Hi again wakebrown

Referring to your original question: "Who/what is the best type of person to talk to too help me get my money working the best for me and to use it too the maximum benefit?"

If you opt to put your faith in someone else's hands… even if they have a business card saying they are this or they are that, they you better hope they are right.

Personally I have found the best thing is to read a lot of material (eg on this forum, in real estate mags), talk to lots of people, and pick and choose ideas that suit your life.  If you understand what you are doing and why, you will have sufficient knowledge to decide what is best for you.  You will have no reason to worry if you will need to be annoyed at someone for giving you bad advice a few years from now.

Hi wakebrown,

You mentioned that your strategy to this point has been renovate and hold.

When you renovate, one would presume you have added some value to the property.  A couple of years of "holding" ought to have added some capital growth too.  Have you looked into how much the renovated property is now worth compared to what you owe on it?  If the difference is already large, you could consider "refinancing".  Basically, let's say Bank A currenly has the mortgage on your property.  You say to Bank B hey, I would like for you to pay the loan out with Bank A and rid me of their services, and I would like for you to start the loan all over again with Bank B.  I would like an LVR of 80%.  So you can keep 20% of whatever you deem the property's current value to be, and please give me the remaining 80% in an offset account, and I shall scurry along and use it to fund the deposit on my next IP.

Apologies if I stated the bleeding obvious, but I thought I would mention it in case you were not aware you could do it in this way.  It is called leveraging equity but it must be financed very carefully.  You do not want to get into a position where you are cross-colateralized (which essentially means that for one particular mortgage, the bank has noted down that TWO of your properties are security for the one mortgage.  So if you mess up with your payments, they take two houses off you rather than one.  Nasty. 

You need a good mortgage broker to help you get it right.  Then it is so easy it you'll find yourself rubbing your eyes thinking "where did all this imaginary money come from?  i didn't even sell my house, and yet the bank gave me a big pile of cash!"  In other words, you do not have to sell to realize your capital gain as you mentioned in your post above.

Jamie M (Jamie Moore) and Qlds007 (Richard Taylor) are two very well respected brokers on these forums.  Get in touch with one of them if it is relevant to your situation.

Apart from that, make sure you keep the rent on your current IP at market value.  The more rent you get, the more "serviceability" you will have to fund your next IP.

Keep us posted on how you go.  Good to see your mind churning away trying to squeeze more value out of your position!

You're most welcome

Ah well you need to create a report from rpdata (or equivalent) showing recent sales for properties comparible to this one.  Put a clear heading on each – handwritten – in texta – so it stands out like a sore thumb.  There should be pictures illustrating condition of said comparible properties, what they sold for, and when.  You cannot accidentally on purpose leave it in the unit for the owner to see, since he doesn't live there.  Shame.  Ask the agent to show the report to his/her vendor in an attempt to open the lines of discussion.

Hahahha!!!!!!!!!!!  Brilliant!  One day there shall be a who's who of pi.com party and faces can be put to names.

It is true that you need to be sure you don't overcapitalize on costs, but it is not black magic.  I am sure you can create a spreadsheet with a basic list of things you intend to do in the reno and what each thing will cost.  You can also wander around Bunnings just staring at all the products they have.  You'll soon start to grasp what products are available and what they cost.  Bunnings also has staff that are happy to talk to you about your particular requirement and offer an opinion on how you'd go about doing it.  They'll even walk you to the aisle where the relevant products for the task are located and point to them.  Easy. 

I'll give you a tip about reno parties… if you put on a barbeque, people will come.  They'll be dressed in reno attire, and they'll even bring some tools and gardening equipment along.  Why not.  It's part of the Australian way.  Helping other people get their first home on track.  Who cares if it an investment property.  Same same.  Helping other people who are starting out and a bit unsure.  A friend of mine was shocked to see 30 of her buddies show up to help her at her reno party… and all it cost her was a few sausages and hamburgers, and it was a very fun day for all that attended.  Let us know when your party is

If she transfers the property to another entity, she'll have to pay stamp duty and capital gains tax.

What is she trying to achieve?

If it were me, I'd get a really good mortgage broker on board to get a new lender to cancel off the debt with the current lender and start it again as an equity release loan for investment purposes.  Jamie M (Jamie Moore) and Qlds007 (Richard Taylor) are both contributors on this site and are very well respected brokers that could sort it out in a jiffy for you.

Out of interest Joe, what sort of timeslots was the old PM offering to prospective tenants for the standard open for inspection time?  Was it Saturdays, or maybe a silly timeslot on a weekday when nobody can attend anyway, such as Wednesday 3pm when all the prospective tenants are at work?

How did this prospective tenant get your phone number?

Dude 7% or 6% or whatever is standard, and if you work it out, they are getting less than $1k per year to put up with however much effort comes their way.  If your tenant is a hassle with rent payments, your agent will have to converse with them often.  If they are of the obusive variety, guess who is on the front line.  The agent.  And anyway, the cost of it is a tax writeoff so it'll be closer to the $600 per year mark or something.  It's nothing. 

Coming back to the original issue, just goes to show hey.  The pics have to SHOW the facilities.  Even the driveway.  Doesn't matter what the driveway is made of, but you want to show you actually have a driveway.  The agent can bring you to your knees if they are not doing their job.  That said, I do not believe in giving free reign on my properties to the agent.  I have a brain and I can look at the ads of my property and if need be say hey, I see an issue, sort it out now.  Not in three months, now.  Perhaps I will have a different opinion if I ever have so many properties it doesn't matter any more, but when you are building your base portfolio, it matters.  You get in that drivers seat and you steer that ship EXACTLY where you want it to go. 

ps writeup still says it is "currently rented".  this might put off owner occupier buyers?  Might be better to say "Achievable rental is $240 per week"

I see the property has vanished from the for rent pages of http://www.realestate.com.au and I figure this is because it has now been rented.  Joe, is that the case?

Hi Ray 8% annual rental growth is not astounding… it's roughly how much the rent needs to go up by default to cope with the rising costs of the bills.  Anything else going for it?