Forum Replies Created
Noted, thanks @benny will do. ps I also notice it’s a bit of a mission to find a particular member now. Once upon a time there was a link that took you straight into members and you can search by partial username. Now that functionality seems to be gone, so unless someone is tagged in a post with an @ symbol it is tough to find them.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Cheezel
There are a lot of people in the world all at many different stages in life, so there will be many different strategies to be heard, but not all will apply to your stage of life or circumstance. It’s important to keep laser focus and not get distracted with irrelevant strategies.
With SMSF, the thing to remember is that some of your money is already quarantined in super anyway. Might as well put it to good use ;)
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Cheezel
You have noted that perhaps your portfolio could do with diversification outside of QLD, but perhaps also consider diversifying into property other than just house and land packages? Value can be found in a variety of forms.
Appropriate strategy differs from person to person depending on age, proximity to retirement etc. Depending on age and other assets, SMSFs can be a powerful vehicle.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi @specha (aka Chattaway)
I’d been looking for your thread as I knew you intended to create one, but it isn’t as easy to find threads and comments by a particularly person any more. The link seems to have gone. Nevertheless, yes, I certainly built my portfolio with a strategy and have in mind viable strategies for each of my clients such that I know what role the property I’m purchasing for them will play in the greater plan.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi @specha (aka Chattaway)
As has been mentioned above by @qlds007 , the first step is speak to a broker regarding what you can borrow.
From there, remember that “growth potential” can mean that the area goes up in value (which cannot be guaranteed) or you force growth through adding value to the property. The latter is more of a controllable outcome and a favourite of mine. This can be done even in the lower priced properties, though it is important not to over-capitalize.
One at a time, get them into the portfolio and make them work for you, and remember there are different buying entities that can come into play that can help you build quicker.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
+1 for paint / pets / grouting / cleaning / gardening.
Also if the window-coverings are getting a bit shabby, changing those can really improve a room also. If the room is dark, go for light-coloured window coverings such as white 50mm PVC venetians (Bunnings/Spotlight). Otherwise eyelet curtains. Also look at light globes and light-fittings. The current tenant may have put in a light globe that makes the place seem really gloomy. At last check a lightglobe is about $7 so you can solve that sort of problem very easily. Light fittings can often be replaced really cheaply with something from Bunnings too.
With paint, remember there is an inside and an outside. Painting concrete paths and driveways can really lift the appearance of a place.
Dishwashers and aircon are also good provided you can afford to maintain them. If you are early on in your investing you might not have a huge buffer and as such want to minimize the facilities provided that can break down or require a tradesperson to attend regularly.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi HealthIsWealth
Perhaps consider submitting two different offers at once. It often leads to the vendor forgetting that they can decline both, and rather feel as though they must choose between the two.
The two offers could differ on price, settlement duration, deposit size, terms, early access for works etc.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Further to this;
If they are on fixed-term leases, you can’t evict them till the lease ends anyway (unless you intend to move in yourself, but you’d be hard pressed to say you and your family needed to live in all four of the units).
If any of them are on periodical leases or near the end of their lease you may be able to get a condition of sale that the seller is to issue that particular tenant with a rental increase notice. At least that way by the time you take over ownership the rent will have gone up or is just about to (increase notices usually have a 60 day lead time on them).
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Jobie
I can’t say I think vacant possession on all four is a good idea. You’d be going to market to lease 4 at a time, and also the lender might look at the vacant possession and decline finance.
Increase the rent on one unit at a time and if needs be evict one tenant after settlement and re-tenant at market rate.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Tim
8% is an extraordinary fee – was that a typo?
As Corey has mentioned, a mistake can cost far more than the fee a good BA may have charged you. Other key reasons for using BAs are not having the time to commit to research, inspecting property etc (quite a common issue for people that have children), or wanting to acquire property in a different state to where you reside.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Sonny
As the others have said, best to keep your cash for the home you’ll live in.
If you ever do start investing, be wary of property that has a low rental price-tag (which property priced below $150k probably will). Your rent can get severely eroded by bills. Council rates, insurance, water rates, maintenance.
