Hi Julee,Commercial property is a whole different ballgame to residential properties. I've looked into it previously, and can suggest a couple of books to read to see if you want to go for it or not. These are;How Investing In Commercial Property Really Works – Authors Martin Roth & Chris Lang, published by Wrightbooks ISBN 0-7314-0293-6Good…[Read more]

Just received this from a property email I subscribe to (Terry Ryder's Hotspotting);The idea that the first-home buyers market will stop on 30 June (the deadline for the First Home Owners Grant boost) is gaining traction in the media but it is based on ignorance and misinformation. A number of organisations have surveyed first-home buyers to…[Read more]

What has been suggested is that the additional $7,000 added to the existing FHOG (or $14,000 for newly constructed homes) last November will be discontinued after 30th June, which was always the intention, not that the FHOG will be scrapped (some news articles I've read today seem to have blurred the difference a little…).Like all temporary…[Read more]

Hi All,After just having an experience similar to michaela_alvares, I'd like to add mistake number 6; not having a good property manager !We 'inherited' the property manager when we bought the property, and given that we were new to the area kept them for a period. The tenant's just moved out without paying the final couple of weeks rent, the…[Read more]

In early 2008 we bought an off-the-plan for approximately the same price and same period, the deposit required was 10% which equated to approx $53,000. We decided to use a deposit bond which cost us approx $7,400 instead. Our primary reason for doing this was because we decided we wanted access to the remaining cash for other possible investments.…[Read more]

I've just spent the day looking around Springvale, and had similar thoughts to most of the people above. I live within a couple of KM of Melbourne CBD and we've been looking to invest in Melbourne for a while. We mainly look for positively (or neutral) geared properties, and hadn't previously found a lot of value in Melbourne. Crunching and…[Read more]