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Newbie here so go easy on me…
I believe Coogee is a suburb to keep an eye on now that the proposed marina development has received the go ahead. Any of the suburbs around Rockingham, Mandurah and beachside suburbs in-between are continuing to boom but rising property prices have forced many investors and 1st home buyers out of these suburbs. I think we bought the last $200K house in Mandurah back in Aug this year. Properties under $230K are now extremely rare and are snapped up within hours of listing.
Property prices in nearby towns of Pinjarra, Nth Dandalup and Serpentine are on the up with a bullet as some of the spillover heads inland. These small towns are at the foot of the Darling Ranges and within 20 minutes of the all the beaches, cafe strips, services and infrastructure of Rockingham/Mandurah. They are all quite lovely little towns in their own right and plenty of work nearby with Alcoa and supporting services. As the Kwinana Freeway extends commuters to Perth will only be 5-10 minutes away from the freeway. Another town on the up is Waroona south of Pinjarra with new semi-rural housing estates coming along. IMHO Harvey would also be worth keeping an eye on.
With plenty of enquity in our two Mandurah properties we’re keen to buy another IP soon but since +geared IP’s are seemingly impossible to find in Perth/Mandurah our cash flow means we can’t afford to spend more than $150-200K so we’ll soon probably be putting our money where our mouth is and looking at investing in one of these rural towns.
Further afield I’m hearing lots of talk about Capel inland from Bunbury. Same applies as above. Nice rural town close to beaches, university, infracture at Bunbury. Currently still very affordable especially compared to the hot Bunbury market and plenty of work opportunities with new mineral sand mining and increasingly diversified agricultural sector. With a current lack of rental accommodation and consequently high cost of rental in Bunbury, there is bound to be a flow on effect for Capel. Collie is another town I’m hearing plenty of murmurs about but you’d need to do your own homework as I don’t know much about it.
First post here but I’m leaping in boots and all…A couple of lessons we’ve learned along the way:
Shop around for an selling agent you have confidence in. Ask freinds, colleagues etc to recommend someone, but be sure to interveiw them extensively before choosing one for the task. We found out the hard way that a bad agent can give bad advice, in one case failed to turn up for an appointment with a potential buyer and later failed to get pen to paper promptly when a buyer made a verbal offer giving them enough time to develop cold feet. We got rid of that agent then spent a couple of weeks and about $3000 freshening the place up as our instincts had initially told us to do but the first agent said was unnecessary. Result – house sold for a great cash price within 2 weeks of going back on the market.
Second tip is like attracts like. If you offer a property for rent in poor/dirty condition, you’ll only attract low grade tennants. Put in the effort to present your property well, keep up the maintenance and freshen it up with new paint, carpet etc when it’s needed. When we bought our 2nd IP, at the pre-settlement inspection the vendor said she wished us luck with our investment but her experience with Ip’s was that good tennants were few and far between, most more trouble than they were worth. So much so that she had gotten out of the property investment game. The house we were purchasing was her own home and was absolutely filthy. It took nearly 3 weeks of scrubbing and fixing-up to get it up to scratch. She also advised us to remove the good quality drapes and take any nice plants from the garden rather than leave them for future tennants. Little wonder she had trouble attracting good quality tennants!
