yack, good point,
never thought about the tax thing…

pete bell, you nailed it though,
“I have never paid any interest on the card anyway.”

if you are that good with credit cards then yeh it’s probably worth paying $200 a year cardholder fee or whatever it is, for 30,000 worth of points – though you’d have to spend 50k on the card to get 30,000…[Read more]

” higher interest rate would have bought the same amount of air travel anyway. I would rather have the cash instead of points.”

yes indeed!!! Pete Bell. My partner and I sat down one night and calculated how much you have to spend on the card to make the 30,000 points that gets you a free return trip to NZ worth 489 Qantas. The points are…[Read more]

Ooh….go the gossip train….

gossip confirmed!

You heard it here first!

joy to the world

Oops! Really! well best I immediately cancel the late-night tv advertising campaign then…hehe

joy to the world

Hi there!!!

Of course you don’t need a licence to get a ‘spotter’s fee’ – provided you are not breaking the law.(and whatever ‘spotter’s fee’ might ‘legally’ mean is probably anyone’s guess!)

This means you might not be able to operate as a buyer’s agent, or do anything as agent – but you may be able to ….

a) get, and onsell, an option on a…[Read more]

Oh yeah, I have this other story. OK this bigtime Aussie ‘household name’ promoter was putting on this big show in NZ which ran for months.

I was on the production team and – this was on the first day of casting – there were Yanks over from the US, and this whole big dealio thing was going on which I was amongst – anyway so at one point this big…[Read more]

the short answer is ‘yes’, they are shockers, and it’s worse in Q’land.

BUT I don’t know if the answer would be ‘yes’ if I grew up here. Then it would be like, “huh? Compared to what?” And if I grew up in the US or South Africa, then it might be ‘no’ (though that’s debatable) – by comparison. But, compared to what? The United Nations?

Guess…[Read more]

hi woodend!

>1) Am I better to use an existing Oz a/c for >rents or open an NZ bank a/c in respect of fees >etc?

I reckon open a NZ account with a hole in the wall card. Then you can get $$$ out when you need to in local currency. Or leave it there in the bank in local currency for rates, etc.
Don’t know how easy it is to open a NZ bank account…[Read more]

“how to do due diligence”

Ooh, I’m pretty good at that. So my method is…for the town, use the internet to find stats on growth, business, etc or buy the data you need – you can even buy an analysis of a postcode, or prices of recent sales in the same street, etc.
know what prices are doing now, what they did recently, for the last 1, 5, 10…[Read more]

Hi yack, I actually watched some of those kinds of deals that people like steve and westan bought in os for 26k and sold for 90k. have they gone down in value since then? No, they’ve held. Now, in those markets where 26k used to be the bottom of the market, the new bottom of the market is 90. I’ve observed that there is ALWAYS demand at the bottom…[Read more]

I would totally be open to partnering with a bird-dog on the ground that could find, photograph, inspect, and research great deals for us, even if that was in Australia (we currently specialise in NZ CF+ve deals.) hey, a deal is a deal – if it is a good deal, and you can authoritatively explain why with data to back it up and photos, i.e. find…[Read more]

“how i can make money easily and happily with no stress”

Oh! i know the answer to this one!
Do something you love!
Yeah!
Then….the passion for it means you put in the necessary ‘work’ (though it’s not work cause you love it!) – and then the money is as you say easy and happy with no stress.

If you are not sure what you are interested in or…[Read more]

Hi Tim,

yeah I think weatherboard has a higher appeal than fibro. Aussies should remember that there are no termites in NZ. There is borer but they are no problem really as they eat very slowly and you can borer bomb the house for $25 from the local hardware store. Having said that, though, I have a fibro house which is a brilliant rental, my…[Read more]

Hi there,

we used to have frequent flyer credit cards 15-17 percent interest) but we canned them in favour of
10.99 percent mastercards. Basically, you’re paying for the points in another way.
I would imagine the mortgage scheme would be the same. the half percent or whatever extra basically is the cost of them doing the points thing, passed on…[Read more]

hi there,

>1. How do you price yourselves…set fee,hourly >rate etc.?

all inclusive set fee. Including helping the client through the entire due diligence process to unconditional, as well as finding, inspecting, negotiating, and tying up the deal in the first place, which we do on spec.

>2. How do you find your customers?
Clients found me -…[Read more]

yippeeee, good for you. Yeah I should have probably had minimogul on my name tag not my real name. hehee

joy to the world

My insights:

yeah, accountability – finding someone to be accountable to. That’s what the mappers had in Steve, but that you can create that yourself.
Without the accountability it’s too easy to say you’re going to do something and then not do it, forget, get lazy, get scared, get distracted

making a goal.
I realised I have been investing away…[Read more]

Yeah, Aussie rocks. I am even picking up the twang (so the Kiwis tell me) after 9 years living here.

my holiday plans? Well the 13 year old skiing star in our midst is off to Europe to compete in his first international ski-racing competitions (slalom!!!) with the Queenstown Alpine Ski-racing team, for the winter season. Unaccompanied by us to…[Read more]

I agree, but every property I have ever bought or bird-dogged has been a property someone didn’t want, for whatever reason…..

joy to the world

Interestingly this is the first time I have noticed so many ‘selling’ posts and threads around here. Perhaps it is as a result of Steve’s recent book or newsletter, or perhaps it is because this forum is a good way of guaging (sp?) the property market. I wonder if we are at the stage of a few more now ‘thinking of selling’ then in the future there…[Read more]