Not sure Perth has a heap of great capital growth prospects at present… Smaller units close to the city might also be for airbnb rentals??

Gazza

I have already built a house in the past, so don't qualify for FHOG and the last time i tried to build a house in 2010 my wage was low enough that with some tweaking i could qualifiy for a Government assistance scheme in WA that would have allowed me to build and only pay $50 a week while i was still renting waiting for my house to be built, but my wage is too high now…  Although i think some of the house and land packagers these days have arrangements with banks to offer deals such as this…

The fact is I have enough of a wage to already be paying $400 a week rent, save up money ($500-700 a fortnight or so) and have almost paid of my car in 2 years and take holidays etc, so its not a case exactly that its an impossible dream, its just that this announcement that they want to lock in a 12 month lease has sort of moved plans forward a bit or else I would have been on track to have the extra money saved up in 5-6 months…

And yes I would strongly be considering renting out a room to a tenant, not because i need the money, just that it would put me in that much of a stronger position money wise…

So it was just a way to arrange it to meet the loan approval requirements ahead of schedule…

The other problem is that 6-12 months ago i would definitely have been approaching sellers and wanting 5-10% discount on the property, but the Perth real estate market, at the low end anyway, seems to have bounced back so much that you often see a house for sale sign go up and only a couple of weeks later or less it has an under offer or sold sign on it, so not sure sellers in Perth are struggling to find people to buy their place, unless its a bit of a "renovator's delight"/dung heap…    

Ok, me again…     My lease at my rental is just about up and they want me to sign up for another 12 months and i don't want to rent that long, plus they are putting the rent up…

Which means if i say no i have like 60 days or so to move out…  Not sure if i might be able to talk to the owners and maybe negotiate another month or so???

So went into ANZ on Friday to see about getting a home loan and they said that i almost have enough of a deposit for a $350,000 loan (on thursday will have about $19,000) but the lady said i would need another $12-15k for stamp duty and fees etc, so I was planning today to go to Westpac and see about getting a $15,000 or so personal loan, which hopefully by the end of the week (if its approved) should give me the funds to meet ANZ's lending criteria (I think that should even give me close to the amount of funds required to go up to $370-380,000 loan…)

The plan would then be to go looking for a place to buy and hopefully i can get settlement and all within that two month period and be in it by mid December…  This is probably being optimistic??  I know it sucks to put myself under such time pressure to make such a big monetary/lifestyle decisions, but as i said don't want to be renting for another 12 months and can't be stuffed moving to another rental for 6 months with all the costs and hassles involved and they would probably want to force a 12 month lease on me in the tight WA rental market anyway…

So, ANZ, i think the lady said i could go for a variable or fixed loan (with maybe a variable component so that i could make extra repayments over and above the fixed repayments)…  For 3 years fixed it was about 5.69%, but because i'm a customer they could bring that down to 5.5% or so…  On their website i note that a 5 year fixed loan is only 5.99% (hopefully able to be discounted down to 5.7% or so)…  They have a bunch of comparison rates which i don't really understand but 5.5% or 5.7% seems pretty competitive to me as not sure the variable rates will get down that low although their ANZ Simplicity plus package seems to have a variable rate of 6.10% and i think i am eligible for a 0.7 or 0.8% discount so i guess that could be a lower option???

http://www.anz.com.au/personal/home-loans/compare-home-loan/

I do like the security of having a fixed loan so i know what i will be up for, but also being able to make extra repayments as my original goal was to either have loan with a redraw or offset account so i could put my full pay in there and live off my credit card for the month and pay the loan down that much more quickly…  So would like to see about being able to get an account with such a redraw or offset account…

Finally i was thinking about seeing if the bank would allow me if i could get it as an interest only loan which would make my fortnightly repayments i am actually obligated to even lower to give me that extra bit of security as a single person taking out a hefty loan, while all the time having the goal of sticking as much of my pay as possible into the loan and getting ahead of the curve from the start…  And would this also be a decent way of arranging the loan in case in the future i want to rent it out???

Any thought would be appreciated from the guys that know all about the loans/finance angle or if you know of any other better deal out there…    I might also contact one or two finance brokers to see if they can come and talk me through it…

Ahhh ok, back in 2010 i think it was i had signed up with Homestart here in WA to build a place down in Bertram, I think the package was about $337,000 or so and I only needed to have saved up about $21,000 i think…  I got to that and had the whole deal pretty much signed and sealed, all I needed to do was provide 1 letter showing one of my credit cards had been closed to bring me down to the allowable amount of credit to have open and still satisfy the loan requirement from whichever bank or finance option they used…  But at that time property prices were falling and interest rates went up about 5-6 times in the year, so I bailed out of the deal as it didn't seem right at the time…

Not sure if building through one of those house and land package deals made the stamp duty less or whether my wage then was also less and whether that qualified me for any government programs or whether they could wrap some extra costs into the loan…  My salary was still in the $80k range but whether now I'm higher still whether i might not qualify for some govt assistance on stamp duty or somethign that i did back then…   $29,000 will take a little bit of time with $400 a week rent.. 

