You might have to to back to work, Mel! Seriously- how can the plan to pay it all off occur if one isn;t working?
[!] Tell me about it. In fact, I had to go into work yesterday for a job interview – the rehab people have finally found me another one. It would have been great too – would have got to travel to Cairns, Darwin, Perth, Melbourne and probably Sydney – all with nice travel allowances. However, I decided that I really didn’t want to go back, and was planning to resign in July. These guys needed somebody who would work their butt off for at least a year, and it really needed to be the same person (involved in building the new Patrol Boats for the Navy – the ones they use to catch the boat people, and illegal whalers and stuff) for that time frame.
The plan to pay it off – well, all I want to do is make sure that the expenses are less than the rent, and I will live off the rest. I’m not fussed about paying it off. In fact, I want to borrow a couple more million – so then my loans become the banks problem, and they’ll be really nice to me[]
As I said in another post, I’m looking at buying rabbits too![] that will help with my servicability
Talk to your solicitor! I don’t think cancelling the payments will help in the long run as they may turn nasty and put a mark on your credit file, which might then need some explaining later on!
We could keep ‘restating our positions’ on this one, but I’ll just add this:
If the tenant is struggling to pay the rent on time, ALL the time, do you really want this tenant? I would be much happier to have a tenant that happily pays on time to get a ‘discount’ (which is precisely the rent I wanted to achieve in the first place), and who was qualified to be in the property on the basis of the more expensive rent, rather than somebody who struggles to pay.
Although I will admit that with one lot of tenants – that I deal with myself rather than using a PM, I have offered them 2 movie tickets per month if they pay BEFORE the 1st of the month. Sometimes I’ve had the rent a week and a half early!
I would think that always having 20% equity is still being very highly geared!!
I’m at between 25-30% at the moment, and would like to reborrow that 5-10% back out, but the banks are saying no, as they see us as being ‘too highly geared’.
Karan, it will become a problem if you cannot find tenants.
If there is a property crash, that suggests that people are not buying, and therefore there should theoretically be less investment properties, so in time there will be more demand for rentals. If you keep your tenant, you shouldn’t have a problem. If vacancy rates fall, then rents could go up, and you could be in an even better position!
Yes, beerboy, but with the ‘rent reduction’ you have actually increased the rent by that $10 per week anyway, so you’re happy to get the quoted price less $10. If they don’t pay on time, then you get a bonus when they do pay up.