Hi Steven051,

Im only a law student so I cant give you legal advice.

However, you should understand the difference between “Joint Tenants” and “Tenants in Common”

in the shortest possible way and without knowing your individual circumstance, in essence they the type of ownership structure over the asset will have certain consequences.

Most notable of this is how the assets are distributed should one of you (knock on wood it doesn’t happen) become deceased.

Just a few comment and examples

if you bought under Joint tenants you can specify the % you each own. Specifiy the ownership of the “seisen” or essence of the property. This can be distributed to as many joint tenants and in any proportion.

Alternately if you bought in Tenants in Common you would all share the seisen equally. This can be shared by as many people that you wnat aswell.

The key difference is what happens when one party becomes deceased.

If you and your dad buy the property as joint tenants if one of you dies the other still only owns his specified amount of the seisen. the rest is distributed by your will/estate.

If you buy as tenants in common if one of you dies then the property is reverted to the other by default (as homer simpson say “my two favourite words DE FAULT” lol), this is know as right of surviourship or sumthing like that.

But ask you Lawyer more.

Kind Regards

Luan M Cao
http://www.ampg.com.au
http://www.wholesaleproperty.com.au

Dear Frank

I have read all the posting in response to your question about building over an easement.

The first thing that i woudl observe in the whole debate is the fact that if you are asking a question about permmission to build over an easement you would be a relatively novice developer. This could very well be your first development.

Having said that, there is a reason why the land is cheap for the area. The reason is that it has an easment.

My advice is to stay away from it as a development because I have seen many novice developers buy land thinking that they are getting a bargain but all they are getting is a headache and heafty holding cost whilst trying to figure out what to do with land that they have purchased that has limited development potential because of easement.

This is not to say that you cannot build over an easement, the town planner is correct it is dependant on the type of easement but most of the time the easement needs to be relocated and this will incure large expenses both in hydraulic engineering consultancy and the physical relocation of the service that the easement is providing.

Kind Regards

Luan M Cao
http://www.ampg.com.au
http://www.wholesaleproperty.com.au

If you locate a Mortgagee in Possession property, asking for the contract will automatically disclose the vendor as it will be contained in both the front page of the contract for sale of land and also within the title searches that are required as part of the contract.

The mortageee / administrator / liquidator of the estate does have the fiduciary duty to sell the property at a ‘fair and resonable’ price but thats not to say that the people who the are foreclosing on are aware of this fiduciary duty or able to estable what is a ‘fair and reasonable’ price.

Kind Regards

I can see that there is a diverse range of opinions about the state of the market. But I must comment that the above quote is a bit paradoxical. Are truely rich people to be ‘kicking it in the carribean’ or are they to be found continuing to invest in which every way they know how?

In any event you could probably find people from both walks of life, some prefer to make their money and relax and some who continue to drive their business forward. My mentor is the former where as people like the Murdochs, Packers and Lowys are the latter.

With regards to the forcasting given by BIS Shrapnel, they have moved their prediction down from the 10.8% that they stipuated last year. I see that they must have some basis to make these assumptions. Also I work with many finance brokers and property developers who are finding the market very difficult. Added to this the number of mortgagee in possessions that can be found in many of the local newspapers pintered (ironically by the Murdoch and Packer clans).

I think that this could be a good indication of where the market is going.

Luan M Cao
http://www.ampg.com.au

go to http://www.homepriceguide.com.au you can buy a postcode snapshot for about $50.00 this gives you all the sales in the last 12 or 24 months depending on which one you want to buy. it gives all the sales in a specific postcode you nominate.

Kind regards

Kabung
http://www.ampg.com.au

Wappack,

I think the fundamental flaw in your plan is your basic assumption that there will be less developers looking for land in the near future.

I think that is unreasonable to assume, as many developers have what the business community describes as ‘land banks’

I’ll give you an example of a situation this is a real situation and is a chess game currently being played by some of the largest developers in australia.

There is a large parcel of land north of the harbour bridge within the sydney metropolian area, by large I mean about 50ha (thats 500,000 sqm) maybe more, I haven’t looked at the maps lately.

About 18 months ago Mirvac (yes the large listed company) acquired a number of properties that was part of this 50ha. They bought about 4 or 5 properties totalling about 20 acres, 2 outright and on 3 on options. The paid $200,000 on per option with an exercise price of $1.6m per acre.

After a report came back from the water board assessing the contributions that developers must make toward the sewerage treatment plant upgrade would total $26mil instead of the originally $7mil estimate. Mirvac didn’t end up exercising the options and they expired lossing about $600k

Then enter Meriton(as in Harry Triggaboff) who have now have aquired some of the land that Mirvac once had under options plus a few more. They will probably end up not doing anything until they aquire the whole 50ha but I couldn’t be certain of that.

