Women doing it for themselves

Despite recent interest rate rises, 50 per cent of female property investors are keen to increase their property portfolios. However, most will get their investment information from the Internet and friends or family before turning to mortgage brokers and financial planners, a recent Mortgage Choice Survey has found.

Mortgage Choice national manager of corporate affairs Warren O’Rourke said women are increasingly making a large impact on the investment property market.

“You only have to visit a handful of auctions to realise how many women are confidently investing in property, often on their own,” he said.

Women are more upbeat about their latest property purchases than men and one in five want to build their portfolio with as many properties as possible, the Mortgage Choice survey of 1,000 investors found.

However, both male and female investors are unlikely to turn to financial planners and mortgage brokers as the first point of call for advice on their property investments. The Internet was the most popular tool to help research and understand the property market, with 64 per cent of respondents using it to obtain investment knowledge. Of female respondents, 40 per cent said their friends were an important source of information. Only 27 per cent of those surveyed relied on financial planners, with 30 per cent getting the advice of mortgage brokers and 39 per cent using newspapers for information.

Financial advisers and mortgage brokers could try and capitalise on women’s interest in the property market by getting involved in women’s activities such as International Women’s Day and the Telstra Business Woman of the Year Awards, O’Rourke said.

“It’s a market that should not be ignored,” he said.

Just over a third of female respondents said that since buying their investment property they considered themselves ‘very knowledgeable’ about the property market, while 4 per cent said they ‘still had no idea’.