This forum topic has been active for a long time.  The suburbs in the "highest yielding" list change over time depending on what's happening at that point in time.  If you find a reference to a great CF+ suburb, you would still need to do your own homework to check that it is indeed still a CF+ suburb, whether a particular house in the suburb is CF+, what are the reasons it is CF+, and what influences could cause it to revert to CF-.  Quite often a suburb is CF+ because there is a higher risk.  For example in mining towns.  Everything is great while there are not many houses but there are a lot of renters.  But once there are more houses than there are renters, the situation changes.  Worse still, if the sole industry that the town relies on moves out, suddenly your house is worth nothing because nobody needs to rent in the town and nobody will want to buy your property from you either. 

No need to apologise for sounding dumb… forums are there to help people share ideas and knowledge… and hopefully to help you gather enough knowledge to decide on a vague strategy before you start paying people to help you execute the said strategy

Yep, in some cases you'd be right. However as an example, my house is in a boring suburb 30km from Melbourne and tripled in value between 2000 and 2010 while smaller dwellings closer to the city merely doubled in value.  Point being it's not just the fancy suburbs that perform.  Definitely a good idea to do your homework

There is also the other matter of this:
If you own a large block, you have options as to what to do with it later on as things get rezoned, council reduces permissable block sizes and so forth.  eg Bring in the bulldozers and redevelop, or build a second dwelling in the backyard etc.  You will struggle to do that if you're choking on the constraints of a body corporate with a bunch of other owners in the mix.

With inner city apartments there is sometimes that danger of oversupply as well.  There is just so darn many of them, and they're all the same, that there's always a bunch of them up for rent or sale at once, which is not helpful to your pricetag.

can't see the pictures..

No not furnished.  However you do need SOME contents insurance to cover things such as the window coverings (curtains) and carpets.  Believe it or not, they are not considered part of the building itself.  Ask your insurer to explain what things in rental are not covered by building insurance and you'll soon find out.

i use AAMI building + contents insurance plus landlord insurance with tenant protection

Good on you – doing a heap of reading is key.  This is because everyone has a different opinion and strategy based on what is best FOR THAT PERSON AT THAT TIME IN THEIR LIFE IN THEIR OWN CIRCUMSTANCE.

For you, best thing to do is get rid of your debt as fast as you can.  Meanwhile you read more.

The debt you should eliminate first should be the one with the highest interest rate. 

There are positive cashflow properties here.  You can't necessarily buy them ready-made and already CF+ off http://www.realestate.com.au though.  For instance, you might need to buy something that needs a lick of paint, new carpet, and new kitchen cupboard handles to launch it to the next level of rental yield, thus becoming cash flow positive.  In other words, you often have to do something to the property to make if CF+.  Renovate, subdivide and sell the backyard, stratatitle some units etc.  My fave is simply buying something on a nice long settlement with a condition in the contract of sale saying that the current owner has to put the rents up before you take over.  That way by the time the property is yours, it's closer to being CF+.

Hi Daniel

Be sure that your trusted source is actually walking the walk and not talking the talk.  In other words, you want to be getting advice from people who are already doing what you hope to do…. and are doing so successfully.

Cool.

Get yourself suitable building and contents insurance and also the tenant protection extra to cover you for malicious damage, failure to pay rent and so on.  I use AAMI for this.

Agreed. 

Capital Growth is not a given.  It is a maybe.  Hopefully it will happen.

Negative Gearing.  Hm… the government has done really well pushing that barrel.  Negative gearing is good they say.  They say this because they cannot afford to provide housing for all the people who cannot afford to buy their own homes.  They need investors for that.  Enter negative gearing.  Yay.  For every dollar you lose you get at best what… 45c back in your tax return.  Either way you still lost at least 55c in every dollar.  Awesome.  Losing money is fantastic.

Seriously – not trying to tear shreds off you – just help you wake up and see the reality of the situation.  There are a lot of places where you can have your cake and eat it too.  Places where there is capital growth AND good rental yield.  Yes, you can became wealthy in non-prestigious towns.  The secret is well and truly out about Blacktown, NSW.  Quite the opposite of prestigious, but it has the trifecta.  Capital growth, sufficient rental yield, and low vacancy rate.  Done.  Thanks.  That's what you need.  Anything else is a gamble and praying things go your way.