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Positive Cash Flow Property

Finding real estate that makes you money each week seems like the perfect way to invest. And it is. When starting out in property investing or even being a professional, it is essential to have positive cash flow property in your portfolio. I will talk about positive cash flow property here in terms of the buy and hold strategy. You can also make a positive cash flows out of flipping or renovations, but that isn't as passive as most people would like.

Positive cash flow property also known as (but often incorrectly referred as) positively geared property, is defined as a property that makes more money than it costs to hold. Negative cash flow property takes money from your pocket as the holding costs out weigh the rental income.

Positive or negative gearing refers to your overall cash position after taking into account such things as tax benefits. For example you may end up better off in cash after negatively gearing, but this only works if you have a large taxable income to offset. What I am going to focus on here is bringing money into your bank account every week, as the total costs for holding the property are less than the rental income you receive.
Property Costs include:

  • Mortgage Repayments
  • Land Taxes or Rates
  • Utilities
  • Building / Landlord Insurance
  • Home Maintenance
  • Vacancy
  • Management Fees / Advertising Fees and Petrol if you are managing yourself

Click here to determine how positive cash flow properties are calculated for Australia here at the Property Domain.

It is good to determine how much these cost for each property, as different states and countries have drastically different land rates/taxes and utility charges. For example in the United States (US) land taxes are also used to fund schools and other surrounding public facilities, in Australia schools are funded by State and Federal governments from GST and income tax and hence the land rates / taxes are far cheaper.

The income is the rent you would receive for the property. You can actually have two types of positive cash flow houses, one of them being a cash positive, and the other being a paper positive property. By paper positive I am referring to, it may take away more cash than it receives, but added with tax benefits may end up leaving you better off than before.

Where To Find Positive Cash Flow Property

1. Economic Cycles. While this is more of a when in time, the location on positively geared property changes with economic cycles. A property boom starts from the city center and spans outwards into the rural areas. While a boom is happening, positively geared properties are hard to come by. Look in the outer suburbs or rural depending on how long the boom has being going for.

2. Automated Services. Property Domain offers a search that detects where all the positively geared properties are. Give it a try now, click here.

3. Professional Services. Buyers Agents are professionals that know their area and try to find and negotiate property for buyers.

4. Mining Towns are specifically created to house the workers of the mine. Because there is little prospect of gaining value on the house, they are always rented out as positively geared. If they are not, then someone didn't do their homework. Be careful of these properties as if the mine goes bust and closes, you will be stuck with a house no one wants to buy and a mortgage to be paid.

5. Renting Out Rooms. If the property is close to a university or CBD then you could rent out each individual room and collect more rent than you would renting out the whole house.

6. Offering Less. If a house is negatively geared at its asking price, what would it take to make it positive cash flow. Make an offer at that price. All they can say is no.

7. Withdraw on Equity You will need to make sure the numbers add up and take into account capital growth and increase rental costs, but if you purchased a property below its value, then you could redraw equity on the house to cover expenses while the rental income is increasing.

How To Use Positively Cash Flow Property In Your Portfolio

Positively geared property is essential in any property portfolio. While positively geared property generally doesn't have great long term growth, it provides the cash flow to ensure you can keep the costs of your negatively geared high growth property.

Depending on what strategy you choose to implement, the most common goal of property investment is to have a property in many years or decades time that is worth a lot of money. You could choose to have many positive cash flow properties to support your living, it depends on whether you want cash flow for just existing or wealth for living.

The ratio on positive cash flow (or at least positively geared) property to negatively geared property can change depending on how much the negatively geared property costs you each month to maintain and how much the positively geared property generates each week. The general ratio to be applied is 4 positive cash flow to 1 negatively geared. Of course if you have other sources of cash flow you want to use for keeping the negatively geared property then this ratio may change.



Conclusion

Well when all said and done there is only one way to become wealthy via property and that is to act. The sooner you get into the game the sooner you become wealthier. Is your first property deal going to be great, probably not, mine wasn't, but the fact you get into the game and start learning means you are now closer to your end goal.

Remember to try out the Positive Cash Flow tools of the Property Domain.

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Current Properties

Here are a random selection of real (and current) cash flow properties in Australia
(updated as soon as new information becomes available, the below properties may have already been sold)

Property


Estimated Cash Flow:

Property


Estimated Cash Flow:

Property


Estimated Cash Flow:


Published 17 March 2009
Adam Pedley