I think there is a difference when buying residential property compared to buying an investment property.
Unlike a lot of babyboomers we preferred to buy Australian equities rather than investment properties. Yes, there has been a lot of "just off to inspect one of our rental property in Qld" occasions when envy on my part reared it's ugly head. I just told myself that I actually lived in Qld.
I guess it boils down to liquidity and options. We can sell our investment portfolio tomorrow if we had to, the same can't be said for investment properties. We can go conservatively or we can go for broke. It's all in our hands. Not in the miners hands, not in Gillard's hands, but our hands. We have choices and options and I don't believe that property investment gives you the same access to to your equity.
The ultimate argument is that we retired when we were fifty, none of the investment property owners have yet. In fact, some want to but have put it off for a couple of years. Residential property is different as most people plan to stay indefinitely and as one of the previous posters said, you have to live somewhere. As long as you don't over-capitalise over what it's worth you won't go wrong.
