There is much debate about the future of the US$, however many commentators see huge downward corrections for it. Since WWII the US has been able to fund its gigantic deficits by selling dollars to central banks around the world. The global stage is changing now and China looks as though it really is becoming a player. It all depends how long they…[Read more]

yeh it seems a bit cheeky to pry around and ask loaded questions for your own benefit and then feel put out when the agent does her bit to look after the seller – full credit to her.

ps – as a buyer I would do the same. As someone else says, depends on which side of fence…..

offering vendor finance is a very innovative way to fulfill the finance condition! In WA would you need a credit providers licence for that though?

Don’t feel too bad Caitlyn – one of my first real estate sales went unconditional and the buyer – out of the blue and after fulfilling some pretty tricky conditions – just changed their mind. I…[Read more]

also if you manage yourself you don’t have that impartial wall between you and the tenant. With an agent you can play the whole good owner / mean agent routine. property management is a numbers game from what I can gather – you may have 100 properties on your rent roll and 4 or 5 may give you all the headaches. If you manage yourself, your rent…[Read more]

reminds me of a story from an old work mate. he had a commercial premise that they couldn’t lease. finally a dry cleaner or some sort of washing business offered him a fairly low rent with long lease so he took it out of desperation. as part of the deal he made significant modifications for this guys machines e.g. holes in walls etc. Anyway as you…[Read more]

Hi Kay,
just wondering if this is something you would seriously consider or are you just bouncing ideas around? I could not envisage buying a church on the other side of the country (you are in the east right?) that needed a reno and was in a small country town. How I would manage the reno would be my biggest concern. I would like to buy somehting…[Read more]

yeh basically what is cf+ today may not be tomorrow. the only way around it is to dump extra cash into the mortgage, which makes it like any other neg. geared property, just with a little less pain and arguably less capital growth as the trade off. There’s no way around it, if interest rates went crazy there are not many properties around that…[Read more]

read somewhere (was it on here somewhere?) that the tax office has had a big crackdown on holiday homes. If its not available for the 12 peak weeks of summer you need to apportion your annual expenses back. so unless you want a holiday home purely for investment or off season holidays think twice. If anything makes the inhumane standards of the 11…[Read more]

if this occurrs, there should be a reduced supply of rentals leading to rent increases. residential property will come to be valued in terms of yield just like a commercial property. interesting. probably how it should be anyway.

those doomsday prophets have been around for years. a bit like the theory a few years back that commodity based…[Read more]

good one bear… just make sure it aint the worst house in the worst street at the worst price!!

also make sure your strata body is not underinsured. often people don’t realise how much building costs have increased. also add $40-50k for a ite clean up in the event of a disaster.

Extensive list of new Perth property available for sale.

Alternatively, become a joint venture partner in one of our property development partnerships – contact…[Read more]

a mate of mine just put rent up $5 a week and the tenant left – pfffff! is a bold investor that puts rents up now. CPI has such a mish mangle of components and has no connection to rents anyway (even though I woudl imagine rent is a component of the CPI calculation). comparative rentals can be the only way to justify it

there is a car wash out Belmont (WA) direction where the equipment is always breaking down, so the owners are out there manually soaping the cars up before they drive through. doesnt sound very ‘passive’ to me! for $700k I hope they give a decent warranty…

Extensive list of new Perth property available for sale.

Alternatively, become a joint…[Read more]

Terry can you please clarify that a bit more? My understanding is you either go hi-doc with verified income, or lo-doc in which case you will need 2 years of unverified income i.e. I was told you can’t just go and make up your income on a lo-doc, you have to have a believable source of income. And of course despite what the bank does or doesn’t…[Read more]

I haven’t read Steve’s book, but now that I know he is an accountant that bailed from accounting (like myself) I think I’ll have a read! In Kiyosaki, if I recall correctly he did specifically say don’t throw your job in tomorrow to do this – he said try do a small enterprise on the side to ease into it i.e. a little mail order enterprise etc.…[Read more]

ok here’s my 2 cents. I bought my first IP in 1991 so I guess I have 13 years up now. I missed all the excitement of the late 80’s though. I wish I still owned every property I have ever owned. I also looked at buying some places in regional areas (which I never bought), some of which I regret not buying and vice versa. So in summary if I had…[Read more]

speaking of 20% equity, here is another link to check out:

http://www.brw.com.au/stories/20040115/21279.aspx

well they don’t really highlight anything, just sensationalise. one night its the reno kings throwing around a tin of paint and putting wood contact on the floor to collect $100k for a weeks work, the next night its the impendng property disaster. its just rubbish and should be treated as light hearted entertainment. what will it be tonight, a 13…[Read more]

I would suggets you have a read through http://www.ato.gov.au – they have excellent and very detailed examples of exactly this type of situation. also I understand that the 12 month rule went out the window a few years back (but persists as an urban myth!)

Yep – we had a heated debate on this a while back. The postings are probably in the archive section somewhere (actually I think it was in “opinions”). The summary of it was: they charge huge real estate agents fees to developers because they shift stock fast – especially stock that is questionable. The boom has masked a lot of this as the revalues…[Read more]