In the context of this article weighting essentially means deciding whether to invest in property, be it an owner occupier or a rental investment, and for most of us we mull over all the pros and cons in our head until we finally come up with a decision. No problem with that but if you actually got out your pen and paper and scribbled your thoughts down it might look something like this.

The Weighting Game

Or is it the Waiting game? There’s a big difference between the two but we’ll address that later.

In the context of this article weighting essentially means deciding whether to invest in property, be it an owner occupier or a rental investment, and for most of us we mull over all the pros and cons in our head until we finally come up with a decision. No problem with that but if you actually got out your pen and paper and scribbled your thoughts down it might look something like this.

So we’ve made the decision to buy and now we need to source the finance. But it’s more than just getting a loan; it’s actually understanding our financial position as it is now and what might happen in the future. And of course the scary thoughts of interest rates hits you between the eyes. In truth the matter of interest rates is not that difficult. They’ll either go up or they’ll come down and nobody, not even the economists, can give a precise look in to the future to allow you to graph the trends. You can have variable or fixed rates or a combination of both. If you believe rates are going to go up, then fixed, if you believe they are going to go down, then variable, or if you are undecided then hedge your bets and have a split loan of part fixed and part variable.

Now to the waiting game. Umpteen years ago a particular real estate firm used a caricature of a skeleton sitting on a chair, bowler hat on his head and his cane resting against his leg, and the caption read “this man is waiting for the right time to buy property”. And he’s probably still waiting!

There is an argument that in Australia too many of us look at property with the potential for a sizeable “profit” in the short term, say three to five years, when in fact many other nationalities see this kind of investment as a ten to twenty year proposition. This short term idea is a mindset that is in stark contrast to the majority of us that buy property, either owner occupier or investment. By and large we really do intend to hold this property for the longer term so the quick buck philosophy should not enter the equation.         

By all means weight your criteria but you might want to reconsider waiting.