Cultural Insights
As we’re researching for our second investment property, our conversations surprisingly are geared more toward culture and food as opposed to simply just on the purchase price as we’re considering owner occupier, and then rent out the property once Brandon completes high school. That means we would need to ensure that the property is an investment within the suburb, and not just a home. However, renting is a viable option as well. I’m glad Kathy isn’t opposed to rentvesting. I’m sensing that it’s because of her living expectations.
After living in Hurstville for a few years, we can say that it’s predominately Asian. Mixed ethnicities of course, but the Chinese are more Mainland Chinese from my experience. There are some Australian Chinese, but younger side. What’s even more interesting, but not surprising, is that the some of the Australian Chinese don’t speak dual language. If I see a Mainland Chinese ordering something and speaking in Mandarin, the Australian Chinese says they don’t understand what they’re saying most of the time. Gen Z not required to become dual lingual. We’re trying to train Brandon to learn Mandarin for his own benefit. Regardless of how people perceive it or how they interpret it, it’s our advantage even in today’s society. If they’re Australian and speak English only as a property realtor, they can’t target the Asian community. It’s that simple.
We’ve visited Chatswood. We’ve visited Epping. Compare them to Hurstville. They’re similar, but different.
As I continue my work focusing on Personal Finance and Financial Planning, including cultural diversity and the newer generation to the mix is intriguing.
Things to consider is… what do people within my age group expect these days? How about people 10 years younger, or 10 years older? How about when Brandon grows up? What do they want? What would they expect?
Kathy’s right about something. Our experience with Australians so far, most prefer not to share information. Could be a cultural thing. However, this contradicts within the Financial Independence (FI) community. We’re transparent with our financials. We have an open communication discussing family financials and is not a taboo topic. Australians, as with anyone else, are busy with their everyday life. Jobs, kids activities, you name it. Americans, depending on whom you talk to, are busy planning on what to buy or where their next trip will be. They’re too busy on thinking about how to spend their earnings from the stock market and expect for the stock market to never crash. Aussies aren’t much different in that aspect. They believe that property prices will always go up and that utilizing negative gearing is essential. Yes, I’m being sarcastic, but there are both greed and ignorance elements in both ideals. US have become more ignorant to the outside world due to it’s focus and the power given to the internet tech giants. AU is home country biased believing that property investing is the only way to build wealth, and not much love given to the ASX.
Becoming a dual citizenship opens a new opportunity where we can reap benefits of both countries. Granted there are tax implications to consider, however, diversification of our overall portfolio is more essential where we’re not reliant solely on the performance of the US stock market or on the AU property market.
