Property Notes Podcast

Alex Zarate
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  • Investing
  • Updated Weekly

Property Notes Podcast is for Australian property investors who want to think strategically about their portfolio rather than guess their way through. Every property decision you'll make comes down to three questions. Where are you now? Where do you want to be in 5, 10, 25 years? And how do you bridge that gap with the assets, financing, and timing you have available? Most property content skips the first two and rushes you to the third. Buy this, hold that, sell now. Property Notes works in the other direction. Strategy first. Tactics second. Specific moves only after the framework is clear. Each week, I pick one question Australian property investors are wrestling with and work through it properly. The framework that determines whether a property is the right asset for your goal. The tax reform nobody is modelling correctly. The historical pattern that explains what's happening now. The case study where the numbers tell a different story than the conventional wisdom. A typical episode runs 10 to 15 minutes. Inside that, you'll get: The setup. What's happening, why it matters, and where the conventional framing gets it wrong. The strategy. How a serious investor frames the decision. Hold horizons. Asset selection. Cashflow vs growth trade-offs. Diversification across property types and geographies. The strategic shift this question forces. The history. Where this pattern has played out before. CGT didn't appear in 1985 by accident. The 50 percent discount didn't appear in 1999 by accident either. Property cycles, tax policy, interest rate regimes. The current situation always has a precedent worth understanding. The math. A specific case study with real numbers. A 41-year-old with one property in Sydney's western corridor. A retiree weighing a 2027 disposal decision. A first-time buyer modelling three growth scenarios. Concrete, not abstract. The application. How to apply this to your own portfolio. The audit question to ask yourself. The next move that makes sense given where you are. I'm Alex Zarate. I write Property Notes, an Australian property newsletter, and built a 25-year portfolio modelling tool because I got tired of property decisions being made on vibes. This podcast is the analytical work I do, packaged in a way you can act on with your own accountant. What this podcast isn't. It isn't financial advice. Your circumstances are different from the case studies. Always speak to a qualified professional before acting on anything discussed. It isn't a course funnel. There's no upsell. No "click the link to access the masterclass." It isn't market hype. I won't tell you "now is the time to buy" or "now is the time to sell" because neither answer survives contact with your specific portfolio. What it is. A weekly habit of thinking strategically about Australian property. Sometimes the answer agrees with the conventional wisdom. Sometimes it doesn't. Either way, you leave the episode with a clearer view of where you are, where you want to go, and what the math says about how to bridge that gap. Episodes drop weekly. Free. No subscription gates. The newsletter at pbco.com.au has the diagrams and working math behind each case study, so if you want to pressure-test the numbers against your own portfolio, that's where to go.

Episodes

  1. May 22

    The CGT reform that's actually a redistribution

    On 12 May 2026, the Treasurer announced what KPMG has since called a paradigm shift in Australian capital gains tax. The biggest structural change to property taxation since John Howard scrapped indexation in 1999. The headlines were predictable. Property investors hit. Fifty percent discount gone. Tax hike for landlords. The headlines are wrong. Not factually wrong. The fifty percent discount is gone, and that part is true. But the "flat tax hike on property" framing is where the coverage falls apart, and where every analyst I've read has missed the actual mechanic underneath the reform. Because the budget reform isn't one change. It's three. And whether you end up paying more or less under the new rules depends on something the headlines aren't running. Your real rate of return on the property you specifically own. This episode walks through the three changes (discount removed, cost base indexation, thirty percent minimum tax floor), why this isn't a flat hike but a redistribution that taxes inflation-tracking assets less and strong-growth assets more, and the historical pattern across the 1985 introduction, the 1999 Howard discount, and the 2010 Henry Tax Review that points at where capital gains tax policy is heading next. Then a case study. A 41-year-old, one investment property, ten-year hold. Under the new regime, his tax bill could be roughly $30,000 better than the old rules. Or it could be $70,000 worse. Same property. Same investor. The only thing that changes is the growth rate. Read the full newsletter at https://www.pbco.com.au/property-notes/issue-12-the-cgt-reform-nobody-is-modelling-properly for the worked dollar tables and the math behind the three scenarios. Property Notes is the analytical work I do for myself, packaged in a way you can act on with your own accountant. Always speak to a qualified professional before acting on anything discussed. Subscribe + read the diagrams: https://www.pbco.com.au

