I worked in property management for 2 years.  Its not a matter of which agency. Its a matter of which person, are they thourough, do they know theyre market, do they accurately check rental references, if so how.  Id be interviewing your few shortlisted agents with some very open ended questions to test thier knowlege. Then after they give you a…[Read more]

I hope its not correct but so many experts are prediciting the same thing that it is  concern. I hope for everyones sake that they are wrong. Unfortunately there are a LOT of hurdles to overcome prior to any sort of recovery. US debt stands at $56,000 per man woman and child, we have a 20 year bubble of easy credit and leverage to unwind and…[Read more]

Student accom – limited capital growth as rental returns are limited to student income.Holiday accom – very dependent on a strong economy – hmmm ????  not a good idea at present.A weak economy will increase vacancies, lower room rates per night and squeeze profit margins of hotel / holiday acomm providers.  A broke hotel or operator is a n…[Read more]

Go onto realestate.com.auSearch for inner city brisbane properies and click on one to each agent in the area. Send them an enqury.You will soon see how the gurus do thier business. You will have ebooks, maket updates, newsletters, mail email and much more coming out your ears within a week. Personally you need a website. Create you own or pay…[Read more]

I dont like it when people try and second guess the market. But having been in NZ 4 times in the past 3 years its market is so over priced it is not funny and its economy is presently tanking. NZ wages are significantly lower then Oz and the domestic RE purchasers are almost priced out of the market from the overseas investors over the last few…[Read more]

I cant believe this is even being debated its an absolute no brainer.  Dont do it. Even if it was legal its completely unethical. Go and make money legitimately without looking for grey lines to dance over.

Search some of the inner city brisbane agents and send them an email. Try Ray White CBD and Tricity at Spring Hill. Within a few weeks of sending them an email as a potential buyer you will have thier marketing products rolling into your inbox. They all  utilise Realestate.com which makes a painful task easy. But more importantly they capture all…[Read more]

At those rates lock in big time. But yeh its still very much wishful thinking. Some are offering 5.99 for 3 yrs but longer terms are still fairly high.  I will be locking in inv prop at as soon as i can get a longer term for anything under 5.5% . But make sure the loan is portable even if locked, as several people i know did this in 2001 in the l…[Read more]

The trap is finance. They usually have to be over 40m2 to get 70% LVR and over 50m2 to get 80 LVR. Also most go onto commercial loan at higher rate. St George and a few others will do it at residential rate.They are good in that you have less tenant issues, but you need a good mgmtcompany with proven track record in that location. It seems far b…[Read more]

Ask the hundreds of ex-farmers from the late 80's how borring cheap asian finance worked out for them.  The excha/nge rate moved at the same time asian rates rose andthey lost thier farms by the hundreds.  It also happened again in 1996 ? 1997 ish when the AUD hit 50 something US centsYeh its possible and if you structure it and hedge it right i…[Read more]

its tempting with the record exchange rate but with the NZ$ predicted to drop to 65c US in the next 6-12 mths and the AU predicted to have a much slower and later drop if at all the exchange rate to the Kiwi is likely only to get better.  See google news todays business section.Also having just returned from NZ if people think Ausie prices are…[Read more]

Firstly if we have a recession economic interest rates will be low as an RBA tool to stimulate growth,Secondly I totally agree about education and information making investment decisions easier. The tools available on the internet make researching demographics, market stats, etc so much easier. Sites like this, realestate.com.au etc etc and…[Read more]

People need to take an emotionally intelligent stance when it comes to these sort of topics. If you jump in and pre judge one as being better than the other you are simply displaying a lack of disciline and emotional intelligence.  There are too many un measurable or unquantifiable variables at play here to judge one or the other as being…[Read more]

yes trustee not appointor. my bad.

Ross

Both my wife an i are currently in the same tax bracket despite me being on about $25000 more than her, and with the new tax scales will probably remain so until our investment earnings kick in.

So at the immediate and near future no benefit is derived.
Also important to note is that when i went digging in literature, with proffessionals…[Read more]

You are correct it was the federal court, not the high court.

As far as the discretionary nature of income distribution, both accountants advocate that to move income or capital from one person to the other is likely to cause a mjor problem and that it would be definitely against the rules of the ATO.

They both said that the ATO looks at…[Read more]

So do tell who lends and what rate.

Theres two ways. Neither is entirely accurate but both will give a good indication.

The first is to work out the Total land area of the site.
Then take the number of floors and floor area on each floor atttributable to apartments. Multiply it out to see how much floor space the total building has. Take off 4% for retail / lobby leasee.

Then…[Read more]

There are several issues with apts. Just to name a few:

1. Its far easier to get an oversupply of apts than houses.
2. Low land content = lower capital growth in most cases (however apts in prime locations can in fact have a high land value and high growth). This needs to be calculated.
3. High body corporate fees and or onsight management…[Read more]

Sounds to me the very fact that this conversation has taken place should ring alarm bells for 2 reasons
1. The developer is ruthless and not supporting his team or system, which may indicate hes not trustworthy or
2. The develper has too much time on his hands and may indicate he is havig trouble moving stock or is unhappy with his agent because…[Read more]