Our writers

Matthew Liddy is a professional writer and word-wrangler and has been API's resident deputy editor and principal journalist since February 2006. He's a homeowner and property investor but reckons that compared to most of the people API writes about he's small fry in the world of investment.

• Where do you live: Brisbane
• Favourite food: A garlic and olive oil pasta I ate at a farmhouse in Tuscany and never have been able to replicate. It's much the same with that fantastic panino bought just down the road from the Vatican in Rome. And the gelato in Florence - Is anyone detecting a theme here?
• Favourite drink: Water. Or an ultra-cold beer on a hot Queensland summer's day.
• Favourite movie: Shawshank Redemption, Donnie Darko, Garden State
• Likes: Good conversation and good humour.
• Dislikes: Running late for the movies.
• Hobbies: I'm a cricket tragic, so playing and watching the game takes up a ridiculous proportion of my summers.

Vanessa DeGroot has been a journalist and subeditor for API since 2008. Her interest in property was sparked when she started covering the commercial property round as a reporter at the Courier-Mail. It was just a coincidence that around the same time she became a first homebuyer. Using her growing knowledge she hopes to build a portfolio in the near future.

• Where do you live: Brisbane
• Favourite food: Anything I can get my hands on, but I can’t say no to chocolate.
• Favourite drink: Any alcoholic drink, water and banana smoothies.
• Favourite movie: Dirty Dancing and anything funny, especially with Will Ferrell.
• Likes: The eighties, laughing and travelling.
• Dislikes:Cold weather and grocery shopping.
• Hobbies: Exercise – especially tennis and squash. And I like to try my hand at golf, however unsuccessfully!

Nicole Navarro joined the API crew as resident journalist and subeditor in February 2009. Formerly editor and journalist of CityLife and Style magazines in north and far north Queensland, Nicole was exposed to the property market from age five – when she sold her family home to the new girl at school. Years later she plunged into profiling national and international developers, builders, interior designers, property investors and even styling interiors.

• Where do you live: Brisbane
• Favourite food: My husband’s traditional Spanish tortilla, my mother-in-law’s duck baked with apricots and prunes. Oh… and iced cold green grapes.
• Favourite drink: Pina coladas.
• Favourite movie: Anything French, Spanish or arthouse.
• Likes: To be surrounded by trees.
• Dislikes: Extreme laziness.
• Hobbies: Reading, seeing live music gigs and art exhibitions, scuba diving, hiking, photography, practising my Spanish.

Shane McNally has been a national freelance journalist for 20 years after starting as a sports reporter covering horse racing, AFL and athletics. He moved on to entertainment writing in the early 1990s before working for four years as real estate editor with Adelaide's Sunday Mail. In addition to his work for API, Shane writes cinema reviews, lifestyle features, sport and politics for various local and overseas magazines. With two teenage children, his work has taught him the advantages of property - and he's currently scouring the Adelaide Hills for further undervalued properties.

• Where do you live: Adelaide
• Favourite food: Moreton Bay Bugs
• Favourite drink: cold - Crown Lager or coke; hot - percolated coffee
• Favourite movie: Too many genres to name one. The Verdict, Jaws, The Sixth Sense, Groundhog Day, The Year My Voice Broke, Goodfellas are all flawless. Have a soft spot also for the little NZ gem Came A Hot Friday.
• Likes: The view from Vaucluse, dinner on the Brisbane River, footy at the MCG, first coffee of the morning on camp, houseboating on the Murray, a day at the country races
• Dislikes: Pretentious cinema, 1950s banking practices in the computer age (i.e. the one day money spends in cyberspace when it can be transferred in a nano-second), two-year mobile phone contracts with one-year warranties
• Hobbies: Swimming, backgammon, squash, snooker

After living in a tent for two years while travelling Australia with his wife and three young children, Jeremy Gough has learned to truly appreciate the value of property - it doesn't generally blow away in a high wind or leak in a rainstorm, for starters! Jeremy has been writing for API since arriving back at his Coffs Harbour home at the end of 2005.

