Thank you all for your replies. I have only had time to glance through the links you posted so far but hopefully I will have sometime before next weekend. A number of you mentioned the value in contracting the work out to those already skilled to do it for you. This also seems to be the view point commonly expressed in many books/seminars I’ve attended. “Pay for someone else to do what they can do a lot easier/quicker/cheaper than you can. Spend your time finding the next deal”.My coldly logical side agrees that this makes perfect sense. The other not-so-logical side is terrified of buying a lemon I have no idea how to fix. My not so rational thought process is to purchase a place I can fix up mostly by myself, making a few mistakes and learning. At least if the problems are of a scale that I can correct, at least I’m only losing my time. Money is a little tighter for me at the moment.
My current plan to get into the property game is to use the first home buyers which should save me close to 20k in stamp duty + grant and then spend the subsequent 6 months doing it up myself.

Jaffasoft, that is exactly what I’m thinking about. I have been keeping my eyes open at Bunning’s recently as they also offer in-shop training sessions on simple, discrete tasks. I’m not what the training to sales pitch ratio but any knowledge is up from where I am currently.
DD, I am looking for training any time (immediately/2-3 months out). I have some family commitments so some notice is helpful, but any time. If you’ve got anything on the horizon (in the Canberra area) please let me know.

I am currently looking for my first property/project in Canberra. It is a little deflating how fast everything is moving. I know that we[you] property investors are meant to make our money on the way into a sale and that we should be taking the emotion out of the sale. Buy the problem, deliver the solution (see I read books). It is just disheartening that all the problems are even disappearing before I can more than catch a glimpse of them in the distance. I inspected a place this afternoon. It was a problem. One of the exterior walls was ‘out-of-plumb’. Apparently that’s builders talk for toppling over. I have decided it was beyond my meagre repair skills. I have just had my finance (re)pre-approved though and will now start contacting agents and doing more ‘walk-throughs’ in my desired suburbs.

Well thanks again for all of your comments. They are all appreciated. As I said I will go through and checkout the links over the next week.

Cheers,
Jonathan