Really? Very cool! And yep, back to full production already.

Regarding holding this unit “until the market picks up” – don’t forget to factor in:

– The holding costs. There’s no point holding the unit for 5 years until it is worth “$100k” again if it costs you, say $5000 per year. You’d be $25k down as opposed to $20k if you sold it now.

– The possibility that the developer will drop his asking prices further / other purchasers who did not manage to get finance may sell their units at firesale prices.

Good Luck,
Foundation, [cowboy2]

I’ve continued to increase my holdings in Walhalla, Victoria, and recently moved into Papua New Guinea. Both had capital gains of 7 to 8 percent between 10am and 4pm today. I took a little profit, expecting a pull-back in prices over the course of the week, but remain bullish on these areas, with an exit strategy of around 50% equity extraction by mid January. GDR & LHG
I wonder if you’d be kind enough to share with us a little information about your US purchases NKibel? How many? What prices? What yield?

Cheers, F.[cowboy2]

For now… what do you expect to get after the rental guarantee expires?

Without wanting to get into another heated political debate, I’d just like to point out that the notion that IR changes will “cost the Liberal Government the next election” is dependant on voters having a viable alternative at the time – ie a leader. Kim B will never ever lead this country, and don’t get me started on Ms Gillard. Kevin Rudd is their only hope. Anyway…
The impact of the changes will not be dramatic. It will be a slow erosion of (a few) worker’s entitlements over many successive agreements. Most workers will not have been affected at all by the time the election arrives. Remember how GST was supposed to bring the sky falling in and cost the Liberal leadership? It didn’t. People are spending indiscriminately like there’s no tomorrow, paying GST without a second thought.
But yes, I agree that the unions will be damaged by the changes. Although the steady decline in membership (especially in younger workers) had probably already signalled their future, and had been ignored by the union sloth. This will simply hasten the process.
Cheers, F.[cowboy2]

Build a fence or plant a tree?
F.[cowboy2]

I’ve tried to read all I can of the IR changes, short of going straight to the source (the 1200 pages of legislation & explanatory notes!!!_[blink]), and can’t see that it will have a broad scale, dramatic, negative impact on existing employee conditions and pay. I think that future employees will be unable to expect many of the conditions we take for granted today, but considering the high proportion of young people entering the workforce on fixed or casual terms, I don’t think there will be any sudden change there either.
I do believe that over time, this legislation will contribute to a slow erosion in the standard of living for the ‘average employee’ as well as the ‘crap employee’, but high-value employees will always be in high demand, and well compensated.
From an economic perspective, I think the mantra of “more flexibility means more productivity equals higher real pay” is silly and illogical, but flexibility will lessen the impact of downturns. Recession (which is an inevitable part of the business cycle) will be shorter, recovery will be quicker (due to a general easing in hiring/firing issues).
On the whole, I mildly support the changes, but would like to see them (and expect I will) as just one piece of economic reform. The next area that needs attention is welfare, beginning with limits on the time someone receives support. The longer a worker works and the more tax they pay, the longer they receive unemployment benefits… bit I digress… Oh, and tax reform is important also…
I am concerned about security of employment (the worker’s SAF if you like). I am 29 years of age, and surrounded by people my age who do not feel secure in their jobs. This is, in my opinion, contributing massively to the destruction of traditional family life. We have a very low and declining rate of childbirth in this country, and a pop-quiz of my friends revealed that very few of them expect to be doing the same job in 5 years as they are today (well, tomorrow for most of them). How can they be expected to ever settle down, and get to the real business of life – making babies – when they cannot even plan 5 years ahead? (The $6k baby bonus might seem like a lot of money to someone on welfare or low pay, but it’s peanuts to those earning 50 or 60 grand).
Keep in mind, this is today. This is before this new legislation is in place. The changes will have no immediate effect on ANY of them, yet we have a major problem.
I would like to see every single employee in this land, whether part time, fixed term, casual or permanent, have access to compulsory redundancy provisions (x weeks payment for x years service as a minimum). But that is not going to happen, not under the existing system, and not under the new system.
Anyhoo, sorry for the lecture. Thanks for listening.
F. [cowboy2]
(Who has access to redundancy provisions and is 30% likely to need them this financial year!)

Yes, I believe a rise from ~7% to 10% interest rates would have about the same effect on today’s average mortgaged-home ‘owner’ as the rise to high-teen interest rates of the early 90s had on the then average mortgaged-home ‘owner’.
Which would be bad.
It would be much worse now because a far higher proportion of Australians now hold mortgages than 15 years ago (including many retirees/near retirement[blink]) and far more have more than 1 house mortgaged.
Then there’s the personal debt referred to by Resiwealth…
Then there’s the fact that we as a country manufacture much less than we did in fifteen years ago and a huge proportion of the jobs created since then have been consumption-related. In other words selling stuff to eachother which is often purchased with debt (‘credit card’=debt). To prop up this consumer economy, we’ve spent as much as 104% of our income over the last few years. Blind Freddy could see that this situation could not exist perpetually. Something had to break somewhere. And it seems the first signs are showing through.
– A slowing in lending growth (housing & personal)
– Falling retail profits
– Unemployment rising from low (trend break)
– Rising redundancies (car industry, Telstra, ….)
– Rising insolvency rates.
– ???

Believe me, things aint all rosey in this country, no matter what the vested interests will tell you.
This is just the beginning, the tide is still turning, but our way of economy is so wrapped up in itself that a further change to any one of those listed ‘signs’ will exascerbate every single on of the others.

Cheers, F.[cowboy2]

I thought the modern version would be:

“The ant trades 5 winter’s worth of food for a second house, knowing full well that by the time the winter came he’d be able to trade that house for 10 winters worth of food, and even if it wasn’t, there’d be heaps of grasshoppers prepared to trade food for it…”

My perspective may be different to many here, but I think the whole moral of the fable was that you should save a little of what you earn for a rainy day (winter), not that a negative savings rate is fine as long as its the result of ‘good’ (tax-deductible) debt.

Cheers, F.[cowboy2]
(Parties like a grasshopper, saves like an ant.)
Debt free.

“Met the market” means your sale price expectation is the same as a buyer’s purchase price… ergo your property is selling or sold. If nobody is prepared to buy your house at the price you expect and you’ve done everything you can cosmetically / repair-wise, you have 2 choices – lower your price or hold it in the hope that future buyers will be prepared to pay more than current buyers. I personally doubt whether a $2000 plasma screen will be worth even $1500 to a potential buyer.
Cheers, F.[cowboy2]