• Where do you live: Coffs Harbour
• Favourite food: Roast lamb
• Favourite drink: Red wine
• Favourite movie: Pulp Fiction
• Likes: Surfing the internet in search of dream properties, positive people, camping (as long as it's not raining), watching his children compete at swimming carnivals.
• Dislikes: Snakes, rude people, camping in the rain, being beaten by his eight-year-old daughter in a swimming race, watching the value of a house he "nearly" bought skyrocket.
• Hobbies: Swimming, soccer, travelling, building wonky rabbit hutches, going to the beach, fantasising about being rich. 

Based on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Anastasia Hackett began to focus on property journalism at the height of the sea change boom. Then editor of the house and garden and property sections of the regional Weekender magazine, she went on to host the Sunshine Coast's first weekly property radio show and currently edits several agency property magazines as well as being a regular contributor to the Queensland Property & Lifestyle.

• Where do you live: Caloundra, Qld
• Favourite food: Almost anything
• Favourite drink: Nothing beats an ice-cold G&T
• Favourite movie: One that entertains the kids for a full 90 minutes
• Likes: Visiting new places, afternoon beach walks and lazy Sunday mornings
• Dislikes: Aggression
• Hobbies: Reading, dining out and catching up with family and friends

Candide McDonald is a diverse and prolific writer. She has been a journalist for 25 years. The fusion of her two most ardent passions, property and writing, occurred when she met her ex-husband and helped him to found the construction and development company, Built. She is a published author, a regular contributor of feature articles, an advertising copywriter and until recently was managing editor of her online magazine, offyrface. But the work of which she is most proud has property as its focus. "Here my questions are blossoms, and the quest to find their answers thrills."

• Where do you live: Sydney
• Favourite food: steak
• Favourite drink: soda water (but only) directly from the bottle
• Favourite movie: the last one I saw (which was... I can't remember)
• Likes: I love my work.
• Dislikes: that my love for work makes me forget to live. (I also love to live)
• Hobbies: I dance - ballet to hip-hop. (I can do a quadruple pirouette or a B-girl trick if... er, when... asked to show off)

Ben Power is a writer and consultant. He was a finance journalist for 10 years and has written extensively on business and investing for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review, The Australian and London's Investor's Chronicle.

• Where do you live: Brisbane
• Favourite food: Schnitzel, spaghetti marinara (at Bistro C, Noosa)
• Favourite drink: Coffee (weak cappuccino)
• Favourite movie: The Godfather
• Likes: Travel, art, countryside, history, Baroque music
• Dislikes: Bad architecture
• Hobbies: Jogging, swimming, skiing, reading, eating out

Phoenix Arrien is a freelance travel journalist who has been contributing to publications around the world for more than 10 years. She has written a mini-guide on buying and selling property and finds property investing, oddly, a very humorous process.

• Where do you live: Melbourne
• Favourite food: Chocolate
• Favourite drink: Kahlua and milk
• Favourite movie: Lord Of The Rings
• Likes: travel and nature
• Dislikes: people who steal my parking spaces
• Hobbies: travel, horse riding, yoga, slee

Bernard Salt is a KPMG partner based in Melbourne. Bernard has established an international reputation as a trend forecaster for the property and financial services industries. He is a best selling author, a columnist with The Australian and Herald Sun newspapers, a regular on the Australian and more recently European and US speaking circuits, and a business advisor. His views are regularly sought by the business community and by the general media. He appears regularly on radio and television programs including 60 Minutes.

• Where do you live: Melbourne
• Favourite food: tapas
• Favourite drink: Mineral water
• Favourite movie: officially Citizen Kane; unofficially Austin Powers
• Likes: pressing the "send" button when I have finished a column
• Dislikes: re-reading my published columns - I keep seeing a better way to explain something.
• Hobbies: Genealogy

Peter Cerexhe worked as a solicitor in Sydney for many years, specialising in property development and planning law, before moving to CHOICE magazine as senior finance journalist and research manager. He now works for himself as author of books on property and other personal finance matters for Allen & Unwin, including Smarter Property Investment which is going into a third edition this year and he's the property columnist for the Australian Financial Review's Smart Investor. He's a property investor somewhere in there too.