    11 min

  2. May 15

    The 186 dollar number the budget commentary missed

    There is a number in the federal budget factsheet, released on 12 May 2026, that almost nobody has quoted. It's tucked inside a worked example, halfway down the back end of the document. The total additional lifetime tax that an investor pays under the new negative gearing rules, on an established property held for ten years, is $186. One hundred and eighty-six dollars. Over ten years. On an established property. Now look at what the commentary has been telling you. Negative gearing is gone. Investors are under attack. Established property is finished. Both versions are true, but they're describing two completely different things. The lifetime tax cost is small. The annual cashflow cost is much bigger. And most investors are being told they're losing their tax deduction. In most cases, they're not. They're losing the timing of it. This episode walks through what actually changed under the 12 May 2026 announcement. The carry-forward loss mechanic. The annual cashflow cost most coverage skips. The harder question the budget surfaced for investors who weren't asking it. And what a serious investor does in response. Then a case study. Sam, who was about to buy his second established property when the rules changed, and what he did after running the cashflow test under the new regime. Read the full newsletter at https://www.pbco.com.au/property-notes/issue-11-the-negative-gearing-change for the side-by-side cashflow tables and the worked numbers if you want to pressure-test the math against your own position. Property Notes is the analytical work I do for myself, packaged in a way you can act on with your own accountant. Always speak to a qualified professional before acting on anything discussed. Subscribe + read the diagrams: https://www.pbco.com.au

    9 min

  3. May 8

    Why your spare cash is worth twice what it was in 2021

    You have around $50,000 sitting in your bank account right now, or somewhere close to it. Maybe it's a deposit seed for the next property. Maybe it's an emergency buffer. Maybe it's just transactional cash you haven't moved since 2021. Where is it parked? If you're a property investor, and that money is sitting in a savings account, a term deposit, or even just inside your loan's redraw facility, you're making a choice that was reasonable when the RBA cash rate sat at zero point one percent. It is not reasonable now. The math has changed substantially. Most investors have not updated their answer. The after-tax return on idle cash in a well-structured offset account, against your investment debt, has more than doubled since 2021. Same fifty thousand. Same loan. The only thing that changed is the rate environment. This episode walks through three principles. The rate multiplier, which tells you what your cash is actually earning after the deduction question. The flexibility premium, which is where redraw quietly fails you (and where the ATO's tracing rules turn an administrative shortcut into an expensive mistake). And the stack, which is how you decide where the cash sits when you have multiple loans. Then a case study. Sam, the Brisbane investor from the last two episodes, with some equity sitting idle and a real decision in front of him between a term deposit, a savings account, and an offset against his Hunter Valley loan. Read the full newsletter at https://www.pbco.com.au/property-notes/issue-10-offset-vs-redraw for the after-tax math laid out cleanly. Property Notes is the analytical work I do for myself, packaged in a way you can act on with your own accountant. Always speak to a qualified professional before acting on anything discussed. Subscribe + read the diagrams: https://www.pbco.com.au

    11 min

  4. May 1

    How a yield decision opens 200K of borrowing capacity

    Two investors are buying their third property. Same gross income. Same major Australian bank. Two different houses, both priced about the same. Identical loan amount. Identical interest rate. One walks out of the application with roughly $230,000 of additional borrowing capacity for property four. The other doesn't. This isn't a lender trick. It's the mechanic underneath the serviceability test that almost nobody talks about. Most investors think of the buffer as a fixed hurdle. The bank runs the numbers, the stress test applies, and whatever comes out the other side is what you're stuck with. That framing misses something. Since Apra locked the buffer at three percent in October 2021, the rate has been fixed. But the variables it gets applied to are not. This episode walks through the four levers that move how far your income stretches under the test. The buffer cost across your whole portfolio. Yield as a serviceability lever (the one most investors miss). Loan structure on existing properties. And lender spread. Then a case study. Sam, the Brisbane investor from last episode, eighteen months on, with a senior promotion and a real decision in front of him on property three. Includes how the choice between a low-yielding apartment and a higher-yielding dual-income property can open a six-figure gap in what you can borrow next time, before property four is ever purchased. Read the full newsletter at https://www.pbco.com.au/property-notes/issue-9-the-serviceability-buffer for the dollar tables and the worked math behind the case study. Property Notes is the analytical work I do for myself, packaged in a way you can act on with your own accountant. Always speak to a qualified professional before acting on anything discussed. Subscribe + read the diagrams: https://www.pbco.com.au

