First Time Property Investor

Pete breaks down what a BA actually does, how they differ from selling agents, and the real dollar cost of hiring one, including the fee structures worth being wary of after recent high-profile industry collapses. Imti and Skye push on the harder questions: how to spot a good BA from a bad one, why the space is dangerously unregulated, and where BAs are increasingly overstepping into territory that should belong to accountants and financial planners. They close out on off-market properties, and why the hype rarely matches reality.

• (00:00) - What is a buyer's agent?

First Time Property Investor is for Australians who want to invest in property but feel stuck between too much information, conflicting advice, and the fear of getting it wrong.
Get honest conversations, practical insights, and clear strategy to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence.
Hosted by Imti, Pete and Skye, with insight from the finance, buying, sales and property management sides of the industry.

A "should you or shouldn't you" episode with a game-show twist. Imti builds four versions of the same investing decision around one client, Jess, changing a single variable each round, and Pete and Skye have to lock in an answer. Should Jess use a parental guarantor now, or wait? What if her parents are nervous about the market? What if she could buy solo with a smaller deposit instead ... go big with a guarantor, or go low and debt-free? And what if she's planning to move out and her cash flow flips negative? The scenarios expose the real decision-making factors behind a guarantor call: certainty, cash buffers, capital growth, and, as it turns out, how much stress a family can actually handle.

Connect with us ➜ https://linktr.ee/ftpi.pod

First Time Property Investor is for Australians who want to invest in property but feel stuck between too much information, conflicting advice, and the fear of getting it wrong.
Get honest conversations, practical insights, and clear strategy to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence.
Hosted by Imti, Pete and Skye, with insight from the finance, buying, sales and property management sides of the industry.

• (00:00) - Scenario 1

Parental guarantors, explained in plain English. Imti breaks down exactly what mum and dad are agreeing to when they help a child buy property - using equity, not cash, to help cover the deposit and avoid lender's mortgage insurance. Skye grills him with the parent's real-world concerns (can the bank take my house? what if I still have a mortgage? what about multiple kids?), while Pete digs into how it works for investment property purchases. The key message: a guarantor solves a deposit problem, not a borrowing capacity problem - and for most families, it's a shorter, less risky commitment than people assume.

Connect with us ➜ https://linktr.ee/ftpi.pod

First Time Property Investor is for Australians who want to invest in property but feel stuck between too much information, conflicting advice, and the fear of getting it wrong.
Get honest conversations, practical insights, and clear strategy to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence.
Hosted by Imti, Pete and Skye, with insight from the finance, buying, sales and property management sides of the industry.

• (00:00) - What a parental guarantee actually is (Tom's example)

If you were to ask us each to pick just one key data point out of the 150-plus a buyer's agent typically uses, we'd land on the same one. It's not capital growth, rental yield, or population growth. It's owner-occupier percentage: how many people in a suburb own the home they live in, versus rent it out. In this episode, your hosts break down why this simple, easy-to-find number underpins almost everything else that drives long-term capital growth, how to actually use it in a property search, where the risks lie (cashflow, strata, hidden social housing pockets), and why it might be the most powerful lever for first home buyers wanting their first property to double as a long-term investment.

Connect with us ➜ https://linktr.ee/ftpi.pod

First Time Property Investor is for Australians who want to invest in property but feel stuck between too much information, conflicting advice, and the fear of getting it wrong.
Get honest conversations, practical insights, and clear strategy to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence.
Hosted by Imti, Pete and Skye, with insight from the finance, buying, sales and property management sides of the industry.

Three people, 30-plus years of combined property experience, and three of their most painful (and least obvious) mistakes. Not the usual "wrong suburb, paid too much" stuff! Pete chased land size above everything else, Imti researched so much it created false confidence, and Skye bought a property (or two) simply because it felt safe. Each host unpacks what actually happened, why the decision felt right at the time, and the one shift they'd make if they were starting again today.

Connect with us ➜ https://linktr.ee/ftpi.pod

First Time Property Investor is for Australians who want to invest in property but feel stuck between too much information, conflicting advice, and the fear of getting it wrong.
Get honest conversations, practical insights, and clear strategy to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence.
Hosted by Imti, Pete and Skye, with insight from the finance, buying, sales and property management sides of the industry.

• (00:00) - Pete's mistake - does size really matter?

Commercial property is everywhere on social media right now, sold as the shortcut to passive income and easy cash flow. But is it actually right for you? In this episode, Imti and Pete - who is genuinely weighing up the move himself - break down why commercial looks so appealing on paper, and the three things worth stress-testing before you go anywhere near it: lease, lending, and location.

