Another way to benefit from owning a home is to buy an investment property. This way you can rent where you want to live and buy where you can afford. This rent and invest strategy is known as rentvesting and it’s becoming more popular. It’s also a way for first home buyers to get a foot on the property ladder.
Buying and selling an investment property means you can wait and hope that real estate prices increase over the long term. If you charge less rent than what you are making in mortgage repayments, the net loss can be used as a tax deduction, which is known as negative gearing or having a negative cash flow.
Chief executive officer of the Real Estate Buyers Agents Association of Australia (REBAA), Rich Harvey says it’s better to be in the market than to rent forever. “You can’t save your way to wealth. If you’re paying rent and that’s your only interaction with the property market, you’re going to be renting your whole life,” he tells uno, adding rentvesting is simply renting where you work and buying in another area.
“If you’ve got a rental property that you’re renting to someone else, you’re in the market.”
Harvey advises people to start young and start early. “Property for me is like a forced savings program,” he explains. “If you don’t spend your money on property, you’ll probably spend it on something else: you’ll buy more holidays, a fancier car, more clothes – which are all depreciable items which decline in value the minute you buy them.
“Sure we need cars, we need clothes, but you have to balance that out with saving for the future.”
This article first appeared https://unohomeloans.com.au/first-home-buyer/buy-vs-rent/
