Another smart thing for you to do if you are a first time renovator is; spend some time understanding how much things cost.

Spend time in Bunnings understanding the cost of plants.  The cost of paint.  How much you need to buy to cover the area you are dealing with.  1 litre of paint covers 1 coat of 12 square metres (eg an area of wall that is 4m x 3m = 12m).  The cost of a new shower base.  A DIY bathroom vanity or laundry trough.  New doorhandles.  Go to tiling stores and understand the cost of tiles.  Mirror and screendoor companies to understand what it costs to replace a shower screen.  Carpet stores.  Cabinet makers for the kitchen cabinetry (if you stick with a basic one it'll work out about the same as attempting to do a Bunnings DIY kitchen but look much better as it is precisely to the size you need – and they'll install it for you too.  Spend time in Spotlight understanding the cost of cheapy blinds and curtains.  You get the idea.  Try to leave all your plumbing connections where they are.  It's costly to move them around.

Hi Chris

Why not get someone who really understands all this to help you and lodge a mortgage application for you.  Richard's a great operator and will sort you out.  Why not give him a call…

jac

I start with exactly what you said – the rear pages of the real estate mags.  I look for the trifecta:  good capital growth, good rental yield and low vacancy rate.  Of the suburbs that come up trumps, I ignore the new suburbs whose capital growth figure is somewhat skewed by the fact they have no existed for a decade yet.  I ignore things that are not within an hour drive of a capital city or a 1min drive of a major regional city.  from there, investigate what the town has to offer already, and what infrastructure is being introduced in the near future.

Nobody knows for certain if there will or will not be a property crash.  If there is such a person then they must also know the numbers that will be coming up in this Saturday's tattslotto.

Hehehe all good Richard, we have loads of time courtesy of the long time allowance on the finance clause on the contract of sale.  I'm excited about finalising my first smsf purchase, but not stressed.  I'd be stressed if I tried to arrange it all directly with the bank – it's so complicated I would have messed it up!  Much nicer having you handle it all for me! 

The problem is the tenant.  Quest Apartments.  You can expect you capital growth to be… zero.   Search the forum for serviced apartments and you'll see plenty of discussion on the topic.

Corio is a solid fifteen to twenty mins drive from Geelong.  Might be worth considering whether you want to keep the property management in Corio itself so your tenant can get there without a car if they lock themselves out and need to wander in and borrow the spare keys or something like that. 

The rent you can charge for student accommodation is no doubt closely linked to the Austudy Living Away from Home Allowance.  If that does not go up each year, then perhaps student rents stay kind of flat.

More concerning is the capital growth factor.  It is known that capital growth is not great in student accommodation.  Perhaps it is due to the fact you can only onsell to investors and not owner occupiers.  Even in a building where owner occupation is allowed, who wants to live in a massive building full of students?  No thanks.  So you'll never be able to onsell to the emotional owner occupier that pays a bit more for the place because the kitchen is pretty.

I use GIO to  insure a unit block that is all on the one title but with each unit separately tenanted.  Surely this is no different.  Give GIO a call

Regarding the rental default thing, each insurer will have a different name for it.  Explain clearly you want to insure the building, and any contents that an unfurnished place has to be insured for (eg floor and window coverings), and that you want landlord insurance that also covers rental default and malicious damage.

It's always a good sign if a major supermarket chain is moving to town.  When is Bunnings moving in?

What is the demand for rentals in this town?  Is the vacancy rate nice and tight, hovering below 2 percent?  No point buying something if nobody will rent it.  Talk to a few managing agents in town and find out if people are signing onto waiting lists for such rentals.  What is the historical capital growth for this town and other peripheral towns of Launceston?  You'd want it sitting above 7 percent as a minimum.

I could not imagine anything worse than living in a one bedder for the rest of my life but ultimately, there is less space to have to clean, it keeps the bills down, and you don't have to share with a housemate.  I have noticed rental managers commenting that one bedders are in very high demand for these reasons.

I always thought that main roads were an absolute no-go zone, but ultimately, there are only a certain number of properties in the immediate surrounds of shopping centres, and of those, only a certain number are rentals.  I've literally been at viewings for properties for sale and observed prospective renters walk up asking if it was for rent and if not, did anyone know of any rentals in the area.  I've also just acquired a place smack across the road from a shopping centre that a couple of middle aged ladies were gagging to move into, after just having to move out of another property smack across the road from the same shopping centre… on the other side of is perimeter.  The only reason they were moving was that the landlord wanted to renovate.  Seems to me that people wanting to rent small dwellings or things near shopping complexes are happy to stay forever.  Moving is expensive, and with demand for rentals being high, they are stressed about finding themselves in a situation of being evicted rom one, and not being able to secure another.

I suppose as the cost of living increases, there will be a growing contingent of people that figure a big expense that needs to be eliminated from their lives is that of owning and maintaining a car.  If you live across the road from the shops, the commute home with the groceries is virtually no different to commuting from the supermarket checkout to the carpark.  So long as there is public transport that will take you into town for all the other services, all is good.  Remember that middle aged and older folk are a big part of the demographic that lives in one bedders, so be sure that medical services (doctors, pharmacies, hospitals) are nearby, or within an easy commute. 

Check to see if the unit is a part of a body corporate and if so, what the annual costs are for the body corporate fees and/or its insurance.  Investigate if a portion of this is for communal lighting and gardening and be aware that you will be unable to control this fee if the good people at the electricity company hike their rates up a lot.  I was mortified to observe on a 2 bedder unit recently that the council rates were over a third more than for a block double its size round the corner that was on its own independant title with no body corporate… that the body corporate fees had gone up more than 10 percent a year for the last 3 years, and that the electricity and gardening in the "communal areas" (otherwise known as the street grrrr) were suspiciously higher that a regular electricity bill.  If it turns out that such holding costs mean you might has well have bought a larger dwelling on a larger block (ie spending the cash on mortgage rather than body corporate fees and electricity), it is something worth giving some thought.

All that said, if you decide it is a goer, hopefully nobody will snap this one out from under your nose.  Might be safer to just mention the general info on the property rather than the actual address