[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

July 13, 2012 - 5:40 am

it can be done but you must have alot of patients and time.
I like to lease out to only international students or international working visa.
avoid the local centrelink mobs, they are always trouble and especially those that asks too much question, thinking they know the laws and their rights… etc

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

April 5, 2011 - 2:05 am

if that is your combined salary, very possible to reach your goal… i would suggest you first invest yourself in a few property investment books and have a read and understanding of some of the strategy, find and speak to family members, friends… etc who have succeeded in property investing and get some tips.

If I was in your shoe, I would be saving and putting away 30% of my salary after tax. I would be looking at the FHO savers account… i hear some pretty possitive things about it since they tweeked it abit… and i would plan to live at home for at least anohter 5 years just to build up enough equity in my PPOR before even considering an IP (so you at least have some money stash away for a rainy day).

remember to buy and try to "never" sell… unless the government remove the stamp duty…. haha

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

April 5, 2011 - 1:51 am

You got some pretty good goals there… not impossible if you are living at home but is still very hard to attain… unless, you and your partner have super high salary… if combined salary of less than 100k a year, i would think this is hard to reach, especially by the age of 30….

you will need to do alot of your own research and find ways to get there… you might need to pay someone to teach you… people will not throw their strategy out there for you for free…

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

April 4, 2011 - 5:09 am

Why I think NG will not be abolished right away.

– House prices will drop, meaning less tax for government and councils
– Bank will not lend up money when the market is dropping, making it extra hard for finance
– Rent will rise and less property for rent
– Less disposible income for investors, means less spending and that would mean no mangers will hire staff if they can't do business = higher unemployment rate
– Builders / developers will not construct new houses, why should they? if they aren't making any money… Which will make the supply much worst off in the long run, especially with our insane population growth (whcih we must have to replace the baby boomers retiring)

 The only way the government can remove NG is to VERY SLOWLY phase it out, say over 15 – 20 years… NG is like an addiction, you can't go cold turkey after 20 years of habbit… hahaha!

Regards,
Zeable

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

February 14, 2011 - 5:28 am

After I purchased my proprety, I'd request for a residex report on the house and it wasn't accurate at all… At the time I'd purchased the house for $475k (got it dirt cheap), council valuation was $450k and bank valuation was surprisingly $520k to $580k…  and my valuation at the time was around 550k to 600k… residex price estimate was $443k

anyway, a house sold 6months later 3 house from ours for land only (the purchaser was a developer). same block size and all… for $705k

i guess residex was way off its estimate on that one.

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

January 7, 2011 - 1:41 am

bought a house in sep 09 for $475k (6 bedroom + 2 bathroom + 2 toilets) and an older house to ours just sold 2 months ago 4x house down from ours, same block size and ready for demolishing for town houses sold for $706k. contract was done up for 1 year settlement!!! no interest paid, while we watch our house grew in value!

had at least 67% increase in equity within 1 year…

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

November 23, 2010 - 11:47 pm

Hi,
Got a friend who lives in Point Cook in victoria and she said it is not a bad place to live. 15 min drives to the beach and is a nearly developing suburb. Only problem is that there isn't the infrastructure setup around those area of the western side, the roads get congested often and alot of FHOG buyers in the area. Prices might fluctuate quite abit and owners are more sensitive to interest rate rises.

hope that helps

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

November 12, 2010 - 12:23 am

Hi,
Since the age of 21, I've always wanted to own my own house because of all the talks from my family about how house prices used to be so cheap (around year 2003). Especially, how they spoke about prices almost doubling etc…

I was still studying at Tafe and in 2004 I'd finished my diploma and started working in the city for a measily 34k salary office job but I'd managed to save up approx $50k by start of 2007 (I was living at home). Bought my first home in Feb 2007 for $301k (got 6k gov grant) in Melbourne. I had help from my mum, who lent me $150k for 2 years. I got lucky because this was the start of a property boom!! 2 months later, a house one street down sold for $320k of smaller land, lesser quality, no opportunity to subdivide compare to ours. This was my first property.

I was dating my long time girlfriend and this spurred her to want to buy her own home also but her salary was only at 30k. In mid 2008 my partner bought her first property at $240k aged 21, doing 3x different part time jobs and studying at the same time. This was her first property.

In Sep 2009, we've managed to secure a property in the middle of a boom but with a bargain price of pre-boom price becoz the owners were elderly and had no insight into the market price. We were the only people to see the property and first to buy it before it was even advertised on the market. we got this house for $475k now valued at approx $700k (basing on sales around us).

Our total equity now stands at approx $460k if we were to sell all three properties. My partner's age 23 and I am now 27yo – we both look to achive financial freedom by age 40.

There was alot of luck, support and sacrifice (until this day we have not had a holiday overseas). We are now planning our first holiday to asia next year! Someone once told me that you need to risk money in order to gain money! That will stick with me for the rest of my life.

