As a bit of reno advice:
Never use wallpaper, it’s dated within about 5 minutes of being applied and it sucks to get off.

Also:
You may not need to remove it, you might be able to get away with just painting over it. If the paper is textured that may not work so well.

Who thought wallpaper was good anyway?

Hi,
Welcome.
You can get some good ideas from this forum, though I must warn you it is an Australian based forum so much of the specific detail may not be relevant.

But otherwise… where to start:
Read up on relevant law and process. There are good instructional type books to point you in the right direction.
Set goals. You need to know what…[Read more]

True enough, a $2M portfolio rising at an average 10% / annum can support a life on credit. After all, it isn’t too different from what I do anyway. Except the way I see it, I borrow the equity AND I work a regular job so I get $140k / year to live off and invest with. Now my annual living expense is pretty close to $20k (Yes I live cheap), so…[Read more]

A safe bet would be between 4.5% and 5.5% gross yield. It may vary slightly depending on any reno improvements you’ve made since purchasing.

In general CBD 2+ bedroom apartments (in just about every CBD) come in at around 4.5% – 5.5% gross yield. The extreme ends (>5.5% or <4.5%) tend to be studio / 1 bedder or penthouse / furnished “executive”…[Read more]

At the moment it is quite cheap to rent in the docklands, however having said that the prices there are negotiable as well.

I inspected a property there. A nice 2 bedroom place. The owners had it on the market for a while and had dropped the price from $420k to $380k and said they needed to get $380k for it at the very least. I got the…[Read more]

As a broad general statement I’ve found that units and apartments have higher rental yields than do houses.

I’ve also noted there is a bit of a cycle with these properties; they have a high yield, high enough to be positive after mortgage payments so people buy them. As they are bought up and traded again the rental yield is squeezed down.…[Read more]

I don’t quite understand… Depreciation is a matter of assets reducing in value due to fair wear and tear. To my knowledge it isn’t related to the income they may or may not produce.

For example:
Carpet laid in an investment property is depreciated over (I think) 10 years. That is to say that at the end of 10 years the carpet no longer holds…[Read more]

Yeah salesmen always say buy. Not too surprising. I’ve also never taken, nor bothered asking the advice of a salesman in regards to what they are selling. That’s just common sense.

I used to work in a patissierie and would find it funny when people would point at a cake and ask if it is nice. I always wanted to respond with “oh, no sir/madam,…[Read more]

And in 5 years time we will be past the slow down and in another speed up. Then there will be another slow down and the sky will fall, then there will be a speed up.

I can’t say I’ve lived all that long, but certainly long enough to know that what goes down must go up just as surely as what goes up must come down.

However it is important to…[Read more]

The market is never right for buying according to popular opinion. And if by chance apparent popular opinion is that it is the right time to buy, you had better not. [biggrin]

I think a better question is: if now is not the time to buy, when is?

Do your numbers and if they are solid then buy. If you come up with something better to do with…[Read more]

I would perform a cost benefit analysis.

Do this by getting a bit of paper (or better yet a spreadsheet on computer) and on one side right down all the benefits of keeping it (dollar values). eg: rental income, capital gains, tax benefit of depreciation. and on the other side of the page write down all the costs. eg: interest, rates, body…[Read more]

Hi,
I’m curretly selling a property myself. I’m using http://www.DIYSell.com.au and odly enough eBay.com.au

Within a couple of hours of listing on eBay I got 2 enquiries. I’ve now sent out a number of contracts (and section 32) to interested parties. Contracts are going to people who enquired through DIYSell and eBay. DIYSell costs $100 and eBay…[Read more]

Hi,
My friends kept telling me no with all of my choices in the share market. They are respectable, intelligent investors themselves so it was hard to ignore them. But This past 2 years (good market) I’ve made 60%/year on my cash whereas they made 15%. I did my homework, like what I saw (including the risk) and ignored the negative nellies. It…[Read more]

Hi,
There’s nothing in the seminars that you can’t learn on your own. The way I see it is that if you can’t learn it on your own you probably not the sort of person who will put the info in the seminar into practice.

Money is a representation of resource, of applicable ability to solve problems if you will. Sitting on your bum solves only the…[Read more]

Hi,
Regarding the laundry link I posted: That was just the result of a five minute search on realestate.com.au for the purpose of an example rather than a recommendation. If I was looking for only 5 minutes and found this then after 5 months I imagine there must be opportunities to be had.
As Buzwells said, I think networking leads to the best…[Read more]

Hi,
Subdivision has little or nothing to do with houses themselves. It’s the land that is subdivided and it’s the land that is owned and has a title registered with the government.

What you put on the land may influence the approval of a subdivision, but ultimately is a temporary development. If you wanted to cut a block directly in half and it…[Read more]

Hi,
What it largely comes down to is two concepts:
1. Leverage
2. Liquidity
3. Ease of entry

(ok 3 concepts and probably more, but hey!)

1. Leverage
Property being, as you say, perceived as more tangible generally inspires confidence in lenders to lend on higher LVR (up to 106% in some cases). What this means is that for $10,000 (excluding…[Read more]

Hi,
Essentially:
At some point crown land (land ownded by the government and not by a private individual) is released for sale through some governemnt apointed company or department. That appointed company cuts the land into useable chunks and probably puts in roads or plans for roads and sewer and so on (or not if its rural). The chunks are…[Read more]

Hi,
I’m not quite sure what you mean, but I think you may be confusing claiming interest on a split loan against tax with using rent to pay down a split loan.

I’ll try to clear this up (if that’s what’s happened)
1. A split loan is where you refinance your mortgage for your primary place of residence(PPOR) to purchase an investment property.
2.…[Read more]

Well the first place I search for is the council web site for the location you are researching.

Just go to google and enter xxx shire council or town council (don’t actually use xxx because then your net nanny will fire up![biggrin])

You can often get demographics about the region from there, such as age, population, gender and so on. Then if…[Read more]