We believed the Agents and now we are feeling the pinch.

How many times does that come up? It’s no wonder Agents get a bad name, their interests are never properly aligned with the interests of the owners.

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We all need somewhere to live – but do we all need a CBD apartment?

Commercial has a lot of benefits over residential. One main benefit is that the supply of buildings as the asset value goes up is much greater. How many 3 million dollar homes would you want as an investment property. But a 3 million dollar commercial property sounds like a great retirement fund.

There are higher risks with commercial, because…[Read more]

Well, the valuation is getting done today. Interestingly though, even though it is costing ME a couple of hundred dollars, the bank won’t tell me the valuation figure. It’s like paying to see a movie and then being told you have to stand in the foyer and listen to people coming out of the theatre to get an idea of what the movie was…[Read more]

Just don’t forget that Cairns is in a cyclone zone. You won’t get flood insurance if the water comes from a storm surge. Hasn’t happened in living memory but it can happen. A relative of mine had a house completely wiped from the map in Home Hill. They couldn’t even work out where it had stood before hand. No insurance possible so total…[Read more]

Just remember the property market is not the share market and doesn’t move as fast. Just because you are sitting on a loss now doesn’t mean that in twelve months time you will be sitting on a profit.

I bought a unit in 1999 which was bought by the vendor in 1995 . He paid 20% more for it than I did 4 years later (ie, I paid 20% less!). Factor…[Read more]

My Dad had a block of self storage units about 10 years ago before they were in vogue. He got a 20%+ yield out of them but the local area is saturated now, and with big money companies moving in the competition is pretty fierce.

I looked at a couple a while back but didn’t go for it. The yield wasn’t high enough, and you couldn’t do anything…[Read more]

Fern

As they say in the share market, bottom pickers get their fingers dirty.

If you want to sell, do your sums on realistic outcomes and not hopes and dreams. If the property is costing you money each month (mortgage payments, rates, body corps?, insurance) realistically how much more are you going to get in 12 months time? If you get $10,000…[Read more]

Well, I’ll go first. When I think about selling, my first thought is….don’t. A dear old friend of mine, weeks before passing away told me that one of his biggest regrets was selling his riverside apartment in Brisbane instead of keeping it. He sold it in the early ’80s before riverside apartments were even ‘the thing’. He could have kept it…[Read more]

I have an older book by Austin Donnelly called ‘Realistic Real Estate Investing’. It was written in the mid-to-late ’90s I believe.

In it he gives one piece of strong advice :

“Never invest in an unlisted property trust”.

Now I think blanket statements like that are always bad as they fail to take into account individual circumstances, such as…[Read more]

Robo

You’re probably right about having to pay commission if you show the property while listed with a particular agent. It would depend on the agreement you had with that agent.

As for listing the house price too low – I fell for that one on my first sale. Initially I was happy to have it sold so quickly. I realised later that if people…[Read more]

Steve

All I can say is that you were a glutton for punishment. After owning a similar Queenslander as my first property, with great dreams of ‘reno and profit’, I feel safe to say that older timber houses look lovely, but their owners bank balances do not.

A good job though – it looks very saleable.

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We all need…[Read more]

“during the week the owner of my PM Agency rang me and said his inlaws are wanting to have a look and are keen, they really like the area and missed out on one over the road and have now sold, but he won’t look at it untill other agents agreement runs out on monday”

> If it were me, I would get the PM to take a look while they are in town. Why…[Read more]

My Father bought 2 properties in a serviced apartment complex in Brisbane. At first these worked quite well and rented solidly, achieving their projections. But… then the developer sold off the managment rights to a private individual. (look in the weekend papers – there are always management rights for sale). This guy couldn’t manage his…[Read more]

Personally I feel sorry for the sad individual that wrote the piece – how he sees everyone else in the world as ‘greedy’, ‘out for profit’ and nasty landlords ‘holding places empty to drive up rents’. It is indicative of a poor education and no grasp of the world they live in. If they just applied their ‘fixing skills’ to a cheap reno they’d…[Read more]

Just to add my 2 cents…

The ‘GC Corridor’ was where most of the ‘2-tier’ marketing to interstate buyers was done. 10 years ago people bought vast lots of new housing after being flown up from Melbourne and Sydney for ‘free weekends’. High pressure sales and nasty tactics resulted in a lot of people owning RE that has only recently reached its…[Read more]

– Regarding the loan affordability question –

I remember going to a seminar that Steve McKnight put on in Brisbane when he was just getting started (predated this forum even). His whole focus back then was getting people to think past negative gearing and onto positive gearing, and the fact that he was buying property all over the place, whereas…[Read more]

I got married a couple of years ago. At the time I had a few assets and my wife didn’t have any. I spoke to a few friends (some divorced) and they all advocated speaking to a lawyer. First I spoke to my wife (fiance then) and we talked about it. She was happy enough to discuss an agreement and spoke to her sister about her side of it (her…[Read more]

Simple really. Ask the RE agent for a complete copy of the rates notice so you can check the council charges. Ask them for something else as well, such as body corporate meeting minutes or something. Do it while you are in the RE agents office so they don’t have time to doctor the copies.

The rates notice should have the owners name and…[Read more]

GR

Do you mean a rental yield?

The best I have found recently is a 2×2 duplex which yields a ‘fantastic’ (as per ad) yield of 5%. The price was 279,000. As of this morning it was shown as under contract.

Personally, most houses I look at seem to be yielding about 3 %. I’m not sure what long term yields are (don’t know where to find the…[Read more]