Hi Hal,
Elwood seems to be showing steady growth.
Here is some data from a free report from domain.com.au
You may want to buy a suburb report from rpdata.com.au or residex.com.au

Look for 'ugly duckling' close to the suburbs that have grown by 20%. Usually there is a ripple effect and these 'ugly ducklings' grow pretty fast as well.

As a condition of purchase, I would include a clause for the vendor to get the approval at their expense.

You can try free suburb profile from http://www.domain.com.au or http://www.homepriceguide.com.au
You can also buy reports from http://www.rpdata.com.au or http://www.residex.com.au
The last few pages of Australian Property Investor magazine has information on median prices, etc.
Hope this helps

He definately needs some help.

You may want to consider buying a property off the plan (preferably with a 12+ month settlement). This should not require a significant deposit upfront and if you buy right (in an uptrending market), you may not have to put any more of your money because the bank will lend against the end value (and not the contract price because your contract is >12 months). As an example. you buy a OTP property for $200k (with 5% deposit or deposit bond). Lets say the property increases by 10% in value over the next 12 months. The bank will lend $198k (90% against $220k) and your purchase price is $200k. You need to put only $2k.
Hope this helps.

Try Nancy Keep from Nancy Keep & Associates (http://www.nancykeep.com.au, 03 9544 9577). I have been using her services for over 6 years and she is great. She is a keen property investor herself and she can suggest some "out of the box" investments that can minimise your tax bill significantly.

Hi Pete,
An interest only loan does not stop you from making extra repayments towards the principal.
Lets say you have a $300k loan on your $350 property and the property price doubles in 10 years. Assuming you make interest only repayments for 10 years (without increasing your loan amount), the loan amount at the end of 10 years will still be $300k but the property value will be $700k. The LVR will drop down to ~42%. This means you own 58% of the value of the property. Take yourself into the future another 10 years, property value = $1,400k and the loan is still $300k. New LVR is ~21% and you own 79% of the value of the property. So the question is, what do you mean by actually owning a piece of property?

I have heard some positive things about Forest Lake and surrounding areas. What do people know/think about it?