There are many of you reading this blog who currently invest in property but you may be a little surprised to know that the ATO reports that in 2016, 47% of Australian investment properties are owned by women.
Women are becoming much more proactive in the property space and tend to be long term players, holding their property portfolios for sometimes decades and reaping the huge benefits to be made from this strategy.
‘Of the 927,000 Australian women who own an investment property, 570,000 of them use negative gearing to build wealth and save for retirement.’ There’s nothing too staggering about that statement except to say that for those of you out there who have to buy positive cash flow properties – there’s nothing wrong with negative gearing – especially if you are currently an income earner in the top tax bracket!
Seriously, as part of an overall investment strategy you might consider having a mix of positive cash flow and negatively geared properties.
What I did find quite staggering is the ATO also reports that ‘in every age demographic, more than three quarters of women employing negative gearing have taxable incomes of less than $80,000 per year.’
This blows away the myth that many people hold that you need to have a high income to invest in property. Obviously no one mentioned this to the women who earn an average income and invest anyway! The strong message here is that whatever your income, get some education and a strategy around how you can invest so that you start to build an income stream ( or several) for your future.
Last week I hosted a Webinar, ‘Women + Wealth’ and had just over 100 attendees, most of them women.
I asked the question “How many ladies currently manage the finances and make investment decisions in their relationship?
There was an overwhelming response to that question. There were only 2 who said that they shared the decision, 1 that did not have any say in the management of money and investments and the rest were the decision makers and drivers of finances and investment in the relationship.
One reason for this being that many women have more time to devote to the research and education aspects of investing while their partners are perhaps earning high incomes and are time poor.
The other reason is that women have become much more savvy in the past decade when it comes to investing and are often investing independently of their partner and using their own money to do it.
Women invest because they understand that in order to build a future that is in line with their current lifestyle, they will need to invest some of their current income to achieve it.
