I found when I was starting out reading the forums was my greatest source of knowledge then putting learnings into practice and learning some more from them. I went to a few of the free seminars but I found them to be biased and pushed their own product or agenda to benefit them and not me.

You’ve got an end goal which is good, but how are you going to get there? Do you want to buy and hold? Do you want to reno? Are you time poor or rich? Do you want to develop? Flip?

Are those 10 properties going to be $150k regional cheapies giving you CF or are they going to be $700k houses in capital city blue chip suburbs giving you lots of CG or a balance of both or all of the above?

Hopefully some food for thought.

I have also used Depreciator before too for my place in Melbourne western suburbs and IIRC the gentleman they sent out came from around that area.

It can be difficult to get finance on studio apartments if they are less than 50m2 – the LVR would need to be lower so you would need to put it more cash upfront.

The rental yields of 10% may seem attractive on paper but usually the body corp eats into it too much to make it a viable investment. Have you called around to any of these places to see what the body corp fees are?

Are you limited in who you can rent to? Ie student accom or holiday let?

Capital growth would be very limited (esp for the retirement unit) as you have a very limited pool of buyers but also you can face the supply vs demand issues in buildings which will keep a cap on CG but also rent.

You may be faced with long vacancy too (why should someone rent your property as opposed to the other 12 units for rent in the building?). If you’re mainly renting to students (who are the ones typically drawn to studios) then you will more than likely have a couple of months vacancy over the christmas period.

In answer to question 2 – there’s better deals out there. Is it mainly the yields drawing you to these types of places? You can get a house with a decent amount of land for the same price and yields in some areas which offer better investment prospects ie cosmetic reno to manufacture CG or subdivision potential.

Anyway, these are just some of the things I thought of – hope it helps.

Are you looking for someone to find the properties for you, or just churn the numbers? There’s some great spreadsheets on the internet where you can punch in the different figures and it will show the projections for various time periods. Same thing with development feasibility.

I can only imagine storage would be the easiest.

I’ve seen concrete water tanks converted to accommodation / man cave’s before and they look good. You would have to check with the council what is and is not allowable.

Looks like it would be a fun project though.

It’s a tough one. I am a strong believer of good things happen to good people and I conduct myself with that belief. I don’t think the industry will change but while being a player in the industry you can conduct yourself with honesty and integrity just don’t expect it from others. Know your game well enough to know when someone is being less that honest with you or do your own DD and become self sufficient.

I refuse to compromise myself too, but in saying that, I have no intentions of leaving the property industry. I will conduct myself in a way where I will not hurt or take advantage of others and can still sleep at night.

1. What’s the kW of the air cons?
2. Seems ok
3. What does the landscaping entail?
4. No experience with this – can’t comment
5. Not sure about this one either, but I would assume it would be included in the build prices as they have to have it.

I think having so many new properties available to purchase will keep the prices of yours down, therefore CG will be limited as the market will be flooded. What’s the proximity like to amenities such as train stations, supermarkets, schools etc?

On the upside of purchasing a new property is the depreciation benefits but on face value without knowing anything else, I think you can do better.

Why Perth? What is drawing you to Perth?

I’m assuming because you’re looking at OTP that you are a non resident so restricted in what you can buy otherwise established may be a better way to go rather than OTP.

Have a look at the demographics of the areas you’re thinking of buying as different demographics will have different needs so don’t buy a 1 bed studio in an area that is typically young families.

There’s a lot of useful resources out there that will tell you what a suburb is mainly compromised of. Have a look at the ABS site or even just the real estate sites as they have some good investor information there too.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 5 months ago by  Kinnon Bell.

Long story short… after growing up on the far north coast of NSW with my family, my husband and I agreed that we would follow them to Melbourne with the intent to stay for only 2 years. It never felt like home and as soon as I arrived I was already planning my exit as I was never totally happy there. Melbourne was great to us career and property wise but I was spending 3 hrs a day commuting, lived in an area I didn’t like and I can’t stand whether that is below 30 degrees. After about 5 years my husband and I decided to put our investing on the side burner for a couple of years and make the move to where we always wanted to go – Cairns.

So we’re here now (after a couple of hiccups)and have been here long enough for the honeymoon period to run out and we’re still absolutely loving it, never once doubting we did the wrong thing. We had done the delayed gratification thing for so long that it felt good to do something for us, something for the ‘now’ and haven’t looked back. It’s delayed out end goal for a few years but at least in the meantime we’re happy where we are.

I still fly back to Melbourne on a regular basis so still get to see family and friends so have the best of both worlds.

If I were in your situation I would either rent in the area that I’m wanting to live in (by the sounds of it you have time on your hands so you can wait for a rental to pop up that is pet friendly) or buy regionally and commute. For me, I found the daily commute tough as it took so much time out of my day – I’d be away from home for 13+ hours a day.

If you sell the properties there’s nothing to say that you can’t buy again in the future but you’ll need to weigh up all the costs ie selling, CGT.