Insights & Resources
Expert analysis, market trends, and practical advice for property investors
People keep asking me whether Box Hill is 'too expensive now.' That question misses the point entirely. The real question is: what drove Box Hill from a sleepy suburban centre to a designated metropolitan activity centre, and which suburbs are on the same trajectory today?
I filmed this walkthrough on a Tuesday morning. The main house tenant was at work, the granny flat tenant was watering the garden out back, and both had no idea they were funding someone's early retirement. That's how passive income is supposed to work.
I'm not being dramatic when I say the middle class is splitting in two. The data from the ABS is brutal. If you own property, your net worth grew by $320,000 on average over the last five years. If you don't, it grew by $8,000. Same country. Same economy. Wildly different outcomes.
My client was shaking. Literally trembling, hands on the phone, watching the auctioneer's countdown tick from 10 to 5. I was in my car with an earpiece, two suburbs away, and I could hear his breathing get faster. 'What do I do?' he whispered. I said one word: 'Nuclear.'
When we settled on 6 Sweet Gum Avenue, the numbers were already decent. A three-bedroom house on 620 square metres in one of Narre Warren's quieter pockets, purchased for $762,000. Rent as-is would have been about $520 a week. But 'decent' isn't why we bought it. We bought it because of what was hiding in the backyard.
I pulled the ABS wealth distribution data last week and nearly choked on my coffee. The gap between homeowners and renters isn't just big. It's so vast that we're effectively looking at two different countries sharing the same postcode.
The most expensive mistake in property investment isn't buying in the wrong suburb. It's buying the right property for the wrong investor profile. I see it constantly — a retiree buying a development site, a first-timer chasing a renovation project, a high-income earner buying something that generates zero tax benefit. The property is fine. The match is wrong.
The first step toward going broke in Australia is letting your mortgage payment exceed 30% of your household income. I don't care how much you earn. I don't care how good the property looks. If the maths puts you above 30%, you're one rate rise away from mortgage stress. Here's how to test it before you sign.
The invitation said 'smart casual.' I showed up in a hoodie. On purpose. In a room full of developers in $3,000 suits, the young bloke in the hoodie who nobody takes seriously is the most dangerous bidder in the building.
There's a website that lets you check school zones, see automated valuations, identify flood zones, and find planning overlays — all for a specific address, all completely free. It's called property.com.au, and roughly 90% of the investors I meet have never used it.
After Victoria's Premier visited New Delhi and announced university partnership programs, the writing was on the wall. Melbourne's demographic mix is shifting, and the property market is going to shift with it. The investors who read this trend early will position accordingly.
Who says you need three properties to collect three rents? This 719-square-metre corner block generates $1,200 a week from a single title. I walked through all three units last week and filmed the whole thing. Here's exactly what we did.
Everyone loves talking about capital gains. Nobody loves talking about what happens when you try to take those gains out of the property and put them in your pocket. I ran the numbers on a $200,000 capital gain last week. The result made me rethink selling entirely.
A rooming house that rents 5 rooms at $220 each generates $1,100 a week on paper. But one bad tenant — one person who doesn't pay, damages common areas, or harasses other tenants — can turn that $1,100 into a $600 nightmare with three vacant rooms and a VCAT application. I've seen it happen. Here's how to prevent it.
I evaluate roughly 40 suburbs a month. I invest in about 3 of them across the entire year. That's a 99% rejection rate. Not because I'm picky for the sake of it — because most suburbs fail a systematic assessment that takes about 45 minutes to run.
When rates drop, two things happen simultaneously. People with mortgages breathe easier. And people without mortgages suddenly realise they can afford to borrow more. The first reaction is relief. The second reaction moves markets.
I walked into an auction last month where eighteen people stood around pretending to be interested. Most of them were neighbours. Two were agents from competing firms. Three were genuine buyers. I knew within thirty seconds that we were going to win this one cheaply.
A client rang me last month in a panic. She had moved out of her family home six months earlier, started renting it out, and just received a notice from the ATO querying her tax return. She had claimed the full interest deduction on the mortgage — but the loan was not structured for investment purposes. That single error will likely cost her $12,000 in back-tax and penalties.
The bill arrived on a Tuesday. Thirty thousand dollars. Victorian land tax assessment for the 2020 financial year. My first reaction was the same as yours would be — that is an absurd amount of money to pay for the privilege of owning dirt. My second reaction, after I actually ran the numbers across every state, was different.
I stood in the living room of a property in Canterbury that had been marketed as a four-bedroom family home with 'stunning period features.' The marketing photos looked brilliant. The walk-through video was professionally shot. The Section 32 was clean. And standing there in person, on my second inspection, I noticed the floor slope. Not a gentle slope. A proper, marble-would-roll-across-it slope.
Pull up any Melbourne suburb on realestate.com.au and note the median house price. Now open domain.com.au and look at the same suburb. Different number. Sometimes vastly different. I checked twelve suburbs last week. The average discrepancy between the two platforms was $83,000. The largest gap was $147,000. On the same suburb. In the same quarter.
Every property commentator in Australia will tell you the same thing: prices go up when demand exceeds supply, prices go down when supply exceeds demand. It sounds logical. It is also woefully incomplete. If supply and demand were the whole story, every property in every high-demand suburb would trade at the same price. They do not. Not even close.
I drive a Tesla. I bought it because I thought it was a sensible financial decision — low running costs, no fuel, minimal maintenance. What I did not account for was the speed at which a $65,000 vehicle becomes a $42,000 vehicle. In eighteen months. Sitting in my garage.
A client asked me last month how many different taxes and fees apply to a Melbourne investment property. I started counting and got to eleven before I ran out of fingers. Stamp duty, land tax, capital gains tax, council rates, water rates, body corporate, FIRB surcharge, absentee owner surcharge — the list keeps going. No wonder people feel overwhelmed.
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