White sand, bath-temperature water and everlasting sunshine would be enough to make anyone fall in love with a place while on holidays. Maybe even drop a cool half a million on a new holiday home.
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Unfortunately, investment experts say that can be a recipe for a making a suboptimal purchase, leading to high turnover rates for properties in holiday regions.
Propertyology's Simon Pressley said the same things that make a holiday a fun and relaxing experience could make it a terrible place for buying an investment property.
"It can be difficult for property buyers to recognise what's going on between the head and the heart," he said. "People don't like admitting it's an emotional decision, unless it's after the fact and they're remorseful.
"Not only do they make a decision not using the logical side of the brain, they take it one step further and exceed their budget."
Mr Pressley said after the home settles a month later, the reality hits home. "Often these rentals don't make as much as the back of the beer coaster calculations and it becomes a bit of thorn in the side."
Ideally, a savvy investor would hold a property for 10 to 15 years, Mr Pressley said.
"They don't hold their properties as long as they should if it was a logical decision. Three or four years is not long enough to hold a property."
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Mr Pressley said investors often make the mistake of investing close to home because they personally like the area and not because it's a strong investment. Going on a holiday was like that, but on steroids. "Those same decision-making skills are the same on holidays but they're more intense," he said.
Mr Pressley used eating at a restaurant as an analogy.
"You might order the chicken and I order the steak, but there's no right or wrong answer because we both have different emotions," he said. "Twenty-five million other Australians won't prioritise the same thing you will.
"Beaches don't make prices grow, views don't make prices grow, they just make them bloody expensive!"
Director of Lambert Willcox estate agents Jesse Willcox said that some holiday markets were better suited for investments than others.
"The upside for the buyer is they've got a holiday unit and it's in a growing economy so there will be buyers," Mr Willcox said. "[In the case of the Gold Coast] it is Australia's fastest growing non-capital city. So everything's on steroids when it comes to property transacting."
Growing economies, such as the Gold Coast, can be a much safer bet than a location that only ticks the box because you like to holiday there, Mr Willcox said, so it can pay to do some research first.
"I've got a good client this week who's one of the leading agents in Melbourne," he said. "He loved it so much he found an apartment and put it under contract."