    11 min

  5. Apr 24

    The borrowing wall investors hit without seeing it coming

    Two investors with the same income, same age, same deposit, same property. One walks out with an approval. The other walks out with a decline. The number that splits them isn't the interest rate, the loan-to-value ratio, or the stress test. It's a single ratio that most serious property investors in Australia have never calculated. In February 2026, Apra quietly drew a line through the middle of the Australian property investor base. Lenders can no longer write more than 20 percent of new loans to borrowers at or above six times their gross income. The major banks have pulled back to internal limits between five and a half and six times. A loan that lands an inch over the line gets declined before a credit officer ever sees the file. And the wall doesn't appear on the application form. It appears as a decline, usually when you're already under contract. This episode walks through what the debt-to-income ratio actually is, why it's a different test to serviceability, where the wall sits at the major banks, and the four options when you're sitting near it. Then a case study. A 41-year-old Brisbane investor with two properties and a six-figure income who wanted to buy a third, and what he did when the math told him he couldn't yet. Includes the pattern across Apra's three macro-prudential moves in a decade (2017 interest-only crackdown, 2021 serviceability buffer increase, 2026 DTI cap), and why the trend matters for portfolio planning over the next five to ten years. Read the full newsletter at https://www.pbco.com.au/property-notes/issue-8-the-dti-wall for the working math behind the case study. Property Notes is the analytical work I do for myself, packaged in a way you can act on with your own accountant. Always speak to a qualified professional before acting on anything discussed. Subscribe + read the diagrams: https://www.pbco.com.au

    10 min
  • 5 Episodes

About

Property Notes Podcast is for Australian property investors who want to think strategically about their portfolio rather than guess their way through. Every property decision you'll make comes down to three questions. Where are you now? Where do you want to be in 5, 10, 25 years? And how do you bridge that gap with the assets, financing, and timing you have available? Most property content skips the first two and rushes you to the third. Buy this, hold that, sell now. Property Notes works in the other direction. Strategy first. Tactics second. Specific moves only after the framework is clear. Each week, I pick one question Australian property investors are wrestling with and work through it properly. The framework that determines whether a property is the right asset for your goal. The tax reform nobody is modelling correctly. The historical pattern that explains what's happening now. The case study where the numbers tell a different story than the conventional wisdom. A typical episode runs 10 to 15 minutes. Inside that, you'll get: The setup. What's happening, why it matters, and where the conventional framing gets it wrong. The strategy. How a serious investor frames the decision. Hold horizons. Asset selection. Cashflow vs growth trade-offs. Diversification across property types and geographies. The strategic shift this question forces. The history. Where this pattern has played out before. CGT didn't appear in 1985 by accident. The 50 percent discount didn't appear in 1999 by accident either. Property cycles, tax policy, interest rate regimes. The current situation always has a precedent worth understanding. The math. A specific case study with real numbers. A 41-year-old with one property in Sydney's western corridor. A retiree weighing a 2027 disposal decision. A first-time buyer modelling three growth scenarios. Concrete, not abstract. The application. How to apply this to your own portfolio. The audit question to ask yourself. The next move that makes sense given where you are. I'm Alex Zarate. I write Property Notes, an Australian property newsletter, and built a 25-year portfolio modelling tool because I got tired of property decisions being made on vibes. This podcast is the analytical work I do, packaged in a way you can act on with your own accountant. What this podcast isn't. It isn't financial advice. Your circumstances are different from the case studies. Always speak to a qualified professional before acting on anything discussed. It isn't a course funnel. There's no upsell. No "click the link to access the masterclass." It isn't market hype. I won't tell you "now is the time to buy" or "now is the time to sell" because neither answer survives contact with your specific portfolio. What it is. A weekly habit of thinking strategically about Australian property. Sometimes the answer agrees with the conventional wisdom. Sometimes it doesn't. Either way, you leave the episode with a clearer view of where you are, where you want to go, and what the math says about how to bridge that gap. Episodes drop weekly. Free. No subscription gates. The newsletter at pbco.com.au has the diagrams and working math behind each case study, so if you want to pressure-test the numbers against your own portfolio, that's where to go.

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