But if anyone would like to have a chat with me, or could recommend a broker I'm all ears… 

Thanks Spiro, yeah there definitely is that factor of a broker being able to give me info on the whole range of what is available out there…  Is the industry pretty good these days in terms of them not directing you to loan products that THEY benefit out of so you will get the unvarnished truth?  

May it also be the case that they have lenders they prefer to deal with or do a lot of business with and so if you agree to go that route you might get access to loan terms that me rocking up to a bank might not be able to convince the bank to let me have???  I'm not talking crazy stuff that would be detrimental to me or the bank, but just if there was one bit i didn't quite have for a loan can the broker have a good relationship with one of their bank/lending companies to get it over the line or is it all sort of very hands off???

I guess having started this process and then stopped a few times I just want to get something started soon as homes seem to be moving here in Perth now, not long on the market before an Under Offer sticker is up so need to get my ducks lined up and work out my strategy to buy or build…

Mark

vj, we will find out, but my thinking would be that i have a pretty decent credit history (have paid off several loans) and seeing that i would be swapping one debt for an equal amount and so my credit/debt situation would not be changing (i could then close or majorly reduce the credit limit on my first card)…   i guess its just up to them to assess how much of a risk i am seeing i have enough cash to pay it off in the bank, no debt, low rent and reasonably high 5 figure salary…   and for them the plus side that i won't be able to pay it off in the 12 months of 2.9% interest or whatever and that they can then role me over into a 14-18% credit card rate on what is left of the debt…    seems not a lot of risk to them….   but again we shall see…

g0b, I think the worst idea would be to flush the money down the toilet, so buying a car rates somewhere above that…   :o)

For various reasons i am wanting to buy a property in WA which will most likely be my PPOR for at least a time until i move out and convert to an IP or buy another IP once equity has been built or another deposit saved, so not able to look for the best performing markets around all of Australia to purchase in, want to be closeto work etc…   the figures for october say that house prices in perth dropped 1.8% and units 3% and have been on the slide for the last couple of quaters, this is before the double wammy of interest rate rises in November which i can't think is going to  increase the punters confidence, this bodes well potentially for people that want to buy into the market but i think it has a bit further to go until at least Feb when the market might pick up if its not hit with another rate rise, so at present for the next several months at least i don't want to jump into the market….

I am at a point where parts of my present '98 model car (that i have had for 10 years and got my moneys worth out of ) are not working that well and are starting to cost me money, plus life has to have a few other enjoyments than just living in bricks and mortar…   when i add all that up, i think buying a nice second hand car, for the best deal i can, armed with a strategy to get credit that will cost me almost nothing (taking into account cash not directly paid on it for how ever long i choose to not pay off the debt will be sitting in a higher interest bearing account than the low interest rate on the credit car so it will probably actually earn some small amount of interest even after tax in net terms) seems to add up…    the type of car is my choice which is part rational calcualtion with a bit of emotional satisfaction thrown in… 

the deposit will be there ready to jump in whether i see a place that suits me in 1 month or 6 months and then the debt (which will be being paid down already) can quickly be paid down as required…   its not a car OR property strategy, its a strategy to get both at the right time…    so plenty of worse ideas out there i think…   :o)

Hi Dave…   Yeah i know the depreciating asset thing, but the only thing worse than the depreciating bit is paying high interest on something devaluing…   if i can at least save half the equation…  :o)   and thanks for that advice, this is getting better with all the tidbits i am picking up…  i am a pretty crappy negotiator so i am going to look at three potential cars hopefully at different car yards and hopefully let them play off against each other in terms of the best package…   give them one day or so to come up with the best deal they can do and send offers to me, i will then come look at the best and hopefully arrange an inspection next day….    i think i will just miss the end of month thing as it will probably be later this week or next week i do the deal, so will be a new sales month for them…

have contacted the perth RAC and gotten the average price for a 3-4 year old car with between 45k-65k km on the clock, so that gives me a bit more ammunition in terms of what they say (think its the red book) the price i should be looking at…    i was originally thinking cheaper with mitsubishi 380, but then it climbed to 2007 VE commodore and the longer i have thought about it its now gone up to a 2007 VE SV6…   :o)   i kept my old car for like 9-10 years so i guess i got pretty good value out of it….   and buying second hand should hopefully reduce the drive the new car out of the lot and lose $3-4000 straight away thing…..    plus at like $35k and up i couldn't afford a new SV6 anyway….     i don't really do much driving for work as usually take department cars out to events and all….   thought about maybe salary packaging but think this low interest rate arrangement on cards will probably end up with me forking over the least amount i'm thinking???

Dan42, paying it off inside 12 months would be pretty tough, not impossible, but tough….  if for any reason i couldn't balance transfer to another low rate cc for another 12 months when the deal came towards its end i would probably try and take a personal loan out for the rest of the time…  even then, the interest saved paying 1 year of the money off at 2.9% rather than 11.99% would mean i would probably come out ahead???

but the plan would be to find something cheaper amid the myriad of card deals out there…  i am just wanting confirmation that these balance transfers don't have some big fee or charge that they don't advertise, is it just a nice smooth transfer over and you pay out the old card and start fresh with the new card after paying an opening fee….