Right ok.  Well there are a few options I suppose:

1. Sell your house to pull out your equity, and by a four bedder. 

2.  Rent your house out, and you live in a rental.  You'd have six years to move back into your house after which you could still sell it capital gains tax free.  If however you remain absent from your home for more than six…[Read more]

You might have to provide offstreet parking for each newly-created dwelling.  Council or your draftie could tell you if this is required.

You can get that lovely "new" smell for a few hundred dollars worth of paint and some new carpet

Welcome Matts

Can you tell us a bit about this house of yours?  ie How many bedrooms, which town & state it is in, and how big is the backyard.

JacM

In Vic, the law is that the landlord pays the service charges and the tenant pays the water usage (provided the dwelling has its own water meter.  Otherwise the landlord pays the water usage as well).

I agree.. I don't understand why the landlord has to pay the service charges during a tenancy.  It is the tenant using the service after all.

In…[Read more]

I am a big fan of Google Street-view.  I cruise up and down the street from the comfort of my desk, checking out powerlines, whether anyone in the street has several carwrecks in their front yard etc etc. Gives me an idea before I get in the car to go for a look-see.

Freckle's comment is very wise.  Never underestimate the value of your sleep at night money.  If by making a certain decision, will you cause yourself such stress in the worry of what might, or does happen as a result that you will be unable to sleep?

On the workman issue, if a workman causes damage and he is not insured, too bad for you.  Your insurance will not pay out on damage done by a tradie you hired. 

As such, no tradies are allowed to step foot inside my property boundaries unless they have insurance.  One would assume this would extend to gardeners your tenants may hire to do the…[Read more]

On a sidenote, train  your brain to no longer subscribe to the idea that you need your investment property to be pretty, new and inner city.

In some cases this may well turn up a diamond.  Though some of the best cracker investments out there are ugly, but fantastic earners, and becoming amazing earners when you mix in value-add techniques such…[Read more]

While it is not an acronym, there would be value in having a definition and explanation of what an offset account is, and how it works.

Admin wrote:
What else should be on the list?

PM = Property Manager
RE = Realestate Agent

Shop around.  Ask an insurance broker to shop around also.

Insurance is going up by the way.  A lot.

I had someone do $40k of damage.  The carpet was trashed (seemingly the tenant walked around inside with buckets of bleach and pink stuff that belongs in a garage and spilled it on the carpet), punch holes in the wall resulting in the need for…[Read more]

It's a tax writeoff against the rental income anyway…

Wait till a tenant does a malicious damage job on your property and pays no rent while they are doing it.  It is VERY easy to do $40k of damage.  It is equally as easy to do $60k of damage.  Perhaps you need to ask yourself how you would recover from such an event if you were not covered by…[Read more]

Hi 9GoldFisk

Something to do right upfront is chat to council about your thoughts, and ask about what sort of permits and costs would be involved with each.  Then cross check that with insurance costs.  For example, council might say that what you intend to do they consider to be a boarding house, and that a special permit is needed, and then you…[Read more]

I'd send a letter advising of the expiry on the offer as suggested by Derek.  If they didn't take it up, I'd wait a week or so and then submit an even lower offer…. or better still two simultaneous lower offers, each with different settlement periods. 

moxi10 wrote:
http://www.gladstoneobserver.com.au/story/2012/08/10/insurance-up-by-689-bundaberg-house-contents/

Good grief.  This is really taking the mickey.  I don't understand how this can be allowed to happen.  What on earth are those muppets in government doing, allowing price hikes of this kind.

At kindergarten you are taught to share and play nicely with others and everything will be fine and dandy.  And it is easy for this rule to hold true when the only thing at stake is who gets to play with the red plastic shovel in the sandpit.  Don't expect things to be quite so easy on the matter of sharing finances or property with others. …[Read more]

The transport situation is bad around that area.  Only one road that can get you to the freeway and it is clogged every single day.  Bit far from the train station to rely on walking and training it to the city for work.

It is widely considered that houses in Seabrook and Point Cook are over priced and thus cannot expect much capital growth over…[Read more]

Freckle wrote:
Did you let your tenant know interests costs have gone down so you're lowering rents to be fair.. I think not.

No, though I also didn't let them know when interest rates went up.  If rents are raised a little each year it generally balances out the ebbs and flows of interest rate impact.

The photos will be better with furniture in them…. get the photos done before you remove the furniture