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I can confidently recommend troy harris from rookie developer. He does a 1 day bus tour for around $500 or a 12 month mentoring programme. I have done the bus tour, well worth the money. He is melbourne based.
I saw Aussie Rob speak and am an experienced FX trader. I was amazed at people rushing to the stage to buy the product, to the point of assuming they must have been "plants" in the audience. I was very unimpressed with his system. I have tried many different avenues to try to ensure trading success and it is very difficult to find anyone that is worth following. I have been trying to find the ideal answer for years.
I can guarantee you that Aussie Rob will have made far more money pedalling his wares at conferences than he would have made trading. A great trader doesn't show you "buy when the green line is over the red line", they show you their audited tax records of the hundreds of millions they made in the markets, a copy of the book "market wizards" with their name in it and a blueprint of how you can repeat their success.
I have also read Van Tharp's book, but believe that Market Wizards and New Market Wizards probably are better reads. The one consistent theme of every success story in these books is "risk management".
I would suggest that if you are going to spend $14k on a course, you would need to have at least 4 times that amount to actually trade the markets with. I am always amazed at people spending half their life savings on a course, leaving them with nothing to actually invest. I have attended a large number of courses, but never spent more than around $600 on any of them and even then, only because they were very specialised in how I am going to ensure my early retirement.
Where to start…. I am one of Richard's many borrowers and currently have 3 development sites in progress up there, for a total of 15-18 townhouses. The market is booming and there are fantastic opportunities.
The coal exports are increasing, but the primary investment in Gladstone is LNG. There are 4 major LNG projects each worth $15+ billion and a number of smaller projects there. In Gladstone the "smaller" projects however are still often several billion dollars each and would be considered major projects pretty much anywhere else.
A recent API magazine article stated there was $88 billion in committed investment in Gladstone in the next 4-5 years, more than anywhere else in the country, including Hedland or Karratha.
Rents are likely to skyrocket in the coming year as the major projects enter their construction phases. Just monitor the number of rentals available on realestate.com.au. There are currently 210 available, but this got down to around 60 a few months ago. In 2012, expect the number of rentals available to get considerably less than 50, with rentals going through the roof due to the number of competing projects, all looking to house workers that can't be housed in the worker camps, which will be full, assuming they can all find enough workers.
Each project has 20 year forward contracts worth 10s of billions of dollars, and these are just the initial phases, with many of them only currently committed to 1 or 2 trains, but have plans to do up to 6 trains each in future phases. If this continues, then Gladstone will be a hot market with high rental yield for at least the next decade and will continue to attract more industry, as a deep water port with unlimited power generation resources and a very willing state government to position further major industrial projects there.
It already has world class aluminium and concrete plants, an 1800 employee steel works and major power plant are soon to be built there. A major shopping centre just announced a huge expansion to cope with the anticipated growth, which will see Gladstone double in population in the next 20 years. It will be the industrial hub of Queensland and the most progressive city.
Gas will be the "oil" of the 21st century. The USA is introducing legislation to encourage consumers to switch cars to gas, to reduce their reliance on oil, as they are rapidly running out of oil, but have an abundance of natural gas. You can imagine what this means for the local Australian Ford and GM factories, with USA moving away from Oil. Gladstone has been labelled the Saudi Arabia of LNG and this major change will see it as a fantastic growth story. Just look at what has happened to real estate in every other market when LNG came to town, its a pretty short list, with amazing property growth, namely Karratha, Port Hedland and Darwin.
Wait a few months until the current rush for under $500k units is over, once first home buyers have to start paying stamp duty. There will be plenty to choose from then.
The market in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne has been very difficult. I just sold a property there, had it listed for over 6 months and had to chase the market down to clear it, by pricing it as the best buy in the suburb. I ended up selling for $100k less than my initial asking price, but it freed me up for my developments, which are far better investments.
I still walked away with a profit and learned so much through the experience. Never try to pick the top of the market, by the time you see it, it is on its way down and extremely difficult to sell into. You are much better off selling at what could be a bit off the top, but still on the rise, when there is plenty of buyer demand.
I think that Sydney in particular will experience similar to Melbourne in the low end markets coming up, when first home buyers have to start paying stamp duty. This will kill the sub $550k market, which is currently being held up by first homebuyers competing before the stamp duty kicks in.
If you don’t fancy paying high rents, don’t move to Gladstone, unless you plan to buy.
It sounds like the ULDA are going to screw up the Moranbah housing market as well with a huge amount of land set aside for under-market housing as they have just done in Gladstone and Rockhampton. This is probably what your bank is concerned about.
thecrest, this thread is almost 4 years old.
Is it 5 years from land purchase or 5 years from development completion?
