Forum Replies Created
The whole north cost is looking great. The poorer sections of Launcestion have got to go soon when the housing commission gets out. Launceston has a developing cafe latte/bakery set at the mall. Devonport has yiedls a bit low or our liking. Nice town and it has the boat to melbourne. Burnie is just about to boom with the new residential development on the edge of the CBD and opposite the beach and next to the cinema. I reckon Penguin is ripe for a major development oppostie the beach. (Just need a spare $50M) Wynyard is a homely town with a few reasonable deals. Just ready to awaken with a cafe latte set. (nice river, with trails, and beach setting) Ulverstone is breaking forward with two bakeries and a nice river setting, ripe for redevelopment on the western side. Many north cost propeties have views that Melbournians would die for. There are also properties within spittin’ distance of sea water going down for less than 200K – unbelievable compared to the prices between Coolangatta and Sydney. Rates are a bit higher than I would expect but the yields are there for the picking. Hobart seems overpriced and not getting the yields expected of its distanced location. Good luck
We just enjoy people spending big on plasma TV, home entertainment, going out on dinners, spending money on new cars and mag wheels. Fantastic stuff. Most of them will need to rent our properties a lot longer than they intend. The ‘now generation’ is great for us who have considered tommorrow and don’t want to be working then. Just managing out little IP portfolios, doing a little bit of maintenance here and there, tax deduction for the inspection and works thereon. Keep ’em speding I says.
Step one – What is your goal? Finish work in 15 years? Have 20 IPs? You gotta have a goal, a vision, you gotta believe in it, then live, breathe, talk about on this forum, talk to others. You can move you vision accoding to future opportunities but you do need it to justify your energies and efforts. BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND. (S.Covey)
Step One – yep at the same time of course – Practise. Get the local paper and read every propeerty advert. What is the yield, if they give the price and rental potential, how can you calculate it quickly. (quick tip – $250K which rents for $250/wk is about 5%. Simple just take the three zeros off the purchase price and see if the weekly rent is lower/higher/same for a quick 5% baseline)
Cross out each property if it does not meet your criteria. Ahhh, that means you have to develop your purchasing criteria. Well, let’s say you start off simple to get the idea and confidence of striking out properties. First, nothing over say $250K (depending on where you are! But think about how much you are prepared to spend.) That should wipe out a good 25% of properties straight away. Now look at each photo – garden, if it’s too much garden then it’s too much for you tenants, wipe out another 10% of properties, leave them for the garden fanatics. Now, is the unit one of 6 or more in a “barrack” style development in an area of lots of same unit development from the 1960’s -1970’s? strike them off becasue there is probably an oversupply of them and they attract not the best tenants for a newcomer in IPs. Just for practise, knock off the weatherboard (wood eventually rots) and fibro (asbestos possibility). Should have wiped out another 20%. Now has the house got a garage, double preferably because people like to store their life’s treasures but not necessarily in the house. Good secure storage for bikes, tools, sporting equipment etc. That should take a good % off the number of properties left. Now it really gets down to price/value/yield and location. Just for practise, ring the agent and ask just two things – what is the address and what would it rent for. Nothing else, just stick to those two no matter what the agent says. Many agents would not have a clue what it would rent for or they use the “need to get a rent appraisal done” to illicit your contact details. When you ring, you will get the receptionist who may be able to transfer you to the responsible sales person for that property. Usually you will have to give your name and phone number for the sales rep to contact you. Just keep asking the receptionist of the address, that’s all. It’s all good practise prior to the real deals.
Good luck and good hunting. Always carry a pen and note paper whereever you go.Check the date of the expiry on the development consent. In NSW they are usually two years. Get a copy of the development consent and ring the local town planner for a meeting. You need to quickly establish how much time you have before building. You can usually extend the consent by 12 months but 12 months only and only once. No ifs or buts – them’s state laws. It should not cost anything to extend the consent date. Can you organise builders and finance before the expiry date.? You don’t have to finish the development prior to consent expiry, just substantially commence the building project which means more than just scraping a bit of dirt around. I would want to see foundations filled and some form of construction work happening to demonstrate a substantial commencement.
It all depends on what you wnat out of it.
What is the purpose – Future Planning or Financial Tracking.We designed ours in excel from the tax time requirements. We also use it to check off rental payments and PM payments against the bank statements. The spreasheet is also useful for presenting to our loan broker when we want another IP loan. So you need to the broker’s requirements on the spreadsheet as well.
