Forum Replies Created
- keiko wrote:who would no if you are boy and girl freind
Who really knows what your income is when you enter into a low doc/no doc loan? Does the ATO really know what your income is when you are self employed? But declaring something that isn't true on a legal document is committing fraud and if you get caught, you will pay the price.
When considering whether you are boyfriend/girlfriend, imagine someone asking one of your friends or your family members what they think. If friends/Family consider you to be in a relationship, you are in a relationship for FHOG purposes.
Cheers
K
You could apply to the Residential Tenancies Tribunal to have the tenancy terminated on hardship grounds. I imagine that if you told the Tribunal that you received legal advice to the effect that you could move interstate, the Tribunal would look on that sympathetically.
Having said that, what kind of legal advice did you get? Did you retain a lawyer and pay them for their advice, or did you just speak to a lawyer at a party one night? I would think that the Tribunal would look on your situation far more favourably if you paid for legal advice and got the wrong advice than if you just spoke to a friend of a friend of a friend who knows a lawyer.
Good luck
K
There is very little supply in Darwin. The market is VERY strong in the under $400,000 bracket. There is pretty much nothing under $300,000 and that included crappy units in dodgy areas. A few years ago, properties in Palmerston were worth far less than Darwin properties, but that seems to have disappeared.
The rental market is very strong and the yields are good. I think that a lot of investors are holding on to their properties to see what happens with Inpex.
If you see something for under $300,000, grab it. Just a tip though. Avoid Nation Cres in Coconut Grove. Or get an independent valuation at least. Some of the blocks of units there are ghettos.
Cheers
K
In this market there are so many bargains out there that I can't imagine that developers will be paying full tote odds for any properties.
Say you pick up the house next door for $400,000, you have then spent about $850,000 on the two blocks by the time you take into account stamp duties, legals etc. Do the sums. Assuming that the houses get demolished (which is what a developer would do) the developer would be paying about $210,000 per block. I see that there are some blocks for sale in Coopers Plains for about $230,000. At that price, there would simply not be enough money in the deal to make it worthwhile for a developer. The subdivision and holding costs alone would bring the costs to the developer to at least $230,000.
I think it would be a good long term investment, but you would have to be able to afford to hold onto the houses for quite a few years. In the meantime, you will probably be missing out on some bargains out there.
My husband and I have just sold a very highly cash flow positive property and have come in for some criticism from investor friends for selling it because we are missing out on the cashflow (about $20,000 pa) and future capital growth (about $100,000 pa based on an 8% increase). But for us, it puts a few hundred thousand in the bank that we can use to snap up bargains. We have already bought a subdivision that the developer can't afford to finish off and that will pocket us about $120,000 in three months. That's the capital growth on the property we just sold, assuming it does grow by 8%pa.
Cash is king at the moment. Long term, if you have the money, the block next door would be a good investment, but if money is tight, then I think you could do better in the short term by looking for something undervalued.
Just my opinion
K
Hi Hk
Two years ago my husband and I went to Hervey Bay to look at property. I was six months pregnant at the time. I remember going to get a massage and the woman doing the massage asked me whether I was in HB to look at property! When the masseuse assumes that a six month pregnant woman is there to look at property, that suggests to me that everyone is there to look at property.
I had been living in Darwin, which was roughly the same size as Hervey Bay, yet the HB real estate pages were at least 10 times as thick.
I can't speak for the HB market at the moment but I can say that two years ago it was very overheated. I expect that, as the market has dropped back now, overheated markets would have dropped back even further.
I didn't buy anything in HB at the time but would probably buy there sometime in the future. However, before I buy, I will study the market for quite a while to see exactly what is going on behind all the hype.
Cheers
K
I tell my accountant what I want to do, they decide what sort of trust will be best and they get a lawyer to draw up the deed. I am a lawyer myself but there is no way in the world I would prepare my own trust document.
There has been a lot of talk on the forum about setting up your own trusts/companies, but I would thoroughly recommend that you don't do it yourself. Just don't.
Cheers
K
Hi Miss Croft
While I think that Mr Robert is probably an employee of Care Park, I have to agree with what he is saying. Yes, you shouldn't have to sign an agreement to park in your own car park, but how would you feel if you came home every day and found someone else parked in your park and you couldn't find another park and had to leave your car outside? It seems to me that this regime has been put in to place by the Body Corp to protect the right of unit owners to park in their own spaces. So Care Park make money out of it. So what?
