Thanks Jamie M and BigVman.

Jamie thanks for clearing the equity part up for me. I currently have 40k, next month I will have 50k, the month after I will have 60k. My salary for the next year and a bit at least will be just over 200k but it won’t be that forever unfortunately, so my goal is to try and get a head start while I can and then once I decide to leave this job at the end of next year so I can be home with my new family I want to be able to have at least 2 property’s, 1 of them at least being an IP and the big thing is making sure they are serviceable when I drop back down to around the 100k a year salary.

I’m just a bit confused on taking the next step to secure another property, where should I buy, what should I buy, how much do I spend, should I touch the money in my current offset to use for a deposit or leave it and start saving from scratch again for another deposit. It’s a tad dawnting for a newbie and I feel as I did when I had my first boy a few weeks ago, the similarity’s are that both my newborn son and how I go about purchasing a second property don’t come with a manual ;)

Loving the information guys, keep it coming.

Shahin you suggested earlier that I should sit down with someone to have a more in depth chat to about this, Is there anyone that you guys can suggest me to sit down and have a more in depth chat to that's based in Melbourne? Preferably for a cheap fee rather than too expensive?

No its not new, its 5yrs old. We brought it just after the FHOG finished and changed to a new home/apartment owners grant, so we got a 40% reduction in stamp duty instead which actually benefited us as the FHOG was only 7k and the 40% duty reduction saved us about 11k.

Also does this mean when i go to purchase my next property ill not only need to save up for the 10% deposit, but ill also have to save up to pay the full stamp duty amount?

My current home loan is with the NAB with an offset account attached to it. I had 20k in it last week but thought it would have been a good idea to dump 10k of it onto the mortgage. Probably wasn't the best thing to do now ive spoken about this a bit more.

Scott, dont i have to live in my current PPOR for the first 6 months before i rent it out since it is my first i have brought?

Yes i am going to turn the property into an IP this year at some stage once i figure out my next move, where to buy, how much deposit i will need to save up, how much to put aside for the dreaded stamp duty, LMI etc.

So if i change my loan to an IO once the time comes, and after say 5 years i decide that i would like to continue to keep the IP, would i then have to pay a lump sum of the principal amount i haven't paid for the time it's been IO? and would i then have to re-apply change to an IO again?

Thanks for your reply Shahin,

Im still pretty naive with the whole interest only thing and dont really understand why i would keep the principle of the loan as high as possible. Obviously being so new to the whole real estate game i have a long way to go, but i really appreciate your feedback.

If you care to elaborate a bit more on the topic then please do, but feel like you have to, im sure if i research hard enough the information will sink in a bit more.

Cheers