You don't necessarily have to pay a premium – Adelaide's one year fixed start at 5.29% with a full offset.

Cheers

Jamie

Youtube – you'll learn how to do everything!

It sounds sarcastic but when renovating our first IP a number of years back – I used youtube to learn how to tile, render, rip up flooring, etc. I don't have as much time these days so prefer to fork out the money to let the pros take care of it.

Cheers

Jamie

Depends on which loan the offset is linked to.

I'd link it to the variable – there's not many lenders that allow for a full offset against a fixed loan.

Make sure that $50k is enough – if you think you can save more than this during the fixed period than I'd look to increase the variable portion.

Is this property an IP or…[Read more]

Hi Yen and welcome aboard.

This is a copy and paste from another forum where I responded to your thread.

I'm all for allowing pets in IPs and have generally had good experiences with tenants who have had dogs or cats.

Can't you filter searches on realestate.com and the other larger property search sites to find rentals that allow pets? If…[Read more]

Nice analogy as always

Which city are you in Neil, you need to speak to a good accountant.

Cheers

Jamie

Hi Prudence

There's a heap to choose from on this thread – https://www.propertyinvesting.com/forums/community/heads-up/6845

Cheers

Jamie

You need to assess whether it's got the attributes to make a good investment.

What's the market like for selling at the moment in your area? If things are moving slowly and prices are being discounted by a fair bit than I'd consider holding until the market improves.

As mentioned above, have a valuation carried out on the property so you can…[Read more]

^^^ 
What Catalyst said.

From memory, there's some ok tile paints out there – it would be the most cost effective and efficient way of getting it done, that's for sure.

Cheers

Jamie

Fixing loans doesn't usually hurt servicing – it can actually improve it because the bank may use a lower assessment rate (ie. the inflated rate that they apply to your repayments to see if you can still meet your liability in the event that rates go up).

There's a lot to consider before fixing though.

Cheers

Jamie

ING just passed it all on. 

Cheers

Jamie

Hi there

If you do a search on this forum and others you should be able to find a heap of info about them.

Cheers

Jamie

From my end – the challenge for some people can be overcoming paralysis analysis.

We get the odd client who is overloaded with too much information that they spend way too much time looking for the "right" property and never end up making a decision.

Cheers

Jamie

Hi Matt

The extra $20 can't hurt – and I assume it's only an example because if we're talking about $20 being a deal breaker in terms of your borrowing capacity then it might not be worth pursuing.

Different lenders have different ways of working out your borrowing capacity – some use 100% of rental income while the majority use somewhere…[Read more]

Hi Maverick

Just to clarify – what do you mean by the "real estate" side? 

Are you looking for a broker that finances residential property? If so, that's the domain of most brokers in Oz – not sure if all  have had experience dealing with expats though.

Cheers

Jamie

Down, down – rates are going down

Cheers

Jamie

Hi Pru

95% lends are possible for an IP – meaning you only need a 5% deposit and enough to cover costs such as stamp duty and legal fees.

We've managed to get a few 95% IP lends for forum clients over the line recently. 

Check out this article I wrote on using a smaller deposit and leveraging LMI to grow the portfolio quicker.

Cheers

Jamie

I've done ok with WBC and CBA pricing requests over the years.

Sometimes certain brokers linked with certain aggregators can offer exclusive products only available through the broker channel – that might be what the broker is getting at.

There are also times where a brokers relationship with a lender can result in a better rate for the client.…[Read more]

Hi Matt

It's impossible to advise without kowing the specifics of your situation.

There are also other ways of improving serviceabilty before selling a property. Here's an article I wrote.

one of the best ways to assist in not hitting a servicing wall too quickly is lender selection – using the right lenders at the right time as you accumulate…[Read more]

Ralph Z wrote:
Hi all:
 I want to talk to a financial advisor about my situation and seek for some advise, the problem is there are way too many financial advisers website and I don't know which to choose, any idea how to choose the good ones or any professional advisers in  this forum? cheers.

Hi Ralph

What are you expecting to get out of a…[Read more]

lukelee wrote:
sounds like a tough job, why do they do cold call and door to door? ask a stranger if they want to sell or buy a property?

It is a tough industry to crack but the good ones do really well.

You can't expect to create something from nothing – you need to do something in order to see results.

Cheers

Jamie