Sunday saw the Santa parade and Bailey's first taste of Candy Floss.

All week the little man had been talking to me about how he was going to try candy floss on Sunday at the Santa parade and sure enough there were two candy floss vendors at the market.

Luckily the vendor I went to sold her candy floss in a bag because even though Bailey loved the very sweet treat, he could not eat the lot and so half a bag went home to have as dessert later.

It was a gorgeous day Sunday and the organisers could not have hoped for a better day, however, I noticed quite a large number of open homes in the area that would have been empty due to the lack of access to the closed streets as well as the fact that Santa draws a pretty big crowd.

It seems the Christmas rush is on with a lot of homes up for sale and a lot of sold signs popping up around the area. Obviously the warm weather and the promise of a nice hot summer inspires people to enter into the fabulous lifestyle that is offered in the Bay.

I'm not sure it's a great time to be buying rental properties at the moment, however, with recently released figures suggesting Tauranga had vacancy rates as high as 14 per cent and this over supply was putting downward pressure on the rents. Add to this the obviously increasing interest rates and the possibility of fewer tax benefits from residential rental properties and it is possible that there will be some new landlords feeling the pinch in the latter half of 2010.

If you are contemplating buying an investment property, don't get drawn into the emotional roller coaster of owning something that, 'We can use ourselves”, or 'We can move into later”. In my experience these properties get sold off long before you ever use or move into them because they don't make good investments for many people.

Instead, sit down and do the maths – buying an investment property is about creating wealth for your future. So work out what is truly needed to help you achieve that goal and then buy the appropriate investment. If that investment happens to be a property at the mount, great, if it's not then that's fine too, you can still holiday at the beach and use the income from your investment to fund the holiday.