Heading off on my trip on Saturday and will post on impressions form out there.

Looks like all is good with the property market bottoming out as far as I can see.  Chuffed to bits about lots of my loans coming out of fixed rates and then back to reduced variable, that coupled with high rents makes the holding costs much smaller. I am sure that I am not the only one that is improving their cash flow simply by holding.

I wont have long to wait at all with Europe.  I will be in a nice boutique hotel in Old Rome right on the south bank of the Tiber and immediately across from the Castle St Angelo on the 4th December 12.  Then of to a converted convent in Venice and then a hotel right in the middle of the old city of Munich.  After that going up market a bit and staying in a hotel at Place Vendome in the 1st Arrondissement section of Paris followed by a Eurostar to London it only takes two hours from central Paris to central London on my birthday, which is fecking unbelievable in my books.  So all in all I am looking forward to seeing first hand how tough they are doing it and capitalising on my strong AUD.

The only set back is that when I was showing my mate that my hotel in Paris was only two mins walking distance to Bar Hemingway on google maps, i clicked on it, only to find that it is closed for a major reno.  I guess you have to take the good with the bad in life and I will just have to make up for that massive loss of amenity in another way.

simple wrote:

A lot of dancing there, but we are not going anywhere!

So are you saying that there wont be a property bust and that there isn't worse to come?

Surely it cant be any worse than the Cooper Basin?

They have the World Cup in the bag and the expenditure has been committed as far as we can see. We are already up in Kuwait and UAE so have some understanding of the local conditions.  We have also just yesterday signed a JV with a local company that one of the family has ownership in.  So that's a good start and hopefully we will start winning some work next year.

Aspirations for moving there were a little tongue and cheek and salivating about the money that is sloshing around.  Besides my missus would kill me if we upped sticks and relocated again.  If I was earning up there I wouldn't be able to negative gear so another reason not to go.  We should be able of get someone from the UK or Ireland to manage the operation far cheaper that an Aussie expat would cost anyway.

If you wanted to keep the full deductibility in your name which I think that you don't.  Then you could transfer the property into a trust at the bank valuation price.  Set it up so that you can get a loan out in your name to cover 105% of the value and the deductibility remains with you which may be beneficial as you are the income earner.  This will cost you stamp duty though.  

This transferring into the trust scheme is all based on doing it with finance and interest, you have said that your  wife may have no borrowings on it and the positive cashflow will be under her tax threshold, so if that is what you want to do then the trust scheme is not a goer.

If we had the meet up then it would have to be on an initial condition of anonymity.  Later in the evening we could have a competition to guess the pseudonym of each guest based on their psychological condition, with more drinks as the prize for correctly guessing a guests identity.  The main question is whether the location was in a CF+ or Negative Geared place. I am leaning towards a Negative Geared joint as they are easier to get to and wont involve a six hour drive.

So I will nominate Brisbane as the preferred location, then Melbourne(tax deductible trip down there to inspect my IP).  Sydney is no good, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart and Darwin don't count.

The other condition would be no firearms.

Nope its not boring and yep property investing can go hand and glove with a non boring lifestyle.

I wouldn't take the capital loss and take the punt that the rent and the value will increase in the next three years.

and Steve Keen has been proved wrong, yet again,

and yields and cashflow are improving and looking even more promising with more IR drops to come,

and rental vacancies haven't shot up to the moon, 

and the current Govt has one again said they wont touch negative gearing and we all know the next one wont either,

and the bust has been put off for the time being by the bears.

As the Guvnor has pointed out, this property bubble has been around for a very unbbublesque duration of time.

Things seem to be playing out quite nicely for the housing market.  All the RP Data is turning green for the first time since they published their daily index, with only Brisbane left as the recalcitrant on the daily index.  Plenty of good gossip on IRs dropping further going around the place as well, the mind boggles as to what impact that any further IR drops would have on the residential market.  Its got to be a good sign either way.  Some guy on AFR is predicting 15% growth in joints by the end of next year, who knows, but the bears must be spewing at the moment, holed up in their caves waiting for some decent price drops, somewhere, anywhere, they will take anything that they can get right now..

Also check out this graph, its quite telling.