Are you really prepared to take them to court over this? It will cost you tens of thousands with no guarantee that you will win. I used to be a lawyer (I am now a full-time property developer) and from a cost/benefit point of view, taking on Care Park doesn't seem to be worth the effort. It's not as if you are fighting for your civil rights or for anything really worthwhile. You will just be making a point – and a very expensive point at that.
If you really do want to take on Care Park, make sure that you have other unit owners behind you. And not just people who see you in the elevator and agree with you. Find out first whether they are prepared to cough up for legal costs in taking them on. I am certain that you will soon find out that you are on your own. Most people are happy to complain but will not put their money where there mouth is. I can tell you for certain that it will be very difficult for you to win a court case if you are the only one complaining.
My advice? Finish venting, get it out of your system and just sign the bloody agreement. Get a parking permit, put it on your car and get on with your life.
Cheers
K
Go to the Legal Services Commission (or the WA equivalent) and see if you can get legal representation. Call the Law Society for their number.
There this no way you can get out of this without legal representation. And stop talking to your ex husband and trying to make deals with him. You are only going to dig yourself in a deeper hole than you are already in.
I'm sorry I sound so harsh but you REALLY need a lawyer.
Good luck
K
Contrary to popular belief that the agent MUST present ALL offers to the vendor, if the vendors have said that they don't want to be presented with offers under $XXX then the agent does not need to present offers under $XXX. Having said that, most REA will let the vendor know of all offers (especially in a market like now) so that the vendors get an idea of what the market thinks their property is worth.
Call the director of the REA and check that your offer has been presented. Alternatively do a LTO search to find out who the vendors are and approach them directly and tell them that the REA refused to present your offer.
In this market 20% under market isn't necessarily offensive.
Cheers
K
Hi there
This PM comes highly recommended.
Suzanne HoweFocus Property Managementph: 08 8395 5789email: [email protected]mobile: 0418 827 585Good luck
K
I have a friend who speaks very highly of their PM in the Adelaide northern suburbs. I will find out their name and let you know.
Cheers
K
Hi pipeline builder
My husband and I have achieved "financial independence" through property and property alone. I use the inverted commas because we still have to work to pay for our lifestyle but our work is property development and we only need to do 1 – 2 builds per year to pay our way and increase our wealth.
We started out at the beginning of 2004, just before I left work to have our first child. My husband stopped work at the end of 2006 and hasn't gone back to paid employment since. We could just do nothing and live off the interest from our equity (most of which has been realised because we have sold off a lot of stuff) but it wouldn't give us enough money to play with. And besides, I love property. I find the deals, sort finance etc and my husband liaises with our builder on the technical stuff that goes over my head. The rest of the time my husband plays on the farm that we bought a couple of years ago.
So some people on the forum may argue that technically I am not financially independent, but I can say that I basically do what I want, when I want it and I have absolutely no concerns about the financial crisis impacting significantly on us. I consider myself financially free and my husband, who drives around the farm with a couple of little kiddies on a trailer on the back of whatever he is driving, certainly considers himself financially (and emotionally and spiritually) free.
Cheers
K
As far as I am aware pest inspections are your responsibility, but I don't think there is any obligation on you to have them done annually. You can do them every six months or you can not do them at all. I don't see what it has to do with the tenant.
Cheers
K
aquarius69 wrote:This company is someone to sure be wary of. With my dealings over the past few months it is astounding how they are still operating. I think more people need to look into the relationship they have with the solicitor firm they use and also the real estate firm!!! There is way to more it than meets the eye and something I am sure ASIC would love to know about. Remember Westpoint!!!!!!Hang on. Aren't you the same person who started of this thread raving about how great Premium Finance and in the process implicating yourself as being linked to them?
The comments on this forum from people linked to Premium Finance have gotten so ridiculous and unprofessional that it is worth keeping this thread bumped up so that everyone can read it. I laugh and cringe at the same time when I see that there is another comment added by a PF employee/director digging themselves in deeper.
K
Knock it down or seal it up.
We are doing a reno at the moment on a house that had an old stove in the kitchen with a huge chimney that stuck out. The stove had long gone but there was still an alcove that housed a newer oven. A couple of days with a jackhammer and the problem was solved!
