I agree.  She is squatting.  Why should you pay bills for her out of the kindness of your heart? 

I've heard that Elders in Geelong is very sloppy with putting the rent up each year.

One company you may not have heard of is ReLease – they are rentals only – they don't do sales.

I'd suggest starting your hunt for a PM by ringing around to ask to speak to someone in the property management department of each respective realestate agency and see which ones actually ring you back.  It won't be many, despite you telling them you're looking to recruit a PM for your property.  That will help reduce your list of contenders right away.  Then look at costs, and ask for examples of how they've dealt with various scenarios involving tenants and maintenance issues.

Perhaps we should all sell all of our properties (I'm not sure who to – since if there is a crash then there won't be a single person in the country buying property) and kick the tenants out and have them live in the street looking at the said empty properties.  Yes, that's the way forward.  Everyone in the country should live on the street, and all the houses should be empty and without owners hehehe

You might be able to turn a non-regional place that is cf negative into cf positive with a bit of creativity.  For example you could:

– Look at blocks of flats, strata title them and sell a couple off and keep the rest

– Look at houses with backyards sufficiently large to subdivide the yard and sell it

– Look at houses with backyards sufficiently large to house another dwelling (eg house, unit, granny flat) which you could construct and rent out.  A recent ruling in NSW has opened up the possibility of renting granny flats to separate tenants than the house.

– Renovate to bring the place into a higher rental bracket

– Pay a larger deposit and/or make larger payments in the early days of the mortgage, thereby reducing the interest payable.  Remember don't get a principal and interest loan.  Just an interest only loan with an OFFSET accout, which is where you'd put all extra cash.  Then in a couple of years when there's a fair amount in there, it is easy to just withdraw and spend on another property.  In the meantime though it saves you interest.

– Don't forget that particularly on newer places, a depreciation schedule could be the difference between cf negative and cf positive.  A quantity surveyor prepares a depreciation schedule for about $500.  In a nutshell, the building, the carpets, the window coverings etc, well, they age, and as such in theory they "depreciate".  The quantity surveyor determines how much they supposedly "depreciate" and writes down a magical figure that you can put down as a "deduction" on your tax return each year for the next however many years, to compensate for this fact.  So say a new place worth about $380k, you might expect a deductble figure of say $8k in the first year, which might amount to a tax refund of say $3k, depending on the tax bracket you are in. 

Depends where it is.  I believe duplexes are listed as units in the stats in API magazine.  Perhaps take a look at what the stats say for units in that  township…

Seriously – would it kill you to get a job that pays an income for a few months, if only for the purpose of securing a loan?  The bank is of course not going to loan you money if you can't demonstrate that you can make the loan repayments…

You can totally get a 4br house for that price.  It is simply that the land value is lower.  To build a brand new 4br house costs under $200k last time I looked…

What is your question?

Get an offset account, and rather than make "extra" repayments when you have spare cash, put the money in there.  The result will be the same – it will save you interest.  The difference is that later on when you want to pull that money out again for use in buying another place, it's a simple withdrawl.  Whereas if you'd paid it onto the loan itself, you have to muck about getting your money back, and fees will apply.

You are correct that when a property grows in value, the "equity" can be utilised for a deposit on another place.  But you must remember that the bank will still only lend you 80% of the TOTAL PORTFOLIO value.  So let's say at the time you go to buy the second place, apartment #1 (which you purchased for $300k) is now worth $350k.  And let's say property #2 is worth $400k.  That's a total portfolio of $750k.  So the bank will loan you 80% of that… $600k.  So you have to leave $150k in it.  So let's say when you originally bought apartment #1, and you put your 20% in.  When  you bought apartment #1, you put in your 20% deposit which was $60k.  There has been an equity growth of $50k.  Total of that is $60k+$50k which equals $110k.  But you need to leave $150k in to cover the entire portfolio, which means you need to pitch in $40k (well, it'll be less because you will have reduced the principal on apartment #1 but you get the idea).  But $40k is less than $80k which is what 20% of $400k is, so you're winning.  The equity has helped.  Does this make sense?