Agent Insight with Karen Van Lawick, Ray White Gladstone

Time and time again we are asked for the elusive ‘positively’ geared property. I think if the investor is trying to find a property purely based on return this has potential to be a bad investment.

There are so many smart things you can do to a property to achieve a higher return. The first thing I would look at when buying an investment is the suburb, and what the resale is like as well as the social economics ie. Is it made up of mainly rented properties or owner occupier’s. Your resale is always going to be better if people are buying into a suburb to live there themselves.
I am always mindful of my resale on any property I am about to purchase especially if I am looking at spending money on it.

Next I would look at what you can do to this property to get the maximum return. It may be for example if you are put some air conditioning in you may get more rent, these things are surprisingly not expensive and can make a big difference to what a tenant will pay.

I see there are two types of investors, those who are looking at short term gain and those who are in it for the long run.

Short term investors are the ones that need to be extremely mindful of their resale as they need to be careful they don’t overcapitalize if they are buying an older property and spending money on it.

The long term investor probably doesn’t need to worry as much about her resale as the market usually looks after itself. Traditionally in Gladstone our market has doubled every 10 years. I will take a property from Ward Close I sold for example, in 2004 this property sold for $185,000 then in 2012 it resold for $420,000. Then a unit in Roseberry Street first sold in 1996 for $65,000 then again in 2007 for $195,000 and just resold in 2012 for $310,000.

So as you can see if you can hold on and ride the market and not panic, your investment should pay off in the long run and with Gladstone having one of the strongest rental markets nationally, it makes sense to invest here.