whether retirement or not imo any investment should stand up by itself - and not be dependent on capital growth.
I assume a property investment is defined by something one doesn't want to live in but either buys for the rental return or the expectation of capital growth.
If you are talking about a place to live and expect to be there until you die or go to the final place of living, then there are probably some good buys around at the moment.
However all other investments whether property or stocks - sorry, I think any investment that is geared and doesn't pay for itself is a high risk - and I don't care how good the address or how good the company.
ie. If one has a property now that is paying say 8% gross and is in a demand area for rental - there shouldn't be any problem - but, there aren't many of them are there? Same deal stocks, if one buys a stock with say a 2% return or worse - nil, then you really are just waiting for a market correction to have a big problem on your hands.
I think our expectation of buying property at 10% down and getting a return of say a couple to a few percent GROSS and expecting capital growth of 10% p/a and above is just playing musical chairs - we have to be stupid to think that will continue.
We need to get back to a behavior where investments of all kinds - actually make money.
imo we seem to have made policy that causes us to commit financial suicide - all the way through - with inevitable consequence.
A good example for me is the debacle of superannuation - what a mess over the years and a variety of governments. It's like someone sat down and said, how can we make a system that is tax inefficient in the savings period so that people get to save as little as possible for their old age, but then make it tax efficient when they finally retire? How is it that in the same politically stable country you can have a government that decides you can put $1m into super in one year but a few years later another govt. decides that you can only put in $25k per year? - what a ridiculous situation. Compounded by the fact that in the year of the $1m input - people put in family homes and investment properties and cashed out of the same to put that cash into stocks etc and then suffered the biggest financial setback since 1930 ------------------- brilliant move.
Same deal property in general - negative gearing on, negative gearing off, on again. Change the capital gains laws - yes for investment, no for a residential home - all very dumb moves. Trained monkeys could have done this better.
And now, what we have is that young people have huge trouble buying a home and that older people can't sell out of homes to provide enough cash in old age - well done all governments in the last 30 or so years - what a stuff up.
Time to get into investments that make money on a week to week basis - speculation and capital growth is destroying us.
