One patriot i tend to think in terms of fundamentals people have not been happy to shell out the amounts of money for houses for a long time but rationalised that they had to for a number of reasons at least at the low end…  fear of missing out as prices continued to climb, constant bombardment by media and RE industry about lack fo homes, i…[Read more]

yeah obviously some sudden big shifts in certain areas could definitely precipitate a crash in the market ie increases in interest rates, rising unemployment, lack of availaiblity of credit…   but for me the other thing is just general confidence (or lack of it) in the the market….    i have bought shares before and learnt the hard way how…[Read more]

yeah its just at the moment there are unlikely to be many buyers in the current climate,  there are other investors with blocks in the same area and plenty of houses for sale in parts of the south west of western australia…   she can keep up the repayments, alhtough if there are 3-4 more rate rises next year it might get tough…   but whil…[Read more]

One thing i would say is that i signed up to a house and land package builder and they suggested a mortgage loan company and a settlement company that they use and there was some slight discount etc…  Then when i had some questions about whether i might need to pull out of the loan and sent them to the loan guy i got a call back from the land…[Read more]

How does this work as far as the currency risk?  Do you borrow in US$ and take the risk that twice in the last several years the A$ has dropped to around US$0.60 and so what you owe could balloon out, although there is talk of the A$ going up to US$1.10-1.20 which could reduce the loan amount accordingly or do you borrow in A$ with the upside…[Read more]

There have been a few topics on here about selling properties yoruself together with some online real estate sites that let you advertise for about $400 up front i think and then so much per month that will get your adds onto some of the bigger real estate websites that maybe only real estate agents have access to….

Yeah, my understanding with the offset account is that it works best if instead of 'paying in' extra each week you get your whole wage paid straight into it and so every dollar you have is sitting in there reducing the calculated interest you owe and then you 'pay out' your bills throughout the fortnight….   but just having your money sit…[Read more]

yes in the old days you used to be able to afford a house on one salary…  and there was usually one car, no mobiles, no pay tv, no gyms, old furniture, no air conditioning (when i was growing up we use to go and sleep outside on the lawn on hot nights and this is the 80s not the 60s), no cafe lifestyle and lots of other things i don't remember h…[Read more]

I am getting my loan through Keystart (http://www.keystart.com.au) which is a WA Govt initiative that allows people to get into homes that usually couldn't.  They expect you to move away from them to another lender after a period….   I think they had lent too much money and so had increased the criteria to qualify for a loan to reduce the amount of ap…[Read more]

I have heard a few people on this forum say they get a discount interest rate…I am hopefully about to get my loan to build my house and land package but after about 6 months plan to switch to probably ANZ as (at least at this moment) the lender offering the loan charges no penalty to switch the loan to someone else…I have banked with ANZ for…[Read more]

be careful, from experience that sudden drop to one wage plus increased costs of all the things babies require can come as a shock even if your just trying too maintain your lifestyle let alone buying an IP…   and although waiting till next year might seem frustrating, you might also want to make sure the baby will arrive healthy and mum is do…[Read more]

Hmmm, biggest mistake, we bought a block in 2001 in East Victoria Park, Perth for $110,000, put a nice 4 bed house on it for $110,000 and a year a half later in mid 2003 sold it for $385,000, which was quite a tidy profit…   last year i think it was that house was on the market for $800,000, not sure what they got for it…Had we held it and s…[Read more]

I'll have a look at your site, but just quickly are there any tax benefits in this way of investing, or is it all about profit and so you pay tax at the marginal rates on the per weekly amount they pay you, on the inital $25k and maybe just CGT on the final payout if the investment has been held over a year?

If only i had bought FMG when it debuted at 50 cents or close to it, instead i bought this other crappy one-use, retractable syringe company's shares…  :o(

I am about to hopefully get finance for a house and land package.  Building should take about 6-7 months (Jan-Feb 2011).  The good thing is i don't need to start making repayments until i get the key so that's 6-7 months i can save up more money (to add the inevitables like do up backyard and some air con etc) but also to build up savings for a bu…[Read more]

I know it probably differs in each State, I'm from WA, but if you try and sell your property yourself rather than going through a real estate agent, how significant are the sales costs?

I was renting a place in Perth and paid an initial bond and then some time into my occupancy the rent went up quite a bit and they asked for an increase in bond…   I didn't check to see if they could or not, just paid it, but i assume they were acting legit, so it may not be the same everywhere in Australia?

Thanks Heather, yeah there were a few questions i was asking there and i know no one has a crystal ball to answer all of them…   For people with different strategies no time might be the right time to buy a house and land package as they use renovate and sell strategies or commercial leasing strategies etc…   and if i go for a short term str…[Read more]

Dunno, but maybe rather than the bank adjusting your repyaments as your remaining principal of the loan gets reduced, they just keep your repayments the same and it is the term of the loan that gets reduced.  Like people say put in a little extra each month and you reduce the loan by so many years (pay it off ahead of time), rather than the bank…[Read more]

I just recently was given an older book called Borrowing to Invest – the Fast Way to wealth – a Guide for Borrowers by Noel Whittaker and Paul Resnick.  It was written in 2002 i think so a few things might have changed (when they wrote it stocks were still going up strongly but probably better to buy shares now than 18 months ago) but they went…[Read more]