• Where do you live: Albury, NSW
• Favourite food: fish
• Favourite drink: lemonade, lime and bitters
• Favourite movie: Stranger than Fiction
• Likes: most things
• Dislikes: very little
• Hobbies: playing in a band - guitar, mandolin and lap steel

Michael Carman is the managing director of Wealth Enhance, which provides information on wealth creation through property investment. He's an avid property investor, with both residential and industrial properties in his portfolio.

• Where do you live: Sydney
• Favourite food: Thai Green Curry Chicken
• Favourite drink: James Squire beer (original or Porter)
• Favourite movie: Wings of Desire
• Likes: spending time with family and friends
• Dislikes: cucumber; green jellybeans; being in a rush
• Hobbies: reading; bike riding

Geoff Doidge was a burnt out public servant going nowhere. At 40 years old in a mid-life crisis, he turned his life around with property investment. That start has turned into a $20 million portfolio of blocks of flats, new houses, old houses and lately development sites to build for rent. Today his passion is property and, as one of the Reno Kings, showing others how to have fun and profit from property.

• Where do you live: Brisbane
• Favourite food: Fresh fish with salad, avocado, tabouli and tomato
• Favourite drink: Chardy or "sauvy" blanc
• Favourite movie: Currently "In the Wild"
• Likes: Seeing people discover the power of property
• Dislikes: Procrastinators and "shoulda", "coulda", "woulda's"
• Hobbies: Aerobics, volleyball and long Friday breakfasts while everyone is working

Julia Hartman started BAN TACS Accountants Pty Limited 16 years ago. She is a registered tax agent and CPA. These days she spends most of her time travelling Australia writing articles, doing workshops and supporting the BAN TACS offices to keep her much loved pet dog Cindy "in the lifestyle she deserves".

• Where do you live: I have a house at Beachmere but spend a great deal of time on the road in my mobile home.
• Favourite food: Chocolate
• Favourite drink: Champagne
• Favourite movie: Back to the Future (It's probably that long since I saw a movie)
• Likes: Taxation law
• Dislikes: Tax
• Hobbies: Running and pool

As the author of the Made Simple series of investment products, a regular presenter at real estate conferences and seminars throughout the country, a columnist for Australian Property Investor magazine and a solicitor of 30 years experience, it's no wonder Rob Balanda is called the most listened to and read lawyer in the country.

• Where do you live: Tallebudgera Valley
• Favourite food: Italian
• Favourite drink: Sauvignon Blanc
• Favourite movie: As Good As It Gets (Jack Nicholson)
• Likes: Unpretentious people who do not take themselves seriously
• Dislikes: Woody Allen movies
• Hobbies: Snow skiing, scuba diving, walking, reading and dining with friends

Tim O'Dwyer has been a common or garden-variety suburban conveyancing solicitor for 35-odd years, picking up a few investment properties along the way. Fifteen years ago he returned to uni and completed a Master of Arts degree before morphing into a real-estate-watchdog-journalist-historian-consumer advocate. He hasn't given up his day job, which he loves.

• Where do you live: Brisbane
• Favourite food: Char Kway Teow
• Favourite drink: Ouzo and coke
• Favourite movie: Prairie Home Companion
• Likes: Podcasts, crime novels and keeping fit
• Dislikes: Real estate rogues, lame laws and having to keep fit
• Hobbies: Media-tarting, gourmet sandwich-making and freelance writing

Frank Lopez has a varied background in finance, having moved to Australia from London only towards the end of 2007. Previous work includes working as an analyst with a shareholder identification company (if you don't know what that is, you're in the vast majority), before moving on to Henderson Global Investors where he worked in the marketing and then the performance measurement teams.

Arrival in Australia offered the opportunity to move into consumer finance, working for independent research house CANNEX, which currently employs him.

As a recent arrival in Australia, Frank's only investment property is in the UK, but he hopes to climb onto the Australian rollercoaster in due course.

• Where do you live: Brisbane
• Favourite food: Italian food - pizza, pasta, ice cream - preferably made in Italy.
• Favourite drink: Diet Coke and water (not mixed together).
• Favourite movie: The Fugitive - Harrison Ford version.
• Likes: Football (of the soccer variety), eating, music, sunshine. I also like any animal that eats spiders.
• Dislikes: The cold - I left London to escape it!
• Hobbies: Football - I play, coach and watch it. Outside of work it's my alternative existence.