Insights & Resources
Expert analysis, market trends, and practical advice for property investors
My first investment property in Melbourne taught me the most expensive lesson of my career. I rented to a couple who seemed perfectly fine at the inspection. Two years later, I found five different names on mail in the letterbox and a smell that took months to clear out.
This house looked like nothing special from the street. Standard brick veneer, 700 square metres, corner block. Six months later it was worth $92,000 more than we paid and generating $1,200 a week in rent from three separate households.
Melbourne just got ranked the world's most liveable city. Again. My Shanghai friends are impressed. But only Melburnians know the full story — the weather tantrums, the suburb pecking order, and the house prices that make 'most liveable' feel like a cruel joke.
Christmas Eve. Three property managers on site. Cars lining the entire street. The neighbours came out to ask if we were holding an auction. We weren't. We were renting out a house for $1,300 a week.
Most people buy a property, grab the keys, pop champagne, and shove the paperwork in a drawer. Ten years later they sell and discover they're paying tens of thousands more in capital gains tax than they needed to. All because of six documents they didn't keep.
I've owned Qantas shares, NASDAQ index funds, 16 Ethereum, and a knockdown house on 600 square metres of Melbourne dirt. Six years on, $150K in land became $1M — a 267% return on equity. The results weren't even close.
Every listing on realestate.com.au sounds like paradise. Sun-drenched living, development potential, stone's throw from everything. After 150+ purchases, I can decode every single one of these euphemisms for you.
Every few months someone sends me a Domain article about Hobart's property boom and asks whether they should buy there. My answer hasn't changed in five years: no. Let me show you why the numbers don't work — and why Victoria at $800K beats Tasmania at $400K every single time.
Most landlords treat insurance as a safety net. It's not. It's a last resort with conditions attached — conditions that insurers are very good at enforcing and landlords are very bad at reading.
Remember the $820K rooming house I wrote about? The one producing $1,200 a week? This one beats it. Different property, bigger block, better numbers. But I'm also going to tell you about the four clients whose properties couldn't be converted — because that story matters more.
Australia carries $2 trillion in outstanding mortgage debt. That figure represents 112% of GDP — second only to Switzerland. The question nobody in property circles is asking yet: what happens when AI starts replacing the exact cohort that services those mortgages?
Most people treat Doncaster and Doncaster East as the same suburb with a different suffix. They couldn't be more wrong. One is being bulldozed into a high-density urban centre. The other is quietly minting equity for anyone who buys on the right street.
Victoria has a reputation for taxing property investors harder than any other state. The reputation is partly earned and partly mythology. Let me separate the facts from the fear.
The average Australian retires with $292,000 in super. That generates $20K a year and runs out at 82. Two investment properties bought at 35 generate $220K a year forever. I'm going to show you both numbers.
Yes, solar can save you money. But the industry is riddled with traps designed to make installers rich and homeowners confused. After seeing dozens of investment properties hit with unexpected solar costs, here are the five mistakes that keep coming up.
Your savings account isn't saving anything. While you earn 4% interest, your purchasing power drops 6%. The people getting richer in this environment are the ones who understood one thing early: inflation rewards borrowers, not savers.
A bad tenant will cost you more than a bad property. After managing 300 properties across Melbourne, our screening process is blunt, methodical, and designed to keep problem tenants off your books before they become your problem.
I'm going to walk you through a deal that my accountant called 'obscene.' Not because it was risky — because the numbers were almost too good. An $820,000 house producing $1,200 a week in rent. Let me show you how.
A $550 building inspection is the best money you'll ever spend on a property. But you don't need a report to spot the warning signs. Here's what my team and I look for before the inspector even turns up.
Mate, I've driven every street in this suburb. I've inspected houses with rising damp, houses with illegal extensions, houses where the vendor's agent couldn't find the front door key. And I keep coming back. Because the fundamentals don't lie.
Most investors can explain negative gearing in one sentence. Very few can explain why their accountant structured their third property in a discretionary trust instead of their personal name. That gap in understanding costs people tens of thousands.
Everyone's talking about how Australia can't house its people. They're right. And if you understand what's actually driving this crisis, you'll see why it's the single greatest wealth-building window in a generation.
We spend eight hours on due diligence for every property we buy. Eight. Most investors spend less than eight minutes reading the listing description. Here's the full checklist.
There's a single data point that predicted Glen Waverley's stagnation, Box Hill's decline, and Hampton Park's outperformance. It takes three minutes to calculate.
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