 

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

October 8, 2010 - 12:28 am

Hi,
I've read that it is a very bad investment, due to below reasons:

Firstly ask yourself, have you ever tried reversing your car into a peak hour traffic main road? If not, maybe give it a go first…
Secondly, real estate agents like to book inspection appointments for sale houses on main road during off peak hours, so make sure you drive by during peak hours to see what it is like too.

A few other points:

1. Harder to sell when you decide to sell
2. Harder to find tenents and higher turn over
3. Real estates agent don't like listing these properties for sell / rent
4. noise, privacy, kids danger zone… etc

Hope that Helps!

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

October 5, 2010 - 11:55 pm

Hey,
I had a quote for $5000 for restumping my house, then I'd asked my tradie friend who works with restumping people and said it is a waste of money, "you could do it yourself for less than $500!". So I got down and dirty, crawled under my house…

he used one of those water ruler thing to check where the house is slanting (bubble needs to be in the center of the green field)… he then told me to dig pot holes about 1 metre deep, half a metre wide with a handheld shovel under the house beams(pretty much anywhere the house is sinking). Then we went to bunnings and bought the cement stumps @ $12 each and premix cement bags $10 per bag… first we fill the pot hole with about 3 inches deep in the premix cement, pour abit of water… wait 10mins… then pop the stump in and fill up with cement and water… wait 2 days.. and use a car jack to lift the beam and run up the house and check if it is even… then head back down and fill the gab between the beam and stump with cement sheet / timber pieces… repeat on all the spots…

it was easy and fun process… no need to fork out $5000 for this easy job!

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

September 16, 2010 - 3:47 am

Thanks for the tip Terry,
I'll definitely give that one a go! haha

Regards,
Zeable

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

September 16, 2010 - 1:52 am

Hi Terry,
The bank told me that they cannot link my partner's account to mine and was told that the only way is to have me also listed into the title as well.

Even if I've agreed to sign the new loan under both our names, we will not have the additional discounts on all loans from the wealth package, unless the title had been changed with both names. There is currently a push to change this policy but it is not yet available, so i was told.

Regards,
Zeable

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

September 15, 2010 - 3:48 am

Thanks guys,
No, we are not yet married, just de facto relationship.

JacM,
Reason why we are doing this because I have 2 property listed under my name and I wanted to bring my partner's property over from wespac to commonwealth bank, so we can benefit from the wealth package. It would reduce interest rate on all three of our loans.

Thanks everyone for imput

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

July 28, 2010 - 1:50 am

you should look around at child care costs and get an idea if you intend for your wife to go back to work. Someone who worked in my place earns approx $35k and she said it almost break even with child care costs… so she lefted work to be a stay at home mum instead.

i think the best move right now is to put ur money into other investment like shares and pay of your PPOR first.

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

July 23, 2010 - 3:04 am

Hi,
If your cash flow is pretty tight, I would believe it would be risky for you to jump into the housing market. Why not invest the 30k in the sharemarket or other means?

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

July 23, 2010 - 12:25 am

Hi Smart Investor,

The main question you want to ask yourself is, what can you afford? If you are financially fit to buy a house, then I would suggest buy a house, instead of a unit due to the reasons outlined by globaltraveller.

Especially, how you made your point, that you wanted to hold it was approx 10 years. Buying a house is definitely the choice u should take in my opinion.

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

July 19, 2010 - 4:42 am

Hi Libra,

If you can self manage your own house, that would be great because you avoid all the fees but u will have to deal with all the problems. If you have bad tenents, you may need to attend court hearings… etc it all depends on how much time you have on your hands.

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

July 15, 2010 - 12:36 am

Hi Wazzie,

We purchased a house from an elderly couple last year Sep 2009 and the settlement terms was suppose to be 90 days unconditional contract. After 60 days into the contract, the vendor requested through the RE agent if they can rent out their house from us and I thought it was strange, so I got the elderly couple's number from the whitepages, we contracted them direct and from here onwards, we became very good friends. Turns out the couple need time to look for a retirement village home, so we decided to extend the settlement for 9 more months… we thought, this was great! they save money from renting and we save interest because we didin't need to take out a loan yet. Things went pretty well for the past 8 months! Sadly enough, the wife past away recently  and now settlement is next month but the husband was kind enough to offer us the keys to the house prior settlement date because he had cleared most of their stuff, which means we can start do some work on the house now, if we wanted to.

This is a very unsual case for us but maybe you should consult the vendor direct first and see if you two can negotiate something out of the book like us… Hope all works well with you.

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

July 14, 2010 - 5:17 am

If you are looking for capital gains, another idea would be, if you look for someone else to jointly purchase a IP with you. You buy a house in the outer suburb for approx $300k to $400k.  Rental yield should be higher and you can together pay it off quicker but then again risk is also abit higher, in that you'll need to find someone who is trust worthy.

[zeableMember@zeableJoin Date: 2009Post Count: 27]

July 7, 2010 - 3:24 am

Hi vinaysalia,

You can just rock up and bid but I would suggest u take a walk with the agent through the house first. Just remember to not get too emotional and have a limit on what is your maximum u are willing to pay before the auction and prepare to walk away.

David