One of the reasons residential real estate is one of the best investment vehicles available to Australians is leverage. Given real estate’s consistent and relatively low volatility returns, lenders are very comfortable allowing borrowers to access up to 95% LVRs.
Learn more about LVR here.
When you can obtain that much leverage, your ROI becomes very high. At the same time, you are also more susceptible if prices fall, so it’s essential to understand the power and how it works.
What is Leverage?
Usually, a bank will require the borrower to put down a 20% deposit on a property and the remaining 80%. Banks are comfortable lending to these levels because real estate has proven to be a robust investment over long periods. Contrasting real estate to the stock market and, for the most part, obtaining leverage for shares is far more challenging. Margin lending is possible, but generally speaking, most brokers are more comfortable lending to a maximum of 50%, given the significant volatility in the stock market.
Leverage can increase the total value of the property you can control and increase the returns. For example, if you want to buy a property for $500,000, you must put down a $100,000 deposit. Should that property increase in value by 20%, your cash-on-cash return is 100%. As mentioned, the same thing applies should your property decrease in value, so you must be careful when using leverage.
Good Debt
The time to use leverage is when you invest in an asset that increases in value over time, such as real estate. The opposite of this is using debt to finance something like a car or even a holiday. In the example of a car, it’s common knowledge that its value decreases rapidly. While debt can get you what you want quicker and more accessible, it comes with a price. Not only are you stuck paying off the debt plus interest, but you are also losing money on your investment.
Learn more about the different types of debt here.
Buying Wisely
While leverage is important to purchase high-quality assets, the risk is associated with any investment, even real estate. We’ve seen many times in our history where Australian property markets do fall. There’s no better example than the boom and bust-nature of mining towns. While mining towns can be attractive because of their high yields and the possibility of quick and significant capital gains, there are also many risks.
We’ve seen properties in mining towns lose more than 50% of their value and take decades to regain their previous highs if they ever do. Imagine a scenario where you purchased a property in a mining town with a very high LVR, only for that property to lose 50% of its value overnight when a mine shuts down. That’s a genuine possibility. Closer to home, we also see risk when you invest in limited-supply properties. The most obvious examples are off-the-plan apartment buildings and new housing estates on the outskirts of major cities.