Q1. So what are the end figures needed for the tax return. This wiill help in the design.
Q2. What is the input information and how will it be manipulated to get the answers to Q1.
You may need more than one spreasheet to make it all work depending on how many IPs.You gotta have a goal. We have just moved our goal from retiring in five years down to three. Why? Because we are not keen on working increasingly stressful jobs. We are visioning WOT time. That’s Work Option Time when we can choose when and who to work for instead of breaking my back picking chestnuts and apples.
So how are we going to do it? By exposing ourselves more to the market by purchasing more IPs of varying types in various locations.
But there is no free lunch. Everyday we get calls from property managers about repairs, tenants etc. And then there are the bills and PM reports and loan rpeorts. Financial scheduling of rates, strata payments and then filing into individual IP files for the year’s tax, loan statements, strata business, tidying up the purchase details, ensuring insurance is up to date.
Hopefully when we retire that there will be cheaper mobile phone/GPS,email,internet,PDA, satellite/world roaming gadget thingy available!
YOU CAN DO IT!Why not call soe of the local real estate agents who are managing properties in Grafton? I note 6 on realestate.com.au and 21 on domain.com.au That is not many in a town of 18,500.
Make sure you know what Council yu are in. There is the Launceston and then there is the West Tamar council.
Next check for any covenants, easements or ‘restriction on user’ on the title.
Next, make an appointment to meet the local development control planner to seek helpful advice on your proposal. Do this BEFORE spending any money on plans. Just pace out the property and structures and roughly mark out on a piece of grid paper. The planner will be able to provide advice on any other contraints of the site before your planned development takes hold in your mind. Be flexible and open to suggestions by planning and engineering staff. They are not blockers, just trying to steer you in the best direction. (although it may not seem like it sometimes!)I would suggest sending a letter address to the CEO or General Manager of the Shire requesting your required information in a polite manner. Sometimes there may be other reasons for unhelpful Council planning staff such as workload. It is easier for planning staff to prioritise workloads if requests are written rather than just coming to the front office counter of the shire or ringing them without notice.
Our local Council fee would be about $250 for the application and $50 for advertiing the proposal in the local paper.
Another tact is to gothrough the local surveying company who does local subdivisions. You will have to eventually get such a company to draw the plans up anyway. They have all the experience with dealing with municipal planners and know what is required and how to get results far more efficiently.Make an appointment to meet with the local town planner. Do not expect to just walk into the Council offices and get all the info you need.
When making the appointment, advise the address and what sort of subdivision is being considered, say two lots or three etc. Also what is on the existing property ie single house, garage,carport. Go and take some rough measurements of the property, pacing out fully stretched will be about one metre (depending on height). An approximate size in square metres or hectares (depending on size) is very valuable.The town planner will be able to prepare for the meeting and they should:
a) provide you with advice on whether you can subdivide in regards to the zone.
b) provide an aerial photo copy of the property with the property boundarys at scale
c) advise on potential constraints such as bushfire/flooding/special vegetation/driveway access/easements etc.Attend the meeting with an open mind, the planning rules are there for everyone and the planner is just attempting to interpret them in common day language to you. (ie Don’t shoot the messenger) The advice is very relevant to any formal proposal submitted because it will give an indication of the potential of approval or failure for a subdivision proposal.
If the rules seem unreasonable or unneccesary then there can be a possiblity to seek a variation, but seek the learned advice of the planner first rather than coming to your own conclusion. The planning rule were put there for a reason that is not always self-evident, even to the planner! They on interpret the rules and usually don’t make them.
If there is a way around the rules, the planner will generally know, although you need to seek a more experienced planner (ie 3+ years in development control/assessment) for this advice.Don’t be scared of the apple isle. I initially was very scepticle of investing in Tas due to the shrinking population. But the deals we got gave me another view of the opportunities.
And now the population is rising as old Taswegians held back to retire to their old haunts. That is moving the prices upward.
CF+ area we noted was Ravenswood in Launceston due to it being a housing commission estate. Just check for burnout marks and oil stains on the road to give an indication of the immediate neighbourhood! I think Ravenswood is worth an investigation and baseline to start with.
There was also a property on the water near Burnie for $250k, just a bit too much for us and certainly not CF+ but seawatered land is very tempting compared to NSW, QLD and VIC.
I reckon ring the local agents and ask them if they are property managers and what do they need. How many properties have they got under management and how many vacant. Then get them to send their lastest properties for sale listing/brochure before heading down.
