No matter whether you’re planning to retire on your property portfolio by living off the rents, or by refinancing and using an increase in borrowings to pay for your living expenses, or by selling all your properties and investing the proceeds in a managed fund, pitfalls and perils lie before you.

In this article, originally published in Australian Property Investor magazine, Michael Carman explains how to avoid the trips and traps...

Negative gearing can be a powerful means of building wealth over the medium to long term.

But for something so powerful, negative gearing has more than its fair share of critics and detractors.

So what are the facts when it comes to this property investment strategy that causes such discord among industry experts? Read on to find out...

Creating a substantial property portfolio can be a lifetime’s work, so serious investors need to know

how to keep their assets safe.

You’ve longingly accumulated your property portfolio, investing and borrowing while you’re working, using capital growth and rental returns to build your empire. But there are a few storm clouds on the horizon: high interest rates and an increasingly litigious society to name a couple. The issue for you now as you contemplate transitioning to financial independence is not how to build wealth, but how to keep it.

In this article, originally published in Australian Property Investor magazine, Michael Carman explains how to keep your portfolio safe...

Many investors have expressed interest in the refinance in retirement approach to financial independence, which has gained popularity in recent years.

This approach sees the investor move to retirement by building a substantial property portfolio and large base of equity.

Read on as Michael explains how to live off borrowings in retirement...

If you want to build riches, it seems there is no shortage of information to give you techniques and strategies to do that.

Judging by its sheer volume, it appears there is a near-insatiable appetite for this type of information. But there’s often a very small, very tacit assumption discretely tucked away in much of this literature.  Read on to find out more...

In the first article in a series originally published in API magazine about retirement strategies, we look at how many investment properties you need before you can consider quitting your day job...

For most people, retirement conjures up images of lazy walks along the beach interspersed with endless rounds of golf. For others, retirement spells the financial independence that moves them from the 'rat race' to the 'fast track', and the choice of whether to work or not.

Much ink has been spilt in the property investing literature debating the merits of property investing for capital gain versus generating income by investing in positive cash flow properties or buying and selling properties for profit (with the latter often referred to as 'flipping').

The reality is that each strategy has it merits ... and its downside.

Read on for more ...

It’s taken for granted in most dinner party discourse that property is out of favour and the housing market has slumped.

The implication is that property is a dud investment.

Even beginning investors know the obvious counter to this line of logic: that a time of depressed prices for assets that will eventually grow in value represents the best time to buy.

There will be a far greater prospect of buying bargains: under-priced assets which will sustain capital growth when the market rebounds.

Fear can have a crippling effect on your life - and your prospects for wealth.

There has been a run of fascinating research into fear and the psychology of investing, some of it Nobel-prize winning, and much of it highly relevant to the current property investment market in Australia.

What two Nobel-prize winning researchers  found was that.....