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21 December 2024
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Australians are taking more mortgage debt into their 60s than ever before. Retirement planning assumptions haven’t adapted and could result in future income projections that ultimately disappoint retirees.
Our housing system isn't working, with prices and rents growing faster than wages, longer public housing waiting lists and more people are experiencing homelessness. Here are five ways to ease the crisis.
The current difficulties confronting housing policy partially stem from an explosion of mortgage debt. We've engineered a price for housing that will cause a severe problem for future generations – if it isn't addressed.
Rising prices have a big impact on retirement outcomes yet our most common gauge of inflation – the consumer price index – misses several important household costs for retirees.
Debt recycling involves replacing or 'recycling' the debt in your family home with tax-deductible debt from investments. While some see it as risky, there are ways to mitigate that risk and enhance your wealth.
Peter Dutton has made housing a key issue for the next election, pledging to “restore the Australian dream” of home ownership. It got me thinking about what this dream represents, how it originated, and whether it’s still relevant today.
In the six months of my battle with brain cancer, one part of financial markets has fascinated me, and it’s probably not what you think. What's led the pages of my reading is real estate, especially residential.
Everyone seems to have an opinion on house prices and not all of it is based on fact. Here is an analysis of the current supply and demand factors influencing residential property and the stocks poised to outperform.
Paul Keating envisaged a super system which funded retirement. For many, it has become a tax shelter where wealth is captured and passed on to descendants and the role of the family home is substantially overlooked.
Interest rates are up again, with promises of more to come, but a major story is being glossed over in all the reporting. Large institutions have a feeding frenzy when people become vulnerable or get into trouble.
Shared equity mortgages, as a solution to Australia’s housing affordability problem, have been talked about for years, but it's been left to governments to develop initiatives in this area. This year, things changed.
Lenders use Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities to finance mortgages and RMBS are available to retail investors through fund structures. They come with many layers of protection beyond movements in house prices.
It’s with heavy hearts that we announce Firstlinks’ co-founder and former Managing Editor, Graham Hand, has died aged 66. Graham was a legendary figure in the finance industry and here are three tributes to him.
Last year, I wrote an article suggesting returns from ASX stocks would trample those from housing over the next decade. One year later, this is an update on how that forecast is going and what's changed since.
Australia is in the early throes of an intergenerational wealth transfer worth an estimated $3.5 trillion. Here's a case study highlighting some of the challenges with transferring wealth between generations.
The Future Fund's original purpose was to meet the unfunded liabilities of Commonwealth defined benefit schemes. These liabilities have ballooned to an estimated $290 billion and taxpayers continue to be treated like fools.
ASFA provides a key guide for how much you will need to live on in retirement. Unfortunately it has many deficiencies, and the averages don't tell the full story of the growing gender superannuation gap.
The Big Four banks have had an extraordinary run and it’s left income investors with a conundrum: to stick with them even though they now offer relatively low dividend yields and limited growth prospects or to look elsewhere.