Now I was offered to take up options on 2 blocks there totalling about 11 acres for an option fee of $1.00. for 12 month but I still didnt take it up. WHY???? Because I would have lost my dollar.

The reason I tell you about this experience is as Frank Lopez says in the movie ‘Scarface’

“never underestimate the other guys greed”

The big players like meriton will hold on to that knoing that they can afford to and just slowly drown everyone out of the deal.

Now my question to you is do you think that you can locate a large tract of land that no other major developer has looked at or contemplated?? Large tracts of land are what the major developers are looking for and unless you can play a competitive financial chess game with them your probably gonna be in touble.

Another example would be Woolworth buyin the foster subsider ALH. Why??? for the land bank.

Companies like this have deep pockets and can afford play hard and unless your pockets are just as deep then you wont be able to play. The only other way you can compete with them is by having a stronger strategy. This means you have to have 2 things, in my opinion, knowledge and information. Because all developers are aware of the same thing about land and Tony Soprano says it best “God aint making any more”

So if you wanna play ball with big tracts of land against major player, im not saying its impossible, because its been done before, but make sure you got a strategy.

Kind Regards
Kabung

I agree with everything Micheal has stated. But would like to add a few things.

Sourcing the property your self is always the better option but this can be time consuming and difficult. R/E agents will have experience and a better in getting owners to put there property on the market. Like Wrappack says that most agents are not willing to entertain the ideas of options and some ‘subject to’ this is because they just want their commission ASAP, which is understandable because its their job.

The key then is when putting in an offer on the property either by option or subject to, firstly make sure that it is in writing. Then either ask for the agent to get the owner to sign the offer or return it some how that shows that the owner themselve have seen the offer. This guarantees that the owner has actually had the offer submitted to them.

Also there is a legal resource centre in Philips street in Sydney where there is a standard option aggreement available. Although this letter may save you some money from your solicitors having to draft the option agreement, I concur with Micheal that you will require a good legal practitioner to help with the administrative and procederule requirements for purchasing properties using option agreements

Kabung.

Wrappack,

The deal that I was posted about earlier was my first ever successful deal, which went a little something like this.

Unemployed and on my way to join the dole que, I walked past and noticed a property in the window of a R/E agent not too far from the centrelink office.

I walked in told the agent that I was interested in the property, she told me that it was sold but may have something coming up in a couple of days. After about 2 weeks she called me back and told me that she had something on the market that would interest me. After giving the details of the property, I gave her an offer of a 2% non-refundable option for 12 months which she took to the owner who readily accepted.(note that i did not negotiate down the price knowing that if i bought it at that price it was well under the prices being paid for land with townhouse/villa zoning and worst case i could subdivide into a battle axe and probably break even or make a small profit (but this would have increased the risk))

Now there are a few key aspects to this deal that need to be discussed.

1. I knew my area very well and the exact property that the agent was talking about. Although obviously any buyer would need to check the property first.

2. I knew all the council regulations that pertained to all the developable land within my local council.

THE DEAL ITSELF

The property was about 1357sqm and had a house with a swimming pool. The demensions were 17.56mX76m. Due to restrictions because of the width of the site it needed to be amalgamated. knowing that the properties next door was a derelect house that had been on ‘A Current Affair’ for the worlds worst tennant, I assumed that the person who owned next door was holding the land to amalgamate it to develop.

After holding out on paying the option for seven days i talked the agent into not advertising it for about ten days. This move turned out to be decisive in enabling me to make profit on the property. During those 10 days I asked the agent to find the owners next door. However she was unable to do this because all the agents use the same system, “RP Data”.

So I made my own enquires through my own resources and within 2 hours i had the mobile ph number of the owner next door who was an accountant for the eventual buyer. We set up a meeting and after some tough negotiations and me threatening to subdivide the land into a battleaxe which would cost him more to purchase in the long run he agreed to purchase the property at a profit that suited me.

If the agent had advertised the property I would not have made any money because the eventual buyer lived one and a half blocks from me, and wold have seen any advertisment in the local paper. hahahaah (thats how the cookie crumbles)

My next 2 deals that im working on are even better than this first deal.

4 blocks of land with 3 houses on them (one sits on a double block) in one of NSW premier tourist and holiday destinations. 200m, 500m, and 1km from 3 respective beaches and panoramic view from the mountains, to the river, to the ocean. I just secured options on them with exercise prices that are less than both the median and average prices in the postcode. The land can be developed into between 20-24 units. If I told you the price i paid for the option fee you’d probably think either I was lying or the owners were a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Regards
Kabung