Celivia,

Is this a local property?

My parents had a place (PPOR) in Bradbury that had had a decent sized crack in the wall. (First noticed when the place was approx. 25 years old). For a non-engineer like me, to say it concerned me is an understatement.

They got an engineer’s report which said that it was not a structural issue. They said that while not exactly common, it was not unheard of in the area.

The reverse could also be true (i.e. looks fine, engineer says detonate). The lesson? I wouldn’t be putting my hard earned in to anything I had doubts on. It’s a worthy investment to get an engineer’s report.

Chan$, There is nigh-on zero chance that the M7 (or whatever they call it) will have toll rebated.

The reason the M4 and M5 have a rebate scheme is because in the 1995 state election Labor said that they’d remove the toll on the M4 and M5.

When they got the books from John Fahey’s Liberal government they used the “the incumbent cooked the books” exit clause and said that they couldn’t afford to drop the tolls.

To keep as many voters happy as possible, they said they will rebate the tolls (now minus GST) on the M4 and M5 for all motorists in a private vehicle registered in NSW.

I’ll take anyone’s money who wants to bet that the M7 will be toll free. Chan$?

If you purchased a property built in 1994 today you would have 30 year’s worth of construction costs x 2.5% to claim.

Something to do with heat…

From today’s The Age:

In Melbourne, house prices grew by just 3.8 per cent during the quarter, compared with growth of 12 per cent in Brisbane, 5.3 per cent in Sydney and 6 per cent nationally.

Over the year, Melbourne house prices rose by 12.5 per cent, well below Brisbane, where prices surged 35.1 per cent. Business research firm BIS Shrapnel’s Robert Mellor said the figures were a last hurrah for Sydney and Melbourne, but prices in Brisbane – and to a lesser extent Perth and Adelaide – had yet to peak.

I hope this isn’t too much information to get into trouble re copyright.

A heavily edited version of the subjects covered by the article follows. If you want more, I guess you gotta give Fairfax their money:

Here is a guide to the eight main areas of alleged tax avoidance or evasion during this residential property boom:

1 Backyard subdivisions
2 GST on new home units
3 Double CGT exemptions
4 Land tax evasion
5 Related-party transactions
6 Income v. capital gains
7 Serial home buyers
8 Deposit bonds

Hi SIS. Sound like the same-ish deal repackaged. Platinum cards are passe in the UK in the way that gold cards are here now.

I’m with CBA (my loans with Colonial) and have some package where I don’t pay fees on loans, savings account, gold credit card etc. The min limit is $7.5K.

Obviously I think it’s a good deal (as I took them up on it). For me the biggest carrot was the savings on all the other accounts plus the discounts on std variable that you get with the package. You just needed to have a min loan value.

The Western Sydney Orbital. It will connect the F5 (road to MEL) with the F3 (road to BNE) by skirting around the city and charging you $912 + GST in tolls.

Mt Druitt is far enough away from the physical road to avoid noise and traffic too much, but surely if you argue Mt Druitt will appreciate then you have to argue that just about every suburb in Western Sydney will go up.