I went to one about 18 months ago before I began investing, it basically went through the book (which I bought later), and after reading it I realised that it was pretty much word for word, including the jokes.

He is an interesting speaker and the $60 I spent was not wasted.

If you do go, and if it has the same format as the last one, then at the start he will pull out a wad of $100 bills and ask something like “who would pay $50 to get $100” – at this point take $50 up to him and he will give you $100. Pays for the seminar. The other option, give him $10 with an IOU for $40 []

I did not go on and do his mentoring program or longer seminars.

We had a chemical treatment done in the last couple of months on our PPOR, cost us $4000 with an annual visit ($300) to come and re-do the chemicals. We did not have termites, however next door did as did the house 4 doors down – their treatments were $7000+ each.

The chemicals that they use under the slab these days lasts an initial 5 years, and then you basically have to have something else put in place to protect against them. In older houses the chemicals allowed to be used at the time had life-spans of 20 to 100 years. Due to concerns of leaching (which I am told, they did not do), we have to move to inferior chemicals and have them re-applied all the time.

Good for the pest companies, not so good for the home owner.

We have 2 houses that will probably need treatments (just for protection) in the next 12-18 months. The treatment will be tax deductable, but still will come out at $1500+ each after tax. No choice really, just a cost have having to hold an investment property in Brisbane where termites are everywhere.

Is one of them at Hendra?

You would want to avoid any of the houses that are close to the main road that goes from Sandgate Road out to the Airport, probably would get a bit of traffic noise. Ones on the other side of the complex should have the noise muffled.

It is not such a bad location, close to Toombul Shopping Centre and a reasonable run into the city. Probably a bit far to walk to the train station though.

There was a recent complex completed at Bridgeman Downs / Aspley on Albany Creek Road, again a main road, but close to the Hypermarket.

The only other Northside one I can think of is over at Carseldine (I think). Have not seen this one.

About $1.8M, but includes $250K for PPOR though.

Hi There!

We have 1 PPOR, 3 IPs and 1 vacant block of land to build IP#4 on.

We started 16 months ago with our first property, signing the contract within 2 hours of seeing the property – mind you we had been looking for a few months so were on top of things when we saw the opportunity. It is a 4 B/R house in Windsor, about 5 Kms to Brisbane CBD. We were lucky to get it, as the agent had 9 other callers while we were signing the contract. It is a double block with a post-war house on it, so we can build units on it later. This one costs us about $10/week, but has been going up in value by at least $1500/week. We were able to borrow 110% to cover all of the costs as we owned our PPOR outright and had a few hundred thousand in the bank. It was tenanted from the day after settlement and has had 100% occupancy. From here we then moved into a new PPOR and bought number 2 at the same time. It was a bit of a hassle as we no longer had a house for security to get #2, so had to lock in a term deposit for the bank and settle #2 a few days after the new PPOR. It was quite messy, but we got there. The new PPOR left us with around $500K of equity, so was relatively easy to keep buying.

We got #2 in Bridgeman Downs. It was a 3 bedroom house, but we were easily able to turn it into a 4 bedroom house and added airconditioning. We had a tenant lined up to move in 2 days after settlement. This is neutral.

Number 3 took a while longer as we were settling into the new PPOR and doing a few things to it. We just bought this one on the 17th of June in McDowall and pre-paid the interest. The owners rented back for a few weeks and then vacated it, which allowed us to re-carpet, re-paint, add in ducted airconditioning and some minor plumbing work. It gets tenanted next Friday, and will also be neutral.

While all of this was happening, the block of land next to our PPOR came up for sale. This was more of an emotional purchase, as it means we can build a house on it that does not effect our views. In the mean time we can tax-deduct the interest while we work out the plans for the house. This all happened on the 30th of June, and again we pre-paid the interest. Unfortunately, no income on this one until we get a house on it, which might take us another 12+ months.

We have learnt a lot in doing this, and I think we will always have so much more to learn. We have built up a list of trades people who are really good and easy to work with. For example, our electrician, I needed to get some lights replaced in #3 so gave him a call. He met me at the house at 9pm one evening to do the work, did not have everything and came back the next morning at 7am. I had forgotten to bring my extension cord over, so he loaned me his for the night. Bloody Brilliant! If you need an electrician in Brisbane, I can certainly recommend him, friendly, courteous, does good work and is reasonably priced.

Good luck!

Sorry, typo …

Total expenses: $D + $E = $Y

Just following on from Leigh’s comment, put all the little extras that they say are included into the contract, otherwise they have no legal obligation to leave them even if they verbally said so. Had this happen to us recently where it was not explicit in the contract and things they said were included were not left behind.

Hi there!

My name is Stephen, 33 and married to my lovely wife Linda. We have 3 children – Kathryn who is almost 4, Christopher who is almost 2 and Timothy who is 4 months. I am an IT professional, these days managing a Technical Support Centre that services Asia Pacific and Japan. My wife is a Research Scientist with a really flexible work environment which helps when raising the kids.

We live in Bridgeman Downs in the northern suburbs of Brisbane having recently moved from the next suburb of McDowall.

We had been researching property investment for about 2 years before we finally took the big step about 15 months ago. We now have our PPOR, 3 rental properties and a block of land on which to build number 4. Each of the properties are slightly cash flow positive after tax (except for the land of course) and are in high growth areas.

We have a 10 year plan of slowly building up our portfolio to the extent that we can give away our jobs and never look back. The biggest hurdle for us was going from no debt (had payed of our previous PPOR) to having significant debt (but good debt) and managing this carefully. It also takes us quite a while to locate suitable properties for our buy and hold strategy in the local area. We are beginning to look at the renovation side of property.

Neither of us had family that had done anything like this, so were constantly baraged with negative comments and doomsayers. Finding out that some of our friends had been doing it for years was enlightening and a wealth of additional information followed. We have also encouraged a number of our friends to do the same, which has been great.

Take care,
Stephen

Hey Tas Investor,

I also use EBM’s Rent Cover Plus, looks pretty good to me when I compared them with other insurance covers.

I too would be interested in any negatives people have had with them.

If you are -ve gearing then you can also complete a 221D form to submit to the tax office to reduce the amount of tax taken out of your pay each period. I believe you basically project what your expenses and income are likely to be and based on this you get the new tax rate. A letter is sent to your employer for them to make the adjustment in each pay. If your situation changes, you just submit a new 221D. This is probably over simplified, but you get the gist.