My first lease I deliberately got a car with good resale value so I could pay it out, on-sell it for profit and get a new lease. Worked out I'd make around $5k profit. However by the time I renewed registration, needed new tires for roadworthy, and some competition on carsales.com meant I dropped my price by a couple $k I think I made about $1.5k profit. Better than nothing, but not what I was hoping for. I suspect this one we'll just give back at the end.

"need to get for it at trade in to finalise payment."

No, you just hand the keys back and walk away. Then the lease company will on-sell it. Check out any lease companies website and they'll have links to ex-lease cars for sale/auction.

Its not really that complicated. Most people will go with a Novated lease, which includes maintenance costs as well as the lease costs. The payments are deducted from your salary pre-tax, so you save money. On the other hand, its a loan, you're paying interest. That costs money.

So say your lease costs you $10k per annum. At 30% tax rate, thats only $7k out of your take home pay, but if say $4k of that was your lease payments, then you have to compare that to cost of just owning your own car and paying your own maintenance.

If you were on 40% tax rate, it would only cost you $6k in take home pay, which could make the difference between it being good or bad.

Leases will normally be between 1-5 years. I have a mate who leases a new car every year, haven't asked him why but I presume its because he wants a new car every year. I do a 3 year lease…I think I did some sums and comparisons when I did it the first time, but now I just do the same period each time.

Ignore growth, its about cashflow.

Cashflow is negative.

Ummm…

He clearly said he only had 300k to spend. Its not a matter of what he thinks its worth, its what he can afford to offer.

Yeah, I believe you can.

Even if things seem straightforward, everyone's situations are different. You're unlikely to lay your life out here for the world to see, but with an accountant you can let them know the exacts of the situation and plans for the future and you never know what they might come up with. Its the things you don't realise are important that they should help identify.

I'd really think about seeing an accountant also…

My general feeling is there's no rush. Whatever's going to happen in the market, I find any kind of significant rise in the next two years to be very unlikely. That said, there's no reason not to buy the right property at the right price for the right reasons now. My main "advice" would be to not get too leveraged right now. I would have trouble sleeping right now if I wasn't comfortable with my levels of reserve in serviceability.

A lot of property spruikers make the claim (as fact usually) that now is the greatest time in ages to buy property. Whilst I don't really agree, what I really don't like is the implicit assumption with such a claim that its only a small window of opportunity and people need to act right now.

Point to note on the last few responses, its very hard to get any information from unbiased parties. Not surprising I guess, as if someone didn't have a vested interest in property then their opinions probably aren't worth much anyway. However I get a little tired of being bombarded with emails from from people/companies who clearly have a vested interest in promoting a positive outlook for property.  I don't know about you guys, but I'm yet to get an invitation to an event where I'll have the opportunity to spend 4 figures on finding out why now (now being any time I've gotten an email) is a bad time to buy property? Or "market research" from a property valuation service claiming that property prices are likely to drop, so I'd be wasting money buying their valuation reports just now?

At the end of the day, noone is going to tell you the right answer, and if they do its more likely to be just luck. You need to monitor the market, be aware of the larger global market forces and make some educated guesses.

For instance, that article linked above talks about how the emerging nations are driving global GDP and somehow (I didn't read the details just browsed) this is good for Australian property (presumably because we sell them commodities). However, I can't help but ask myself how much of the GDP of those emerging nations is driven by consumerism of the first world countries? If theres economic collapse in the first world countries, just how much demand for commodities will still exist in the emerging economies? I don't know the answer, but I know its not all as black and white as a lot of commentators would have us believe.

Are you sure they're decreasing public housing in that suburb, and not just focusing elsewhere for new public housing?