– The water company will normally charge the same service charge for a dwelling that has just 1 bedroom as it would for a 5 bedroom home.
– Council rates and insurance are not necessarily proportional to size of dwelling and rent achieved. Insurance on smaller dwellings is quite ouch.
– You still have to maintain the plumbing, electrics and appliances. If the oven dies, you’ll be looking at $600+. There’s 4 weeks rent chewed up right there. The Hot Water Service will be over $1k. Yes you have to maintain oven and HWS in a bigger property, but bigger property fetches more rent to help pay for these things.
I wouldn’t want something that fetched less than around $200 per week in rent.
Hope this all makes sense.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Amelia
Glad you have managed to start to see a path through it all !
Just another suggestion is to talk to each of the service providers you are going to use to explain to them the other jobs that will be happening, and ask them to help you determine which order the respective tradies should attend in. For instance, you might be advised that the ventilation system should be left till last (eg it might be deemed that there is no point cleaning that first, then kicking up more dust during the process of cleaning floors and mould, as these particles might end up in the ventilation system). No need for you to be an expert at such matters, just talk it over with each of the tradies you use. Line them up in an appropriate order, and be wary of booking them all in too close together in case one attends later than planned.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Lb 75
Richard Taylor of Taylored Financial Solutions is Brisbane-based. His userid on the forum is Qlds007.
The link to his userid on these forums is here; https://www.propertyinvesting.com/members/qlds007/
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi LB 75
The place you want to buy in Brisbane – do you want to live in it yourself or do you want it to be an investment property?
Before you get too ahead of yourself and sell anything, it would be best to talk to a good broker and determine how much you could borrow if you kept the Laverton property compared to how much you could borrow if you sold it.
Remember that while your $10k savings won’t get you far for a deposit, an equity release loan against Laverton could beef that number up if Laverton is now worth a decent bit more than what you paid for it.
Something to keep in mind is that mortgage interest against a property you live in is not tax deductible (whereas interest against an investment property is tax deductible). So there is sometimes a good argument for having a very small loan against the property you live in, which in your case if you live in the new Brisbane property, the loan could only be small if you sold Laverton.
Chat to a good broker first and that should clear the clouds a bit to help you decide what’s best for you.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Amelia
Welcome to the forums : )
Sounds like you have quite a job ahead of you !
With some councils, you are entitled to a couple of hard rubbish collections per year. It would be worth speaking to your council to see if this applies to you. It can be a convenient way of getting rid of bulky items that you would otherwise need to transport to the tip.
Also with some councils you receive tip entry tokens on/with the first council rates notice of the year.
The above two comments help reduce a bit of the cost of removing the junk, but it sounds like you are more overwhelmed by the cleaning task than the junk removal. So to address that :
With the cleaning, if you are feeling too nervous about asking a company to clean the whole house at once, you might consider asking for a room or two at a time. To get an accurate quote you could send a written description of what needs doing plus a few photos.
I’m not convinced that just using the same kind of residential cleaners that do end of lease cleans would be sufficient in this case. It might be necessary to get in a commercial or industrial cleaner.
With the windows I’d get in a specific window cleaning company rather than get a local cleaning lady to tackle it with her spray and wipe and sponge. It’d take too long. The the experts in, it’ll be faster and cheaper.
You mentioned that the floor is blackened … do you know what material is under the blackness? Is it tiles, lino, other? If it is lino it might be best to just rip it up and replace with new.
There are various cleaning machines available for hire at places like Bunnings and Kennards. It sounds like you’re not keen to tackle the cleaning yourself, however solutions like this might help get rid of the first layer of grime efficiently.
As has been mentioned by Benny there are various junk removal companies. There are also some that specifically take away items made from metal (they recycle it). So it’d be worthwhile scoping those out too.
Hope some of this helps.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Gabsy
Don’t advertise it as a 3 bedder plus study. If the fourth room is big enough to be a bedroom then call it a bedroom. People that only needed 3 bedrooms can see it as a bonus room for guests, storage, play room, home office, or whatever.
It makes letting a bit easier to have the second bathroom, but I’d take a well located 4 bedder with one bathroom over a poorly located 4 bedder with 2 bathrooms.
