Might be worth asking around if you want to find people to play the board game with. Might even be some people here who are interested. — Jeremy Melbourne

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I have 18 rats, and they are the most fantastic pets that you could ever EVER own. You can see some of them at http://www.rockabyeratties.com .

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Are you out of the rat race yet, Smaointe? []

All we have at the moment is a pure bread cocker spaniel named Sonny Jim, as well as a canary named Charlie. Used to also have another cocker spaniel (blue rone) named Ruby, she was a great dog.

Have had two budgies, doody boy and uncle feather. Also as a six year old I thought it would be a good idea to get a hen (hey whatever pet has edible produce?) so we had 3 chooks; henny, penny and foghorn (in the Melbourne suburb of Box Hill).

Initially grew up with dalmatians. The first one Sugako got cancer and had to be put down, the second one Mitchica was vicious and bit anyone who came within 10 metres of him so he was put down as well

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Jeremy Lunn
Melbourne

Also take a good look around this forum. You may pick up some tips as to which areas to look in and many other priceless tidbits of information. Also another useful forum is the somersoft forum which you can find through the web links (though just beware, people like to negative gear there [])

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Jeremy Lunn
Melbourne

The first real step is to get out on the ground. Have you read Dolf de Roo’s book “Real Estate Riches”? He has a nice little ratio, as follows, to show that real estate is a numbers game:

100:10:3:1

Basically it means that you look at 100 houses (I’d say you’d want to look at 90% of them in person, not over the net), of those you may make 10 offers, of which 3 offers will be accepted and one offer you’ll be able to obtain finance for.

Of course there are no hard and fast rules, but generally if all your offers are being accepted then maybe you are offering too much (but if it’s positive geared and you’re getting a nice income that may not be too much to worry about). On the other hand, if you’re lucky enough to get finance for all 3 offers that have been accepted then you’re laughing! [8D]

Conclusion: Just keep in mind that you may have to look at over 100 houses before you are able to find just one property that you can buy.

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Jeremy Lunn
Melbourne

Obviously there are no hard and fast rules about having a population >10,000. If can buy these properties are particularly low prices and all, then get a good yeild then why not? Though might be a little harder to finance.

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Jeremy Lunn
Melbourne

Personally I wouldn’t invest in managed funds. They’re diversified to the max so growth is as low as possible, you don’t get a huge return on your investment at the end of the day, you have no control over how your money is invested and you’re still not 100% safe.

If you can invest in property then do. If you’re not going to invest in property or anything else though, you may be better off having your money in a managed fund instead of having it sitting in a bank account where interest doesn’t even cover inflation.

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Jeremy Lunn
Melbourne

Sorry can’t really give you an example but negative gearing essentially means that you make a loss. The government allows you to compensate for this loss by deducting it from your taxable income. So if you’re in the highest tax bracket this really means that you save 48.5% of which you’d have otherways paid in tax. Doing it purely for tax purposes only doesn’t make sense. Where it does make sense, however, is where you know there will be at least enough capital growth to compensate for this loss.

Now where it really makes sense is where there’s large capital growth. For example imagine that you have a cashflow shortfall from the investment of 0.5% per an annum, but you were achieving capital growth of 10% you no doubt end up better off. The only problem is that you have to sell off to take advantage of this capital increase. That also means that you’ll pay capital gains tax. You also have to be able to service your loan between the period that you buy and the period that you sell.

All in all I wouldn’t recommend negative gearing unless you either have a large sustainable income or you already have a number of positive geared properties to counter the cost.

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Jeremy Lunn
Melbourne

As many people have said, I think you have to really get out there on the streets to find the best deals. I’ve yet to get started with this myself, have really got to find a time when the family car is available and get out to the country.

Good luck,

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Jeremy Lunn
Melbourne

Our experience with homestay students is that you can get up to $200 (depending on how much responsibility you take on, e.g. if they’re under 18 ). Generally though I think it’s about $180/week for an adult if yo provide food. Even though rich parents usually pay, they tend to try squeezing every last cent out of you, some going as far as trying to take cut lunches to TAFE for their friends.

A mate of mine used to take them for $200/week from Taylor’s College. In one particular instance they had a student who only showed up once a fornight to pay the rent. I think that it’s an immigration policy that students under 18 have to arrange homestay, though no one actually checks to make sure they use it.

That particular mate of mine went on to buy the house next door to him to house the students, though more recently he reverted to renting it out. Now he doesn’t have any students (I think it was mainly something that carried over from when he was renting anyway, helped him to offset the rent).

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Jeremy Lunn
Melbourne