What is negative gearing? Part 2.

Thinking While everything is good and well with negative gearing when the house price is on the rise, the picture changes dramatically when property price stagnates or goes down.

According to some people I know this never happens in Australia. “Haven’t you heard, mate, in property the only way is up!” Well… I’ve never been a big believer in things that “never go wrong”, or “always go great”, and that’s been working fairly well for me so far.

What is negative gearing? Part 1.

A man with a laptop Do you understand negative gearing? I didn’t, until very recently. My excuse is that in Europe (where I come from) not many people have ever heard about it. But even in Australia I’ve met surprisingly many people who know the term but not sure how it works, exactly. There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out - and this post should help you gain a basic understanding about what negative gearing is.

Those of you who weren’t born in Australia, New Zealand or Canada have probably never heard about negative gearing and for a very good reason - this form of leverage is illegal all over the world, except for these 3 countries.

Discussing real estate over at Nestoria.com.au

Nestoria.com.auNestoria.com.au is the ‘new kid’ on the real estate block - they are a vertical search engine that has been launched not too long ago (March 2010) in Australia. Back home in the UK they are very popular (in fact I’ve read that they are the 4th most popular real estate search).

But with Domain.com and Realestate.com.au, why do we need Nestoria? What makes them different is that they are a search engine - not a portal. This means that you can expect to find property listings through them, which they aggregate from many different sources, including Domain.com. One thing you won’t find there is the real estate ads, so less distraction for you. The search is also supposed to be very convenient and fast and all the properties are pinpointed on the map.

How iPhone can help make your house-hunting easier

iPhone Home Buying AppThese days it seems like the world and his monkey is determined to make the stressed home-buyers happier. Just a couple of weeks ago Realestate.com.au came up with this huge makeover for their website, and now I find out about the Commonwealth Bank’s latest invention, that is all about helping people find and buy a home quicker and easier.

Oh, and they wouldn’t mind lending you some money, while they’re at it.

The New And Improved Realestate.com.au

Realestate.com.au I’ve always found house-hunting to be stressful, but never imagined other people would feel the same way - I thought it was just me and my partner who would get nervous, frustrated and fight about which property we should or shouldn’t buy.

Well, guess what… I was dead wrong.

Domain.com.au: Inspect properties ONLINE

Property Video Listings One of the latest additions to Domain.com.au allows you to make your house hunting much more efficient, by saving your time, petrol and the stress of rushing to inspect 3 different properties within the same half an hour.

From now on, your inspections at Domain.com.au begin online.

Property Reports 101: Who To Buy From and How Much?

Property reports And now, when you’re all back from your Easter holidays and are house-hunting again, finally we get to the most interesting part. This post, in fact, will save you the “price shopping”, as it lines up all the major property report providers and compares their products and prices.

There are 3 big report providers to consider: RP Data, APM and Residex. They all offer property reports to be purchased and delivered online. Below you will find a list of reports they provide, with samples, pricing and my comments - things to pay attention to.

Property Reports 101: What is “Postcode Sales History Report”?

Suburb View Those of you who had a look at the property reports websites know that some of them call it a “Postcode Report”. You could also have noticed that there’s another similar report, named “Suburb report”.

In case you were wondering, yes, there is a difference between “Suburb report” and “Postcode report”, and the reason why “Suburb report” is normally cheaper is because it can have less data than “Postcode Report”. In many cases Postcode report includes quite a few suburbs, all sharing the same postcode, whereas Suburb report will include only one suburb.

Property Reports 101: What is “Street Sales History Report”?

Houses on a streetYou will find this report available at different providers’ websites under the names of “Street Sales History Report”, “Street History Report” or just “Street Report” - but they all are essentially the same.

What’s inside?

Property Reports 101: What is “Individual Property Report”?

Hand drawn mapIt’s the same story with any range of similar products: when you first look at them and there are more than just 2, it’s easy to get lost. There was a sales study I heard about, where they put 6 kinds of jam on the supermarket shelf and 30 percent of the people bought a jar. Then they put 30 kinds of jam on the shelf and just 3 percent of people bought it. Barry Swartz called it “the paradox of choice”.

This was just to demonstrate why I am going to analyze property reports - because it could narrow your choice down and help you pick the one that would really help you buy or sell your house.

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