The mainstream media is finally waking up to what no bond issues for Australian banks would mean for the housing market.
An excerpt “The implications of another meltdown in credit markets are dire. Roughly a third of the funding for Australian mortgages comes from overseas bond markets. Were a third of the big banks’ sources of capital to suddenly dry up so would credit for housing markets here. Ergo, price drops.”
As a developer your goal is to maximise your profit margin, by meeting the market’s needs at minimal cost.
Your key levers are:
1. maximise the number of units – I have seen DAs for 5 townhouses on a block which was large enough and had the right zoning to fit 8.
2. minimise the floor space – especially wasted floor space. I have seen terrible layouts with lots of wasted floor space and others that are fantastic.
You don’t want to have any wastage from hallways, poorly positioned stairs, wasted living space that is unusable etc. A great way to use space is to do a 2nd living upstairs, instead of a hallway. The hallway may have taken 8 sqm, while a 3x4m second living at the top of the stairs may add huge value for the cost of an extra 4 sqm. At $1500 per sqm that extra $6k cost could add $30k+ in value. I just used this layout to fit a 4 bed, 3 bath, 2 living townhouse on 130 sqm, (excludes garage) its amazing what an efficient use of space allows.3. Minimise your cost per sqm through selecting the right builder, using inexpensive materials that achieve the right look. If you can build at $1,500 per sqm, why spend $2,000 per sqm, as that is probably half your profit margin.
I hope this assists.
Cheers,
MattYou need to have the same corporate email address type i.e. [email protected] and it is only limited functionality, it doesn’t include either My Valuer or My Research.
We are seeing signs of entering step 5, with Ralph Norris advising they can't roll over their debts given events in Europe.
"Step 5. Australia will be competing with every other western nation, (think USA, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Iceland, Ireland) for debt funding to try to keep the housing bubble propped up. The debts that Australian house owners have taken on due to weak credit requirements from the banks (at 7-8 times income and 5% deposits for mortgages) has all been funded by overseas debt, from nations that can no longer afford to do this and will see Australia as high risk. "
http://www.smh.com.au/business/gfc-ii-on-its-way-norris-20111124-1nwx1.html
Mr Norris, who retires next Wednesday after more than six years in the role, cautioned that credit-crunch conditions were returning, which is threatening to choke off funding for banks around the world.
''This has potential to be significantly worse than the Lehman Brothers collapse and the subprime crisis because now we are talking about nation states,'' Mr Norris told BusinessDay.
''If you have a situation like you had today, where markets had effectively frozen, then it doesn't matter how good your name is, you are not going to be able to access markets,'' Mr Norris said. ''As of today, no banks could access these markets.''
Hi Josh,
Past 18 months my Gladstone property has increased in rent from $360/week to $560/week (probably still slightly under rented).
Vacancies have actually increased in the past 4-5 months from around 60 on realestate.com.au to around 220, but discussions with other seasoned investors in the area indicates that by mid 2012 we should be at 0 vacancy rate.
I now have 2 development sites in Gladstone and am looking for more.
I was originally slightly concerned about the 2265 person Calliope workers camp which came online in September, but was recently advised that they are charging $1300 a week per person (includes food). If I could get just $500/week per person for my new developments and sell on a 10% yield, I would be ecstatic.
We are well into step 2 now, with large western economies now unable to refinance their debts at reasonable interest rates.
“Step 2. Japan, China and other nations that have been funding debt not just for Australia but the rest of the world, wake up and realise that the debt funding to Western nations can’t continue. Treasury auctions will have no bidders and interest rates will skyrocket.”
Italy is now paying over 7% on their huge debts ($2 trillion to roll over), even with the ECB doing all the bidding to avoid a collapse in the market. This is very unsustainable.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8846201/Debt-crisis-live.html
This can vary significantly. I am currently doing a development in Queensland. The council contributions will be 5 times the cost they would have been to do the same development in Melbourne!!
Marie123 wrote:So are all those that are saying that the end is coming, or there abouts, are you all selling up your property and putting it into gold, cash, something else? Or don't you have property to begin with? Honest question!
Interestingly, I am rather exposed to property. My Melbourne property has now been discounted by $80k and still no offers 6 months later.
I am also doing developments in a town that has such huge investment that it is unlikely to be affected like the rest of Australia is. The developments are so profitable that I am achieving a 40-50% margin on costs. Very hard to lose money with a buffer like that.
Bumping this thread in light of the Euro-crisis.
Italy and Greece are on the edge of a very steep drop.
Joel Smith wrote:Hi, I have looked everywhere on the net but I have been unable to find this "2 hours DVD" that I keep hearing about. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I'd really appreciate it.Cheers!
Joel