Connect with us ➜ https://linktr.ee/ftpi.pod

First Time Property Investor is for Australians who want to invest in property but feel stuck between too much information, conflicting advice, and the fear of getting it wrong.
Get honest conversations, practical insights, and clear strategy to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence.
Hosted by Imti, Pete and Skye, with insight from the finance, buying, sales and property management sides of the industry.

• (00:00) - Why commercial property is so appealing right now

This episode tackles whether first-home buyers and first-time investors should buy an apartment versus rent-vesting, arguing apartments can be a good investment only if you buy the right one, but many are poor financial decisions due to high strata fees, oversupply, weak owner-occupier demand, and limited “next buyer” pools. The hosts break down why “rent money is dead money” can be misleading by comparing rent to the full cost of ownership (strata, rates, insurance, repairs, special levies) and showing how a $500k loan with minimum repayments barely reduces principal while total weekly outgoings can be far higher than rent. They explain strata, sinking funds, and special levies, highlight the importance of reading strata minutes, and give a three-step apartment checklist: location, building type (low-density walk-ups), and supply/building approvals, centred on who the next buyer will be.

Connect with us ➜ https://linktr.ee/ftpi.pod

First Time Property Investor is for Australians who want to invest in property but feel stuck between too much information, conflicting advice, and the fear of getting it wrong.
Get honest conversations, practical insights, and clear strategy to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence.
Hosted by Imti, Pete and Skye, with insight from the finance, buying, sales and property management sides of the industry.

Part two of the tax law changes series. In part one, the hosts covered strategy, portfolio size, and owner-occupier decisions. This episode zooms out to the bigger-picture questions: is property still worth investing in at all? What types of property will actually perform? Are rents really going to keep rising? Is now a good time to buy while prices are softening? And are buyer's agents still worth the fee? Imti, Pete, and Skye fire through all five as practically as possible - what to look for, what to avoid, and how to make an informed call in a market that's a lot less forgiving than it used to be.

Connect with us ➜ https://linktr.ee/ftpi.pod

First Time Property Investor is for Australians who want to invest in property but feel stuck between too much information, conflicting advice, and the fear of getting it wrong.
Get honest conversations, practical insights, and clear strategy to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence.
Hosted by Imti, Pete and Skye, with insight from the finance, buying, sales and property management sides of the industry.

00:00 Q6. Is property still worth it?
04:58 Q7. What properties will perform best?
09:58 Q8. Are rents going to keep going up?
16:27 Q9. Is now a good time to buy?
21:02 Q10. Are buyer's agents still worth using?
27:59 Bonus: Host Takeaways

Since the recent tax law changes passed, Imti, Pete, and Skye's phones haven't stopped going off. Can you still build a portfolio? Does property even make sense anymore? Do loan structures need to change? In part one of this two-part series, the hosts tackle the first five of the top ten questions they're hearing from clients right now - grounded in facts, not headlines, and designed to help you cut through the mixed signals and clickbait dominating the property conversation at the moment.

Connect with us ➜ https://linktr.ee/ftpi.pod

First Time Property Investor is for Australians who want to invest in property but feel stuck between too much information, conflicting advice, and the fear of getting it wrong. 
Get honest conversations, practical insights, and clear strategy to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence.
Hosted by Imti, Pete and Skye, with insight from the finance, buying, sales and property management sides of the industry.

• (00:00) - Introduction: Why everyone's asking these questions right now

This episode introduces the Ikigai framework as a way to make clearer, long-term property and life decisions amid noise from social media, family opinions, and investing “quick win” narratives. Imti explains Ikigai as the overlap of what matters to you, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for, and asks Pete how it applies to client investing journeys. They discuss how losing alignment leads to distraction, ego-driven goals, shifting goalposts, overbuying, selling early, buying the wrong assets, and lifestyle strain, and argue most people don’t need huge portfolios to reach flexibility and choice.

Buy the book: https://link.amazon/B04SeHnHo

Connect with us ➜ https://linktr.ee/ftpi.pod

First Time Property Investor is for Australians who want to invest in property but feel stuck between too much information, conflicting advice, and the fear of getting it wrong. 

Get honest conversations, practical insights, and clear strategy to help you avoid costly mistakes and move forward with confidence.

Hosted by Imti, Pete and Skye, with insight from the finance, buying, sales and property management sides of the industry.

• (00:00) - Why Ikigai Matters