Data is key in quest for property investment success – The Australian Financial Review

This content has been funded by an advertiser and written by the Nine commercial editorial team.
Rampaging inflation, rising interest rates and tumbling consumer confidence is impacting the property market but investors who are asset rich can ride the wave of inflation and come out safely on the other side.
Inflation and rising interest rates have shaken up property markets. Freedom Property Investors
“Inflation will be responsible for the creation of many millionaires in the next decade,” says Freedom Property Investors founder and CEO Scott Kuru. “There will be people who know how to ride the wave of inflation and create enormous wealth for themselves, and others who will be wiped out completely by it, like a tsunami.”
Earlier this month, the Westpac-Melbourne Institute Index of Consumer Sentiment fell by 6.9 per cent to 78.0 (previously 83.7), with the bank’s chief economist, Bill Evans, admitting confidence had “buckled under the pressure of rising inflation and interest rates”. The gloom coincided with yet another hike in the cash rate by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), albeit by a modest 0.25 basis points.
The index has now dipped below its low point during the global financial crisis and, as Evans explains, “you have to go all the way back to the deep recession of the late 80s/early 90s to get consistent reads below that 78 level”.
“Certainly, more consumers expect substantial follow-on rate rises,” Evans added. “Amongst those surveyed after the RBA decision, nearly 60 per cent expect rates to increase by 1 percentage point or more over the next year, up on 54 per cent in the October survey.”
Scott Kuru, co-founder and CEO of Freedom Property Investors. Freedom Property Investors
With price rises now running above 7 per cent annually, Kuru warns of a decade plagued by inflation that is likely to extend the wealth divide.
“It will continue to grow because you will have people who have assets and you will have people who don’t, and unfortunately it is hard for people to get into the property market right now,” he says.
Australia’s housing downturn widened through October with every capital city and all states (except regional South Australia) recording a fall in housing values. CoreLogic’s national Home Value Index (HVI) moved through a sixth month of decline, as values fell a further 1.2 per cent in October.
“Overall, property prices are going to come down; we have seen that already,” Kuru says. “However, we have to remember there are 15,000 suburbs in Australia, so when we say the market is dropping, what market are we exactly talking about? There are at least three locations we have predicted where average prices will grow between $100,000 and $200,000 in the next 12 to 24 months.
“Our members are incredibly savvy and smart and they could probably invest on their own and get a really good outcome, but they don’t have the time to do the extensive research involved – that’s where we come in.”
— Scott Kuru, co-founder and CEO of Freedom Property Investors
“People have less money to spend on property but there’s still demand – people still need somewhere to live.”
Kuru, who started Freedom Property Investors from his living room almost 10 years ago, is now one of the country’s most successful property players.
Ten years ago, Kuru was a single parent raising four children in a rental property in Sydney.
After meeting the company’s co-founder, actuary and data scientist Lianna Pan, at a property seminar, the pair brought together a small group of 15 people to build extensive property portfolios.
Lianna Pan, co-founder of Freedom Property Investors. Freedom Property Investors
“We were a community of busy professionals, hunting down good property deals based on data and then using the group to go to developers and landowners get the best deals we could find.
“Australians love property, so, when we told people what we were doing, our group expanded quickly. We just thought if we could help 40 or 50 people get the best deals – and we could also get good deals for our portfolios – that would be great.
Backed by a data-driven approach, Kuru and Pan, and their team of 200 full-time staff, have now helped 6500 Australians, generating $4.5 billion worth of property transactions. And in just seven years, Kuru has amassed 17 properties of his own.
The team’s research focuses on past market trends and analysis, as well as fundamentals, demographics and infrastructure investment. When zeroing in on particular regions and suburbs, job and economic prospects come into play, along with rental yields, future housing supply and affordability.
“We truly are the industry leader,” Kuru says proudly. “We have serviced the most people, have the most success and the most staff to support our members. And it is because of our size, history, strength of our community and relationships we have that we are able to do the deals no one else can do.
“I’m very proud to say that over a decade we have never lost any of our members any money. We have more than 800 positive Google reviews from members and not one of them has been negative.”
A one-stop-shop for investors, Freedom’s clients are a mix of property investors – first-timers, mums and dads, sophisticated investors and those approaching retirement.
Extensive data and algorithms developed by Pan help the team narrow their property search to 10 to 15 key locations, from about 15,000 suburbs in Australia, finding low-risk, high-yielding properties with strong capital growth for their members.
A lot of people don’t invest because they hit road blocks and the biggest road block is time,” says Kuru. “Our members are incredibly savvy and smart and they could probably invest on their own and get a really good outcome, but they don’t have the time to do the extensive research involved – that’s where we come in.”
To learn more, visit www.freedompropertyinvestors.com.au or follow Scott Kuru on Instagram and YouTube.
This content has been funded by an advertiser and written by the Nine commercial editorial team.
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