Hi James

Can’t say the hoping strategy is a favourite of mine, so if it were me I wouldn’t be borrowing money to buy shares in the “hope” they grow in value.

Just out of interest, here are my questions:

Have you cut the numbers on your position if you sold your home to fund purchasing a bigger home?

Also, do you have a depreciation schedule…[Read more]

Hi Liana

How much have you saved so far?

Hi Keldyn

Out of interest do you have a savings pile that can be utilised for deposits and/or value-adds?

My other question is how old are you? I have a couple of ideas in mind depending on the answers to those questions :)

Hi Kiwi

In response to your questions:

1. Find out how much I have built up?

As has been mentioned, you can contact your existing super fund and simply ask what your fund balance is as at today. Some of them get a bit funny about it and dodge the question by saying it’s hard to answer because it depends on the precise balance when they hit the…[Read more]

Hi Macard

Perhaps attack the figures the other way around.

You mentioned you were hopeful of the following scenario:
– I’m thinking along the lines of purchasing a run down house (around 350k)
– Spending around 80k on lifting and renovating the property
– Property be worth around the 470k-510k mark once complete.
– And if property rented…[Read more]

You don’t need a car worth $50k. You can have a perfectly good new car for around $15k if needs be. I agree with the others. Sell the car and put the money into an investment.

Hi Wiwin

You’ve hit the nail on the head with that sentence. Generally speaking it can be done one of three ways:

Assuming a bank is happy to lend to you on 14 properties (which may not necessarily be the case if they are not satisfied your day job income could support the mortgages if there was a problem with tenanting), you could fund…[Read more]

Cleaning is very cheap. Mostly elbow grease.

Painting can have a dramatic effect. Perhaps combined with changing doorhandles of kitchen cabinetry.

Gardening.

Hi JZ_33

Take care not to fall into the trap of listening to people who tell you to get yourself some negative gearing “for the growth”. If you sit down and cut the numbers, quite often such people are essentially paying for their “growth” up front in the form of out-of-pocket expenses along the way. Heaven help them if their forecasted growth…[Read more]

What is required to rent it out? Steps and costs involved in making it a separate dwelling?
It depends on your council’s ruling, but the easy answer is “nothing needs to be done unless you as the landlord are not prepared to pay for the utilities usage (gas/water/electricity). Ideally the downstairs flat would have its own set of bins and its own…[Read more]

Further to what Terry said, it will also come down to what you can get finance for. Financing development projects can be a bit trickier, particularly if your partner isn’t working and given that you cannot demonstrate experience in turning a profit in this field to the lender.

If you go down the renovation path, remember that you only pay…[Read more]

Hi Angela

You’ll have trouble accessing equity in the property if your intention is to use the equity for a purchase in Australia.

You couldn’t borrow back the entire $100k anyway. Assuming you are wanting to release the equity for investment into another property in NZ, then in a mortgage refinance situation, the refinancier would take you to…[Read more]

As mentioned above, communicate expectations and deadlines clearly in writing. If they don’t comply, report them to Consumer Affairs. They stand to lose a lot if Consumer Affairs pursue them.

Being inconveniently vocal about the issue in their reception area when it is full of clientele is also quite effective.

You could look at buying a slightly cheaper property, thereby leaving a buffer of perhaps $20k in the smsf. This would enable it to weather the storm if you were out of work for a while. If you get hit by a bus you’re either injured or no longer with us. You have death & tpd insurance for this, which covers paying out the mortgagee.

Were you planning to pay cash for it? If so, sounds like you have about $50k. You can most certainly do other things, including acquiring property, with $50k.

Never mind the question of “can you”. Why on earth would you want to?

Yep. Dianna. Her userid on these forums is DWolfe . I know she does great work on existing dwellings and also newbuilds being advertised for sale.

https://www.propertyinvesting.com/members/DWolfe/profile/

You could drop her a private message from there. The website is http://www.homestagers.com.au

(Moderators feel free to remove the website link if…[Read more]

I agree with knightm. Don’t take the approach of choosing the suburb and hoping it’ll all work out. Define a set of criteria and find the suburb that complies with it. Be clinical about it.

Be careful with the knockdown and rebuild strategy. Be sure you’ve got a broker that knows his onions on such deals. Some financiers won’t touch it because of the issue of getting caught in that middle phase where they’ve financed a property that had a house on it, then suddenly all it is after the knockdown is a block of land that is worth less…[Read more]