The costs that immediately spring to mind are:

– Your solicitor
– The selling (real estate) agent.  They don't all charge the same commissions.  Ring a few in  your local area to ask what they  
   charge.  2% is a guesstimate.
– Capital Gains Tax.  The "gain" you make is added to your taxable income, and may push you into a higher tax bracket.  Note that you'll get 50% off the CGT bill if you've held the property for at least 12 months.  The sale of your home (PPOR, or "Primary Place of Residence") is CGT-free.

Do remember that when you sell a place, you will presumably need to buy another, and thus pay stamp duty.  So for eg, let's say you buy a place for $100k, and stamp duty is $5k, and your solicitor costs $1k.  If you sold for $106k you'd actually make a loss, because you'd have to pay 2% of $106k to the selling agent, and you'd have to fork out another $5k or so in stamp duties to get into the next property. 

I think you'll find that to avoid the CGT, you will have to be living in the house when you sell it.  The 6 year rule merely means you have 6 years to move back in to do this tax dodge.  However if you've moved to another house and declared it your PPOR, and turned the first house into an IP, then you will not be selling CGT free…

The trouble is that when you borrow funds for a PPOR, the interest on the loan is not a tax deduction.

Generally when people come on this forum asking a question such as this, the advice tends to be to sell the unit, and buy a new home with that.  Your gain will be CGT (capital gains tax) free.  If you want to buy an IP and deduct the interest on your tax return, you have to have borrowed the funds for investment purposes in the first place.  You originally borrowed funds for your unit as a PPOR.  So I don't see how you'd ever be able to claim bank interest on it as a deduction, unless you did something fancy like sell it to a unit trust which you control, in which case you'd need some help from someone in the know.

Sounds like you got a good deal on your hands, House Call!  Nice one!  Where are these flats of yours?

In my opinion the Breakwater area would be fine as a buy, renovate, sell area, but not so convinced about buy and hold.  If you were a tenant, would you happily live in an older place when brand spanking Armstrong Creek is virtually across the road?

Always IO loan with an offset account.  Always pay the interest as required, and funnel extra money into the offset, which holds off the interest.  Then you either leave the money in the offset to pay the property off one day, or pull it back out to use it as a deposit on another property.

hmmm i've encountered those before.  there's an estate like this in vic called Moorookyle.  It's in Tarneit.  it appeared to me you had to pay for the stupid gym even before they'd built it, and you had to pay for it regardless of whether you used it.  These sorts of estates really annoy me, because as far as I can gather, the fee includes the upkeep of things like footpaths and streetlighting.  Call me stupid, but I thought I was already paying for that in my council rates and my income taxes.  I find these "estate" body corporate fees very offensive.

Did you pay stamp duty at the time of purchase.  That is a cost.  Have you factored that in?  If not, are you sure you wouldn't actually make a loss on this property?

Remember property goes in cycles.  Your suburb may well be on its flat year and be due for a growth spurt….

Hi –

refer to the recent comments in this thread;

https://www.propertyinvesting.com/forums/property-investing/help-needed/4332556

The airport is just another feather in Corio's cap.  Granted, the Geelong area is a lot of years behind Sydney, but if you look at suburbs like Marrickville: Marrickville was a very industrial looking working class suburb.  It's hopelessly close to the airport and you cannot hear the tv when a plane goes overhead.  The prices of property in Marrickville are very high.  So.  Marrickville is close to Sydney CBD, and close to the domestic and international airport.  Corio is close to Geelong city, and close to the soon to be built international airport.  See the similarities?

I started a thread about investing in dodgy suburbs a little while back.  People referred to valid cases such as Richmond VIC.  Once upon a time, you would not get of the train in Richmond.  No way.  Now, it's a lifestyle suburb and super expensive.   Footscray is following suit.  Even Frankston has gone up in value despite is dodgy profile.  Why?  It's commutable to the cbd for people that work in the cbd each day, and it's near the water, and has all the stuff people need – freeways, trains, shopping centres and all the rest of it.  Corio is not at all far from Geelong CBD.  The geography of that will not change.  It's not like in the future God will say "oh hang on, we're actually going to shift Corio into the desert just to upset the apple cart with investors".  Corio will always be positioned where it is, relative to the established cities of Geelong and Melbourne, and a train line which is unlikely to be torn down.  When the near suburbs fill up, the cheaper suburbs will fill the blank space currently on the map and Corio will, by sheer proximity to Geelong, polish up.  It's a given, in my opinion.