‘Irresponsible’ property reports blasted, investors cautioned

“Headlines such as ‘Property market falls off a cliff’ are just irresponsible. Yes, if you do read the whole article there may be some qualifying data buried in it, but the danger is that people are not delving deeper for their information,” Mr Plant said,

“This headline driven reporting makes buyers nervous and unwilling to buy. The lack of properties selling means that not only the real estate industry is depressed but there’s a flow on effect to conveyancers, lawyers, landscapers, hardware stores, furniture stores and, of course, state government revenues.

“There’s also a general uneasiness that develops with all home owners that the value of their asset is being eroded and so they curtail spending.”

The downturn, he said, was identified as stemming from the anticipation of the final banking royal commission report and banks keeping finance tight. Since the report has been released, Mr Plant said he expects finance to loosen up.

Doing your research

Instead of focusing on the media attention, Mr Plant said to Smart Property Investment that investors should be focusing on their own research.

“Researching’s easy. There’s so much information out there these days on data that is available on the internet, you can look up property sales, you can look up property values, you can do all sorts of things, whereas years ago, you couldn’t,” he said.

“When I refer to do your research, research is: find an area that you like, that suits you. Now, you may be new to a town if you’re moving from Brisbane to Sydney or Melbourne to Adelaide or whatever, but you’re either going to rent for six months or rent for 12 months, get the feel of it, and see what you like and see what you don’t like.

“Then, you’d automatically be drawn to an area by way of what your budget is or what you feel comfortable with or where the schools are or where the shopping centre is, or how far your work is.”

Following this, Mr Plant then recommended to attend open houses and auctions in the area.

“If you go to auctions and just stand there and watch, you will see what the interest is, what the momentum is, what property gets passed in for, what it ends up selling for or if gets sold under the hammer,” he said.

He also added that property investors should also consider creating a spreadsheet to collate all the relevant property-related data for areas and properties being considered.