It’s not a lie, I just changed my position Your Honour

I could fill a book on some other pitfalls in the property market but another that stands out involves a real estate agent who sold us an investment property in Brisbane with two of our sons also on the deed. This smooth operator said he was a former bank manager and he seemed on the level, but when he showed us through the property he said he couldn't access a locked room behind the garage because the absent owners had some valuables stored there.

Maybe we should have seen the red flag when he also advised us to forgo a building inspection. "It's a solid brick build, why not save some money, what could go wrong?"

One word - termites - with an obvious infestation in the door frame inside the locked room, which we only discovered after settlement.

Fortunately the house had a hardwood frame and the little pests were confined to that one limited area so the fix was relatively easy but no one would have known that.

Termites were also found gnawing on wooden garden sleepers in another investment home we bought so I got a pest controller to treat them. No obvious signs of infestation inside the house but when it came to the roof void he said he was practically retired and there was no way he was going to crawl around up there.

"I'm too old, you can borrow my gear if you want to".

So that was how I got to be crawling around with a headlamp and a cylinder and pump squirting termite treatment in a dark confined space on a sweltering summer day…

We sold that house before any possible future termites showed their hungry little heads, which I hope they never did.

As I said, we didn't rely on negative gearing but that was personal choice, not government policy.

I'm not always a fan of popular finance columnist and lifestyle guru The Barefoot Investor, Scott Pape, but he had a big swipe at an investor (Terry) bemoaning Labor's negative gearing changes in a recent column. I'm not saying he's right but somehow it's worked for us.

Hi Terry,

I'm not sure if you're from the housing lobby, the Liberal Party, or if you've just stumbled onto my column for the first time in 22 years and haven't worked out that I've spent the better part of two decades arguing against negative gearing and every other form of taxpayer-funded landlord welfare.

For far too long, first home buyers have had the footprints of investors on their backs.

'A toxic mix of pain and devastation'? Please.

If that's what happens to your investment portfolio after a few tax tweaks, you've got bigger problems than I can help with….

As for the figure of '9% of mortgage holders at risk of defaulting if there were one or two more rate hikes' ... well, I have a few things to say about that.

First, if they're that skint, they should sell their homes immediately and get out of the market while they still can. They don't own their home. The bank does.

Second, these people most certainly are not my readers. We're way too smart for that…

Gee Scott, tell him what you really think!