[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

March 22, 2010 - 3:53 am

Agreed about meeting the market, vacancy and changeover costs tend to be much larger than a few after tax dollars per week in reduced rent.

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

March 22, 2010 - 3:41 am

Borrowing some excellent advice from Melanie McDonald's blog; about how to start with property investing.

Q: How do I get started?

A: You just start.

Sounds flippant but I mean it. Will expand on the point tomorrow.

source

To the point I thought

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

March 22, 2010 - 3:36 am

We pay $83 a week for full access to Brisbane and Ipswich, costs are more if you want greater coverage.

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March 20, 2010 - 9:31 pm

I'm aware of downward pressure on rents at the moment in the outer Northern Suburbs, places around 30k from the CBD specifically. Lots of development stock is being bought by investors and it's all being placed on the rental market, depends a lot on the specifics of where you are and what you are renting.

Some recent rental data from the REIQ (March 2010, .pdf file)

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

February 16, 2010 - 8:09 am

I've paid $440 the last few times I have got a valuation done in Brisbane.

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

February 14, 2010 - 12:26 am

We have our PPOR opposite a HC house, also the suburb has plenty of them sprinkled around. Never noticed a problem, likely this depends on the general area as well (We are 10k from Brisbane CBD). Our HC neighbours are very quiet as have been all the ones I'm aware of, probably something to do with waiting 7 years or so to get a house in their desired area! 

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February 14, 2010 - 12:08 am

Hi Luci,

A good start might be to attend some investor networking evenings in your area, in Brisbane we have monthly BIG (Better Investing Group) on the last Tuesday of the month, you should have something similar in your area. These evenings are a great and cheap way to meet fellow investors and listen to an expert speak on their area of interest without having the pressure of being sold something. These events are very different in nature to marketing events or organizations (some of which will have the word investor in there!)

Also the local library is a cheap way to pick up a different range of books to read. Stuart Wemyss, Peter Spann and Jan Somers are three authors who have done excellent jobs with their work in my opinion.

Regards,
Andrew

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February 13, 2010 - 11:21 pm

For the southside, I have bought tiles at Springwood, the long strip next to the highway and not far from Ikea with lots of car sale yards, don't remember the exact place but there are a few choices there. Got a very good price on a line that was going out of stock. For skips I have always just used the classified section in the local newspaper, get a few quotes and go from there, found them much of a muchness and all pretty good.

I love tiles in a property, one of the best ways to transform a floor when you are doing a reno I think, also prefer non white tiles that don't show every speck of dust.

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

January 22, 2010 - 3:51 am

http://www.big.org.au/

Meets last Tuesday of each month, first visit free. Excellent networking possibilities. Can't beat it I think.

Cheers,
Andrew

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

January 6, 2010 - 2:07 pm

Hi Denis,

The Better Investing Group (BIG) hold meetings on the last Tuesday of each month at the Jindalee Hotel, first visit is free. Great networking and information resource for anybody interested in property, I'm always there if I'm able!

Regarding CBD apartments and capital gains I know that performance can be very building specific, which is likely true of all property So drilling down into the data and looking at individual resales would be important. My personal experience with units is that the Body Corp can really eat into the net yield.

Good luck with the searching.

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

December 4, 2005 - 4:30 am

A slight update to this post.

I have found out that there is a standard 2% charge on all foreign currency transactions with my Suncorp Metway VISA card.

Interestingly I got a mysterious ‘foreign currency refund fee’ for all my transactions recently, and it was quite a decent amount as well.

No idea why, but I won’t be phoning to enquire.

“Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on marble.” Arab proverb

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

July 24, 2005 - 8:47 pm

What garbage.

I almost stopped reading after the ‘never been wrong’ part of the article. Never been wrong must mean you have done nothing in your life, or you are perfect, and we all know how many perfect people or predictors there are out there.

It always pays to look at a persons motivation when they have a point of view, especially with money and investing.

There are a lot of people who hate George Bush and aren’t afraid of saying how the world will soon end because of him and his administration.

George Soros and Buffett have each dropped serious money (even for them) shorting the USD this year, and why? Well… it wasn’t trading reasons, but political.

Always take what you read on the net with two grains of salt. Take any position and do some googling to find hundreds of articles and websites to support any quirky point of of view and get a warm and fuzzy feeling that plenty of people agree with you.

“Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on marble.” Arab proverb

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

January 13, 2005 - 4:28 am

Originally posted by Big Rob:
<snip>In any case, you can actually leverage MORE against SHARES. How do I know this? Well, I bought $100,000 worth of shares in November for $0. Ongoing cost is the interest repayment which is slightly higher than the interest repayment on a property loan (about 1% – 1.5%). No stamp duty or legal fees and I even got the brokerage fee waived so there was zero entry costs.

