What is the most important factor for your investment in order?

1 Distance to CBD
2 Close to lake/beach
3 close to nature reserve
4 top public school zone
5 close to park
6 close to big shopping center
7 close to train station
8 close to bus stop
9 close to university
10 rezoning potential
11 etc

feel free to add
Thanks for sharing

 

market conditions

 

Lots of good fundamentals in that list, but if you can afford it, over the long term the right school outperforms everything.

 

Long term economic fundamentals of the greater region. Ultimately, as an investor/landlord, you are in the business of providing accommodation to people. Most people choose to live where ever they live due to work. Long term economic fundamentals and sustainable employment opportunities, coupled with affordability, controlled supply and many other fundamentals are much more important to long term growth than proximity to lakes/beaches/nature reserves/train stations etc. in my opinion.

 

Size matters, land size that is.

 

It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it....land size that is.

 

Just to add to your list some key criteria that I always look for:
- Proximity to shops (Ideally a main shopping strip that contains restaurants, cafes, clothing. Anything like or a mini chapel st)
- Public transport (trains, buses & TRAMS)
- Freeway Access (I and many others hate having to sit on a busy Rd for 20 minutes each morning to get to the freeway)
- Streetscapes (ideally lushly lined)
- Proximimtiy to medical and more importantly hospitals and quality of hospital
- Walking and Cycling trails

That is just to name a few

 

Being educated on how to use property as a wealth creation vehicle .

Edit:

Market conditions
risk
profit return
risk
risk .

 

Depends on your strategy and position.
Some people buy for yield only and consider none of the above.

 

Exit strategy
Opportunity
Funding
Timeframe
Risk
IRR

 

Being able to manage unforeseen costs and expenses without impacting on your lifestyle.

Bad things happen to good people. Interest rates will rise, tenants will trash the place, markets will move sideways for an extended period and everything will cost more than you expect.

If something bad happens and you cannot deal with it financially - the first event will trigger a second and then a third and you will end up in a world of pain.

Always make sure you can cashflow fund it all. If you cannot do not do it then property investment is not for you.

In Perth the closer to the beach and the closer to the city the better - but tonnes of other stuff impacts that old saying.

 

Risk (and the amount of buffer I have) - no buffer no buying

 

I guess you're saying location, location, location.


In addition to your location mentioned above ..
- Good piece of dirt, decent size, regular shaped, highside of the street
- value add potential
- reasonable yield (around 5% +/-) unless it's a splitter or LMR site

In that order

 

Obviously price. Has to be value for money, not just cheap.

 

investment: location, size of the land, & potential growth of the area

personal: near to a beach

 

vacancy rate

 

So many good answers here! To add other considerations...

Supply and demand weighted against land restrictiveness and vertical height limits. i.e. a city, town, or suburb that has the trifecta of:

1) high supply that is unable to keep up/pace with latent demand (usually the best key metrics to identify this are: consistently low vacancy rate over time - less than 1.5% - and brief days-on-market for property sales in the area)

2) physical restrictions on land supply. sea, river, mountains, flood zones, national parks to name but a few. This stops the area from growing 'outwards' any more...

3)... and now we need to look at restrictions on it growing 'upwards'. The 'air' is an artificial boundary that is heavily policed by zoning codes, council rules, and public complaint. Other artificial (i.e. not natural as above) dampeners here include heritage overlays, fixed zoning, power lines, mineshaft overlays, indigenous overlays etc. learn the retrictions in regards to building upwards. I say this because, if you can find an area that ticks all the boxes above AND (for example) has a low height restriction or heritage overlay preventing swathes of low-rise detached houses from being ripped up and either mcmansioned, duplexed, townhoused, 3-floor-walk-upped, or high-rised, then this will only further support values growth and indeed higher rents due to there being permanently less housing available in a super high-demand location. I'd also add here granny flat restrictions. most states and councils within them dont allow you to rent the main house amd grammy flat swellings on separate leases to unrelated parties and this is a great restrictor on supply.


Of course, school zones, amenity, greenery etc. are all critical too, but the basic fundamentals above should be your baseline for 'consideration' postcodes before building on that baseline further with other desireables.

Of course... an area that ticks every single box of a 30+ item list is usually priced accordingly, i.e. out of reach for most investors

Of course, any of the above can change or be intervened with - even nature to a degree! examples here include 'always considered flood safe' suburbs that are unexpectedly under water in freak floods. these suburbs get forever tarnished thereafter and never achieve their same value-highs. Or, look at Christchurch. an expected horrific earthquake flattened many of the posh suburbs (due to the previouslt unknown faultline being under some of them), whilst the lower-socio-eco chealie suburbs were largely unscathed. in the five years since, due to safe liveability restrictions and future-earthquake-proofing, some entire posh suburbs were largely government condemned, and demand for the once lower socio suburbs exploded!

So.. you can only make the best location decision you can, based on the information available to you today, as things can and do change.

 

For me it was a little different because IP1 was always going to be PPOR in the future, by securing IP1 now it means we don't have to stress about when we want to move, we can simply do it and flip Northmead into an IP. I made loads of investment mistakes but I did so knowingly because it will be our PPOR (in about 18 months), we let ourselves be a little emotional (not overly) and there is litteraly no potential to enhance this property in the future.

This removed the desire for developable block or value adding, the fact that it's a really odd shaped block (like a cheese wedge) makes no difference to us, the fact that it's already renovated and there is literally no where to unlock more equity is actually a benefit for us because we don't want to renovate a PPOR ourselves.

We did get a hell of a depreciation schedule though, worth every cent that I paid for it .

The number still had to stack up though. So for me, I would say I have to be able to prove in Excel that it's going to work for us, it can be the most splittable block in the world or close to whatever life enriching thing you want but if the yield / CG doesn't hit the number I need then it's no good to me.

Price itself, weather I save 2 or 3K on the purchase price will not make a massive impact down the track so long as that Yield comes in where I need it (4.2 or higher).

 

Closeness to
- Transport,
- decent schools (primary & secondary) and
- groceries shopping.
Everything else is a trade-off between different factors.