If the property is near facilities that tenants need there shouldn’t be too much issue leasing it out. The presence of a second bathroom and under cover car parking is a factor but not a deal breaker. Often the man of the household will be unhappy there is no garage for him, but ultimately beggers cannot be choosers. If a family needs to rent somewhere they must take what is on offer. You’d also be surprised how many single mothers are out there with 3 kids. Bang, right there is the need for 4 bedrooms. But no man on the scene wanting a garage.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Ren
With building, you’re usually stuck on a variable interest rate with the bank till the build is complete.
With a house & land package, the bank would pay the builders in incremental stages.
You are correct that stamp duty is lower if the dwelling is either not on the land or is incomplete. However keep in mind that most house & land packages are built in large clusters of other house & land packages. There won’t be anything different or special about your house because everything in the area looks similar. So tread carefully if you are assuming your house will magically go up in value by settlement and turn you a profit. You really want to do your homework on whether such a phenomenon has happened with other house & land packages in the area, and also be prepared to execute “Plan B” if the value rise you hoped for doesn’t happen. Plan B will almost certainly be “Hold onto it and rent it out”.
Folks with limited funds have historically opted for the first 5 years of the loan to be interest only (after which it lapses into Principle & Interest unless you do something to revert it to Interest Only). However many lenders now charge a higher interest rate for interest only loans which can nullify the purpose of having gone down this path in the first place.
Another thing worth doing is working out how much more you can save within say 6-12mths and what budget range that would place you in, should you choose to sit on your hands. That might get you into a slightly better suburb that may increase possibility that a reno could turn a small profit.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Ajay
On those figures, a $250k property would need to be fetching $295 per week in rent to nudge its nose into CF+ terrain.
A $250k budget is a house in the outer ring Western suburbs of Melbourne, or a unit closer in (not all suburbs).
You are extremely unlikely to find something in Melbourne for that price that will also be CF+ and also offer development opportunity, and also growth potential. It might be necessary to focus on will be getting a sturdy property that will appeal to tenants.
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Ajay
Welcome to the forums
There are parts of most towns that are fine and parts that are best avoided. The key is to not stumble into buying something that will hinder the progress of your investing.
Either way, while there are properties on the market in Melton for circa $250k, it is unrealistic to expect to find such a property which also happens to be CF+ and offer subdivision potential for this price-tag.
In order to not get caught up in a tangle of trying to find a property that features every property strategy going, try first deciding what the spend limit is (the bank will no doubt decide for you), how much you’re putting down in cash as a deposit (which will contribute towards determining the cash-flow position of the property) and from there decide what areas you can afford, and thereafter what “extras” you can get for your money. For instance, you might need to decide between cash-flow and big land.
Hope this helps :)
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
Hi Hendo
Not sure… it could be any number of presenters. The fact that it is a two-day seminar makes me think it might be the Stuart Zadel presentation you were thinking of. If so be sure to take along a packed lunch as they are very full days and you might prefer to utilize your lunch-break chatting to other attendees rather than standing in a queue for food at the nearest cafe.
Going to lots of seminars is a great way of expanding your knowledge, and reinforcing knowledge you already have. Lots of little bits of learnings add up to a lot. And gaining knowledge from lots of different people means that sooner or later you develop your own view on what will work for you, rather than one person’s view on what they feel is best for you.
Tread carefully with your spending at seminars – it is very easy to get caught up in the urgency of “buy this today to get a discount”. Be clear in your mind before you attend whether you are permitting yourself to make any purchases and if so what you are prepared to buy and what your spend limit is. Products and services aren’t really a bargain if you didn’t want or need them in the first place.
An important tip is that if you want to have time to chat to other people at seminars, get there nice and early. Heaps of people will show up early and many are just like you hoping for some networking. There is never enough time in the breaks for lots of networking and at the end of the seminar everyone is tired and just want to go straight home. So the time to leverage is the time before the seminar begins.
Hope this helps!
Jacqui Middleton | Middleton Buyers Advocates
http://www.middletonbuyersadvocates.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeVIC Buyers' Agents for investors, home buyers & SMSFs.
