/03/2010
Mortgage Broking

RBA Rates Decision – March 2010

Today the RBA announced an increase in the cash rate of 0.25% to bring the cash rate to 4%. This is the first increase in 2010 and follows three consecutive increases in late 2009. The RBA decided to increase the rate based on positive economic news within the Australian economy, led mainly by the improvement in the level of unemployment. Th...

12/02/2010
Buyers Agents

Negotiation Tactics in a ‘Sellers’ Market – Part One

It’s an understatement to say that the residential property market is ‘hot’, as values in almost all major locations are up on this time last year. Sydney, Melbourne and Perth are leading the charge, as supply is outstripped by demand from a growing population. In real estate terms, we are currently in a sellers market, whereby in most loc...

12/02/2010
Property Investment Advice

Rental Yield Outlook Positive

2009 saw many first home buyers take advantage of the additional government stimulus schemes on offer to buy their first home and get out of the rental market. This impacted in less demand for this sector of the market. However this decline was offset against the overall population growth in the major cities centre's around the country. BIS Shrapn...

12/02/2010
Investment Education

Pressure on Housing—Long term

Last week the government released their third Inter generational Report forecast. It is forecasting the population to grow from current levels of 22 million people to 35.9 million by 2050. An increase of 13.9 million people with the level of older Australians increasing as wills the average age they will be living too. This means a double wh...

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