I tried to find ways to keep the alcove but decided that it imposed into the kitchen too much. With things like that you tread a very fine line. Either a reno keeping original features can look really cool or, and more likely, any prospective purchasers will see that you have just tried to incorporate an ugly feature into a reno and it will look cheap.
If you can cover it with gyprock then I would think that would be the best way to go.
Cheers
K
Hey Melanie,
You have probably put this somewhere in this thread but I'm too tired to read through it all. When you first bought the property, what market value were you aiming at and what do you think the market value is now that you are nearly finished?
Cheers
K
PS. Our reno is coming along very slowly but very inexpensively. We have done a lot of the work ourselves but have struggled to find the time. So far we are VERY under budget but our 1 month timeframe expired the other day and we haven't had any tradies in yet!
We bought a house on a development site 12 months ago for land value only. The house was a mess. The tenant had left crap anywhere. We brought in a skip and emptied out all the rubbish, whipper snippered the property (on 5000 sqm), got a tenant in paying $280 per week and had the bank revalue it 6 months later at $100,000 more than we bought it for. Underneath the crap the house was in pretty good condition with loads of potential that we haven't even tapped yet. I think the skip cost us about $300.
I remember being cranky with the vendor for leaving the property in such a mess but it really worked in our favour. $99,700 in our favour, to be exact!
Cheers
K
Hi bespoke
In my experience (and this is just my experience and opinion), unless you buy a property well under market value there just isn't a very good return on reno's on their own.
You are right, by the time you take into account purchase costs, holding costs, selling fees, possibly GST and definitely CGT most profit is gone. Yes, you may make $20,000 or so on a reno that takes a month of your time but when you factor in "non renovating work" such as organising finance, researching the market, the stress of having an offer accepted, the stress of wondering whether the property will sell, etc, you would really have to question whether it is worth the effort. It may be for you. It is not for me.
Having said that, still make a very healthy profit (enough so that my husband and I don't have to go to work) by buying, renovating and onselling properties. For us though, we only buy properties on blocks that are subdividable and the money is in the subdivision.
We are working on one at the moment that cost us $250,000 and with a $20,000 reno we will sell the house for $300,000. Now without the subdivision there would be perhaps $10,000 in it. But that $10,000 pays our subdivision costs so we get a vacant block next door, worth about $140,000, for nothing. That's where the profit is in it for us.
I am not a buyer and holder. But if you were, it may be worthwhile buying a rundown property, doing a reno on it to increase equity and then holding onto it. It still seems to me like a good way of building equity. But as for using renovating as a way of earning a living, in my experience, those days are over for the time being.
Once again I iterate (for the benefit of all the D&Gers), this is just my opinion.
Cheers
K
If you don't put a timeframe in the contract then the offer is valid until you let the vendor know in writing that the offer has been withdrawn.
Even if there is no timeframe in the contract and the vendor signs the contract say a couple of weeks later you can still exercise your right to cool off under the contract.
In my experience as a vendor, I have know just about immediately whether I am going to accept an offer or not. I see no reason to give a vendor a really extended timeframe. If you want to put other offers in and not be "held up" by waiting to see if an offer is accepted, you could always have a timeframe in your offer and tell the REA that you want to make an offer on another property. That will get the vendor to pull his/her finger out and make a decision quickly.
Cheers
K
Hi mrscam
You have a couple of different answers to choose from so I thought I'd give you another one to throw into the mix.
It all depends on what is stated in the sales agency. If there is nothing said in the agency you signed then you are free to sell privately to the purchaser after the agency has expired. However, usually there is something in the agency to the effect that if the purchaser was introduced to the property through the RE Agent, then the Agent is entitled to commission even after the agency has expired. The Agency would set out the time period for this, usually about 90 days.
Just be wary of doing this. The REA will have access to any sales data. If the agent sees that you have sold your property via the data and can see that it was sold to someone he/she introduced to the property, then the agent will probably take you to court to try to get the commission from you. The agent may not win, but it will probably be an expensive and time consuming process.
Just as an aside, why would you agree to do this? You are not getting any more money than if you sell through the agent. It is the purchaser who will be getting the entire benefit. Yet you carry the risk of being sued if the agent finds out. It just sounds a risk for absolutely no benefit to you at all.
Cheers
K
