Planning on listing your property on Airbnb? Here are a few things new hosts should consider.

1. Location of your property and potential demographic of your guests.

Guests usually plan to stay close to the centre of activity and culture they would like to experience. For example if your property is near a stadium, there’s a high chance your guests may be attending sports events. Think about the biggest demographic of sports attendees and ask yourself the extent of behaviour you would tolerate in your property.

2. De-risk your home against bad apples.

You can request a security deposit prior to the guest’s arrival. Be wary of Instant Bookings, as this does not give you the opportunity to review the guest before they book in their stay. As a final precaution, have your guests sign a contract before they arrive. This can clearly lay out the check-in and check-out dates and times, rules of conduct, deposit refund or any other concerns you may have. While it may put off some guests, those who have nothing to hide should have no problems with signing it.

3. Make sure your home is safe for occupation.

When leasing out your property, it is your property manager’s role to ensure the safety of the premises are kept. If you’re putting up an Airbnb listing, this responsibility falls on you. You’ll need to check that the smoke alarms are working and that heaters (if any) have been serviced in the last 2 years. Make sure that all doors and locks work smoothly in the event that evacuation is necessary. While Airbnb does not conduct any routine inspections on the safety of your property, it’s a simple favour you are doing your guest that may save their life.

4. Check your home insurance coverage for accidents or damage.

You’ll need to fully insure your home against the risk of irresponsible guests causing major damage, as seeking damage compensation from Airbnb is difficult. Read the fine print of Airbnb’s Host Guarantee, and don’t assume it will protect you fully. It also does not cover a refusal to vacate.

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We have just released our latest Secret Agent report!

Earlier this year, Secret Agent set about determining the true capital growth of houses and townhouses in inner Melbourne to provide investors with more accurate figures on previous growth in the local property market.

In this report, apartments get their turn as we analyse the growth in prices over the past 16 years. An updated index for the capital growth of houses and townhouses is also included.

Access the Apartments Capital Growth report now!

[Click to view image in full size]

Key findings

• 1 bedroom apartments will be 8% bigger on average.

• 2 bedroom apartments remain the same size.

• 3 bedroom apartments will be 4% smaller and remain rare.

• Little to no 4 bedroom apartments are being proposed.

• Most apartments meet the minimum balcony size.

Following up on our recent Supply report, Secret Agent wanted to dig deeper into what sort of apartment buildings are being proposed by developers. Using planning permit applications sent to local Melbourne councils, we sampled 1,680 proposed apartments from 34 buildings in 15 suburbs of metropolitan Melbourne.

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There are two ways to be a consistent winner in investment: information asymmetry (mostly through insider trading, which is illegal) and holding assets in the long term. Both of these methods are protected from short-term volatility.

The first expects and profits from these movements (often very risky as all public information is already factored in the price), while the latter can safely ignore the daily peaks and troughs, knowing that these will cancel out over a longer period of time. Investing for long-term returns and robustness is the appropriate reason to buy treasury bonds, yet it is very counterintuitive for most of us to ignore weekly or monthly yields (even changes over one year can be irrelevant with the right strategy).

Business Insider recently published a story called “The week is underway and Australian bonds are getting destroyed” with an image of a building being demolished. Yet as the article correctly points out, yields are still below pre-Brexit levels (bond yields rise as prices fall), which was less than three months ago. It can be difficult to separate signal and noise from information when there is such an abundance of data.

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Size is yet again compromised in the apartments soon to be developed in Melbourne, but not just in terms of their total floor area. Here are 7 primary observations about the upcoming supply of apartments in Melbourne over the next 12 to 18 months.

1. Balconies remain small

Whilst most apartments will have a balcony, many will have one that is too small (less than 8m² for a single bedroom and 10m² for a two bedroom apartment).

2. Snorkel bedrooms are common

This L shaped layout is an ineffective way to provide light access to a second bedroom in two bedroom apartments. The snorkel is often too narrow to be habitable and the natural light often does not reach the actual room. These are still a popular option despite the waste of space.  Read the full post

We have just released our latest Secret Agent report!

Demand is a hot topic in the apartment market at the moment, and assumptions about what buyers want are being made by almost everyone with the right to an opinion. Predicting future demand for a property is one way for investors to estimate the future capital growth of an asset. However, too little attention is paid to the supply side of the equation.

In this report, Secret Agent will move the focus from demand to supply, and forecast Melbourne’s upcoming stock of new developments.

Access the Supply report now!

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You can also explore our interactive map of Melbourne’s supply of new apartment and townhouse developments here:

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Inner Melbourne’s apartments are getting tinier with each new development. But, how small is small? Secret Agent’s updated apartment index reveals that the average size of a 1 bedroom apartment is only 47sqm, and for the more popular 2 bedroom apartment the average size is 73sqm.

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Secret Agent has updated its price per square metre index for secondary apartments in inner Melbourne. An additional 478 apartments have been added to the index so that it now consists of a total of 870 apartments which have sold between 1st January 2016 to 30th June 2016. The new average square metre rate for apartments in inner Melbourne is $8,679/sqm.

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We have just released our latest Secret Agent report!

The original period homes that remain in Melbourne are frequently purchased for record-setting prices. It is difficult to quantify the value of character, however it is possible to estimate how much these houses are truly worth if we were to build them from scratch today.

This month, Secret Agent investigates the cost of rebuilding two period homes in inner Melbourne. We demonstrate that the prices paid for period property fairly represent the quality, history and scarcity of these types of homes in today’s market

Start reading this report by clicking on the link below:

Register to receive our report monthly and access the Recreating Period Homes report now!

Suburbs such as Fitzroy and East Melbourne have historically strong capital gains. Conventional wisdom is that by investing in neighbouring suburbs that have lower median prices, an investor would achieve stronger growth than in the blue chip suburb. This is because they would benefit from the spillover effect of buyers being unable to afford the blue chip locations and the subsequent gentrification of the suburb. This bulletin aimed to test if this is the case by analysing the growth of 5 bride and bridesmaid suburb pairs in inner Melbourne.

To compare, the median sale prices and annual growth rates since 2011 for all suburbs shown in Figure 1 were gathered. These suburbs were divided into suitable pairs, based on locality and differences in median prices. The results are shown in Table 1.

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