dan, another forum member recently discussed how they use two credit cards to earn maximum points from both. I think card B has to be Citibank Platinum or something though.

Basically, spend up on your card A (only what you normally spend, and can afford to pay back each month – maximising interest free time). Card B then allows you to ‘transfer’ debt from Card A, earning points for every $$ brought across. This person then paid off the debt over the next few days – not all at once as Citibank might get suss – occuring a little interest, but not much. Then repeats the cycle.

this way, basically gets the points from both cards. But any transfer like from B to A is always a cash advance – the banks aren’t going to be that good to you.

Cheers
Mel

1. Steve’s filter for determining if a property is likely to be cashflow positive. Halve rent, add three zeros – should be your buy price. Take three zeros off purchase price, double – should be the rental achieved. Then do further due diligence on other expenses etc.

2. Principal Place of Residence – your home that you own (with or without the bank [])

Cheers
Mel

Hi venusgirl, welcome to the forum.

Am I right in thinking that you have purchased in this way? Basically, the ‘deposit’ be it cash, dep bond or bank guarantee doesn’t affect the onsale at all.

The contract is slightly different though. In the special conditions your solicitor basically spells out that you have bought off the plan, and that you will give the new buyer only about 10 days to complete once notice has been issued (you get 14 days, so it allows some turnaround time for the paperwork).

As far as selling it goes, you can sell it yourself, or give it to any agent to sell. Only problem will be that until it is complete, or there is a display unit, you cannot ‘show’ prospective buyers the unit. If you use a different agent than whom you bought from, it can be a little trickier. I’m not sure how the ‘display unit’ works, but I would think that only the initial selling agent has keys to it, so your buyer would need to have a look during the other agents open for inspection times.

Cheers
Mel

I’m going to defend Bill on this one, as I believe this has gone a bit far.

Firstly, I too have seen this email that has been mentioned several times.

The forumite was told not to deal with somebody they had met over the internet. Bill specifically states that there are many issues to discuss, and this MUST be face to face.

He also said that he was not asking the forumite to take any risk whatsoever. He is willing to sign a personal guarantee to that effect. Why does this mean that he’s going to take off and leave the country? Caveats can be placed on properties etc. etc., and there are many other means of ‘covering oneself’ in case Bill were to do a runner. Not likely.

He also told this person that he would pay a monthly in advance payment so that they could cover their commitments on a very negatively geared property investment. I also believe that there is implied in the contents an offer to prove his trading history. If I saw his history, and saw continued income of 40-60%, including losses, I’d happily hand over my money. Heck, how money financial planners happily show us their portfolios before we give them money to buy managed funds? None that I’ve heard of – cos they’re all broke. (OK, not all)

A MINIMUM profit of $21K per annum is guaranteed. 12% is not to be sneezed at surely! With no risk to you? Wow, this looks good. And Bill spells out exactly how he would win too. Isn’t this full disclosure? Don’t we want people to do that? Don’t wrappers advocate that for win/win?

Now, how did this person get in contact with Bill? Did Bill approach them? I think not. I think this person was one of the many 100’s, including me, who contacted Bill to ask for help, or in my case to touch base as I saw he mentioned Canberra? Before I had even met Bill he forwarded me a scenario that someone had sent him, asking for advice on what to do about their super neg geared property. He asked if I had any thoughts. I gave quite a few options, which were then passed back to the person, who eventually made their own decision. Perhaps it was the same person? Who knows!!! I don’t, because the person’s name was never revealed to me.

I personally have borrowed $180K from various friends, and offered them a 50% return on their money, with a max term of 18 months, and a min term of 3 months. We signed agreements with them, and they were more than happy.

I have met with Bill several times now, and found that he has as much integrity as anyone I have met. You all question his length of time in real estate – well Bill was one of the most successful agents in Canberra for a number of years, and has testimonies put together by a local radio station to prove it. Yes, he’s a bloody negative bugger at the moment, and I have had words with him about saying the same thing over and over. But then you don’t know the amount of people who approached Bill when he started putting his email up, asking him for help. Some of the people he helped stood to lose a whole lot of money in deals they had naively got themselves into.

However, with all his negativity, he has not advocated to sell all properties you own. He’s said to sell the dogs – which I would have thought was good advice. He’s offered plenty of advice, and some advertising tips to get your fair price. He’s offered to do a financial analysis, which often takes a couple of hours, and produces something like a 9 page report – completely free of charge. He’s offered his phone number if people wish to talk with him. I really wonder if the full story from ‘both’ of these people have come out. As I said, I’ve met with Bill many times, and not once has option trading come up. I would give him some money if he wanted it.

How can you say that having $200K cash in the bank is not ‘loaded’. I would think it is. You don’t know what Bill’s other assets are. He might be ‘diversifying’ his portfolio. He might have enough invested in real estate, and might enjoy the challenge of writing options – he’s obviously bloody good at it. I’m not – tried it once, didn’t like it (or was that s.., no, never mind). It’s a strategy that peter Spann advocates to help you fund your properties.

I think I’ve said enough. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of you that now think less of me, but that’s life I guess. I need to say it as I see it, as you all have done.

Cheers
Mel

Michael, why do you say this? I have purchased 15 OTP apartments in the last few years, and not one of them had been started before I signed my contract. In fact, due to skyrocketed building costs since our bushfires in January, some of them will not commence until late this year or perhaps next year.

Or when you say ‘project’, are you talking about the planning stages, and the acquisition of the land to build on?

Also, the developer that I mention above has at least 4 projects currently being built that I know of, so he’s obviously not in a hurry – he’s also charging carparking money on his land while he waits[] as it was a government owned carpark previously.

Cheers
Mel

It’s

The Love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.

That distinction is fairly big I think. I don’t know of too many people who will ‘stop at nothing’ to get their hands on money, but there are a lot of people that will do the wrong thing in one way or another.

I believe there is a line of thought that says that most criminals have their ‘code of honour’ or whatever. Look at the child molestors etc. who end up in jail. They are never treated very well by the other prisoners…..

Cheers
Mel

[]Muppet.

I thought that it was sheep though[:X]

Cheers
Mel

Westan, I think you’ll find that Kerry Packer thought James was a mug in regards to One Tel. He quickly came back and took control back from him after that little debacle. James did not do his own ‘due diligence’ into the company – he merely believed what Jodi Rich and that other guy told him. I read somewhere that they all went to the same exclusive school in Sydney – so it was very much a ‘boys club’.

There is a program called Stock Doctor – I didn’t want to mention it before as it’s vey shares oriented, and if this post gets deleted, so be it – but it tracks the financial ‘health’ of companies, and it showed One Tel in big strife a couple of years before it went down the tubes. If you invested on fundamentals, you would have got the hell out.

As for the others, perhaps you are right, but for such a spectacular fall, there had to be something again in the financials that wasn’t right – if you knew what to look for. A company that big doesn’t ‘die’ because of that one huuuuge ‘error’.

Cheers
Mel