Hey Grimnar,

Let me quickly share my viewpoints on them…

Poor capital growth; very true, even negative growth!  But that's great when someone paid $235k for that unit 5-7yrs ago and I just bought it from them for $188k!  Essentially, someone else can wear that expensive lesson and I'll happily take it off their hands.

Rented part of the year; again very true.  This complex used to only rent for 40wks of the year so think of having a constant 23% vacancy rate!  That's fine as long as you budget for it and calculate your returns on an annual basis and not some inflated weekly figure.  Also, the managers here are in the process of changing from 40wks a year to 48wks.  Not many other places have their rental returns jumped 20% although this is a once off gain.

Lastly, the banks don't like them.  I mean they really don't like them!  Be prepared to shop around to find someone willing to take them as security.

Ok, now the upside.  Stupidly high cashflow.  Low entry price-point.  Can be fantastically hands off if you have a good manager (same as anywhere).  Lots of similar properties to compare against so lots of fun running around making insanely low offers and seeing where they go.  Well that's just in my not-so-humble opinion.

Anyway, not something to dominate a property portfolio but can be a nice balance to those -ve cashflow high growth properties elsewhere.

Hope that helps,
Andy

Hi,

I'm in Rainbow Beach (on the coast from Gympie) and know only a little bit about Gympie.  TBH most of what I know has come from small sub-division developers asking me to try and sell their land.  Can't advise on which are the good parts of town unfortunately but interested to hear what others have to say.

Good luck,

Andy

When I was with the CBA (over 12mths ago now) it was procedure that you had to apply to Genworth directly, about all we could do was look up their website and give you the phone number!

Sorry I can't on whether CBA have a separate agreement with Genworth now though.  Good luck!

Ditto what Daniel said.  Education defeats fear and ignorance every time, so spend a bit of time and money reading like mad and you'll find that when everyone else is ducking for cover, there will always be a few out there smelling the roses

I'm in between the "rah rah" crowd and Banker I think. 

Being given a copy of Rich Dad, Poor Dad when I was 21 was a turning point for me and I devoured the book in a couple hours.  Between the first three books I can honestly say that there are some fantastic pearls of wisdom there that I use in every business transaction or investment.  However…

…after those first three books I found he went off the deep end and is trying to sound too much like a guru or prophet.  I got almost nothing of value from the other books and haven't even bothered with the last couple.

As others have said, fantastic start to a prosperous financial journey, but definitely not enough to get you there on their own.

Cheers,
Andy

Ditto, use the money as a nice big deposit on another place (or two or three!)

Whether you target high-growth and low-cashflow, or pos-cashflow and low-growth is another discussion entirely.  I was in the same boat as you though and thanked my lucky stars that I focused on good cashflow property from the beginning.  It just made things so much easier and less stressful when I changed jobs, etc.

Failing that, feel free to lend me the money!

Hope that helps a bit,
Andy

Hey chellie,

I'm actually a property manager at Rainbow Beach in QLD and holiday letting is about 80% of my day.

We take 12% +GST but you must also consider that after every stay the cleaners go through (avg $85 per house) and you will also be running water and power all the time so your holding costs do increase.  Having said that the properties almost always net more than in the permanent let pool and like Invest2surf said you can also take bookings yourself and some of my owners do that as well.

Hope that helps a little bit, afraid I don't have enough time to give you the full spiel! :-o

Cheers,

Andy

Common problem on the financing side and I've encountered it with CBA too. 

However the reasons Banker was giving about why not to buy them is also the reason I am jumping on as many as I can get.  ie Hard to sell on the secondary market so you can negotiate VERY hard and pick up bargains and (so far) always be positive cashflow.  I just always avoid any of the super small student units, I have no end of bad stories about them (I'm looking at you Unilodge!)

Hope that helps,

Andy