Australian Property Investment Websites: Somersoft

Jan and Ian Somers entered the Property Investment industry in 1989. somersoft.com.au is their website which they use to support their books and software over the years up until the latest book “More Wealth from Residential Property”.

Although Jan Somers has published several property investing books for the Australian property investment and New Zealand property investing markets, her currently in print books are anecdotal stories rather than detailed “how to” books.

The Somers also publish and support Property Investment (PIA) Software which uses a simple spreadsheet interface for “what if” modeling of property purchases, projected out up to 40 years. The software supports current state and country tax laws including superannuation. The software is not particularly cheap but is updated with all the relevant taxes and government fees per state plus New Zealand and works reliably and is very useful if your portfolio involves more than one property.

In the Somers’ own words:

“On the market since 1988, PIA has become an industry standard in both Australia and New Zealand, being used extensively by leading real-estate groups, property marketers, lenders and accountants, and by thousands of property investors.”

Quite possibly the most useful part of somerset site is the forum has been active since at least the early part of this century and currently is huge, current statistics are:

• threads 39,708
• posts 436,217
• active members: 1,300

The forum’s software is standard and easy to use. It has some useful touches such as showing members being in the top 5, 20, 250, 500 of users and their join date to give you an idea of the longevity and activity on the board.

There are 14 main property investment boards discussing everything from legal matters to renovations. There are an additional 3 community boards and a two which cover the pre-2006 incarnations of the forum.

Those not familiar with Australian real estate would find the “Where to Buy” forum particularly useful to get a feel for specific property markets. Asking a question about a specific suburb or town appears to always elicit intelligent responses, often from locals.

Useful sticky threads including standard abbreviations used in the local property industry. The most active admins and users are active real-estate investors who are primarily Australian residents though there are also some ex-pats who bring an interesting view . Some of the threads aer literally years old: make sure you check the date before you gt excited!

A nice gallery feature which includes before/after photos of renovations by room and also of properties by state.

Although the original authors don’t appear to be active on the forum; or don’t disclose their identity there are some published authors active on the site including Michael Yardney

This property investment forum is specifically Australian: it doesn’t pretend to cover anywhere else but it covers absolutely every aspect of Australian property investment.