Just come back yesterday from 4 days in Rocky. While yields may be good, you also need to take into account the fact that they have very high rates.

As an example, my brother bought a place for $80K a few months ago (owner occupied). He is paying just under $1600 per year for rates. The basic rate seems to be around 2.4% of the UV every six…[Read more]

Think it really depends on the style of the serviced apartment. We looked at one about 18 months ago in Canberra. The figures looked great. The place was leased until 2007 with 2 x 5 year options afterwards.

But when we looked at it, it had no kitchen. It was just a one bedroom unit (similar to a motel room).

So – our thoughts were what do we do…[Read more]

M&K – I’d include a phone, just make sure that it’s a mobile number. If you have a prepaid sim & secondhand phone, you can use it for just receiving calls and it should cost no more than about $20 for 6 months.

That way you’ll get people calling & they will have no idea where you are. Besides, you can use the excuse that the place is rented and…[Read more]

Thanks for the info. Must admit I’m curious about London. Lived there in 95 – 97 and had I really thought about it seriously would have looked at buying.

I did some looking around, but was not really confident enough to do the deal (and wasn’t sure about buying a place in a country where I wasn’t allowed to live).

Interesting thing was there…[Read more]

Is this in Tassie? Situation looks similar to other properties I’ve seen. If it is, I can let you know what RE agents have told me.

Cheers,
Jon.

I know this isn’t an answer to your question, but given that investing in London isn’t really a big part of the board, I thought I’d throw a question in here.

What sort of return (and outlay) are you looking at and how did you manage to do the finance? I’d really love to invest in London, but prices seem crazy (and rents not up to the point where…[Read more]

Changed over to an IO from P&I on one IP and will do so on the other once the introductory rate changes.

I still owe a reasonable amount on my PPOR, so I’m going to work to get that down to zero before doing the same thing on my IPs.

I figure that given I can’t claim tax deductions on my PPOR, I might as well be using the principle to completely…[Read more]

St. George

quote:Yes, lenders will reduce the LVR if loan sizes start getting over $400k/$500k (or $700k in your case). It appears that you have the properties all under one loan. Not a good idea. How about trying to split the loans (thereby each individual loan is less than $700k (or $500k depending on policy) and mortgage insurance should only kick in if…

[Read more]

We only have two places – one showing with a positive cash flow from day one and one showing a slight negative cash flow. The negative one is because we’re paying a P&I loan, and if we did go to IO, it would turn cash positive tomorrow.

Both have shown good capital growth (the cash negative one has had a 28% increase in roughly 9 months and the…[Read more]

Rocky was going to be a very good area to invest as the QLD govt was going to help setup a multimillion dollar project in Stanwell. Unfortunately, that’s fallen through, so Rocky’s growth won’t be anywhere near as good as it might have been.

As for the floods, it’s really only around the centre of town near the Fitzroy river where it’s a problem.…[Read more]

Fixed a property at five years interest only loan at 5.99% about only three weeks ago. Noticed that five year fixed rates had risen 0.2% to 6.19% when I was in the bank on Tuesday.

While rates may continue to stay low, I think locking in isn’t a bad idea at the moment as I don’t see them going much below 6%.

Curious as to how you manage to get your finance for a rapidly growing property base.

As an example, I have $100K equity in a home worth $300K. I buy an IP “zero down” for $200K. Now I have $100K in property worth $500K (80%).

Now, for me to borrow more money, I need to look at going above 80% borrowing and therefore need to look at taking out…[Read more]