I think it comes down to ‘risk profile’. Shares are a LOT more risky than property.

I would consider property AND shares. A diversified investment portfolio is always a good thing.

How is that for constructive??? <snip>

Very constructive! And an interesting point re: leverage.

I too have had a question about leverage re: shares-property The assumption in Australia being that property wins this battle. S teve Navra demonstrates in his investment course why he considers property to be the “better” investment even though he loves investing in shares, simply due to being able to leverage more.

But there is plenty of leverage available when you trade currency (1000:1) or futures etc. The risk profile is very different of course.

I’m you can buy shares with no money and no collateral used then that is infinite leverage If I want to trade in currency I need to have at least a little money in my account to satisfy my broker. The same goes for futures brokers. So it’s been my personal experience that property does have potentially greater leverage.

After all you can just walk into somebody’s house with RE and agree some sort of deal with no money down. Not that I have ever done that!

<edit- just thought of this> actually wouldn’t getting 100+% finance for property be a better example! Haven’t done that either though <edit>

Food for thought.

WaySolid

“Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on marble.” Arab proverb

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

January 13, 2005 - 4:01 am

I have been in a similar situation with a girl friend. She didn’t even want to know about finances despite my attempts to involve her.

I ended up just keeping quiet about the whole matter. I think getting people to step outside their comfort zones is just very very challenging.

“Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on marble.” Arab proverb

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January 12, 2005 - 6:20 pm

Hi Barbara,

Hopefully this is a constructive reply:

I believe Robert Kiwosaki answered this question excellently, he was asked so many times for investment advice before he came up with the following “fits all sizes” response:

“If you do not know what to do with your money, put it in a bank, and do not tell anybody that you have money to invest.”

The reason being there are m1llions of people with an opinion on what you should do, and what might be good for one person wouldn’t work for another.

There are key differences between shares and property, the thread “shares v property” has been debated here many times and also at http://www.somersoft.com/forums So reading those threads might be a good place to start.

One advantage of property is that if you can afford 200k of shares (with borrowings) you can afford to buy more than 200k of property due to the higher leverage, but then shares are so much easier and cheaper to turn into cash if you need to and so on and so on for many pages.

In the end It all comes back to your own plans and objectives, once you know these it’s easier to chose an investing vehicle.

Regards,
WaySolid

“Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on marble.” Arab proverb

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

January 12, 2005 - 5:42 pm

Originally posted by unannounced:

Has anyone been to the Better Investing Group Brisbane meetings before?

I was wondering how people found it?

I’ve only read a couple of bo oks [like a mi llion other people] and have the desire to purchase property [like a mil lion other people], so I am wondering if I should learn a little more before hand.

Personally my favourite thread about BIG would have to be http://www.somersoft.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17236

Lots of good info in that thread

“Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on marble.” Arab proverb

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January 2, 2005 - 8:29 am

I don’t see why only <edited> naive would think hyperlinks from a persons posts can be viewed as endorsement from them for something.

“I don’t like having my posts hyperlinked.” That’s really all there is to my point.

Bye.

“Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on marble.” Arab proverb

[Andrew_AParticipant@andrew_aJoin Date: 2003Post Count: 392]

January 2, 2005 - 4:37 am

Originally posted by The Mortgage Adviser:

Julia,

That is a bit over the top don’t you think?

I agree 100% with Julia, I don’t think it’s over the top at all.

And the idea that you can choose from a “vocabulary minus advertising linking words” smacks a bit of newspeak from 1984. Doubleplusgood eh? Ok maybe that was a bit over the top

I like the site and don’t mind S t e v e making a buck out of it/or covering costs. I won’t be having my words borrowed for this end though.

I for one consider it invasive advertising.

“Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on marble.” Arab proverb

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November 28, 2004 - 1:21 am

Another Coastie here. Mermaid Waters.

I have 2 spare seats in my car going up to the Brisbane Investors Group this Tuesday, leaving 6pm returning by 11pm or so. Info available on this forum and Somersoft as well.

WaySolid

“Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on marble.” Arab proverb

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October 23, 2004 - 12:46 pm

Terry,

Are the banks thinking that rates are likely to drop at all?

From a post I read at Ssoft from PittSt it would appear as if banks fix their profit in on both fixed and variable rates and their fixed rates are no indication whatsoever of their view on future rate movement.

WaySolid.

“Write the wrongs that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on marble.” Arab proverb