Are you talking about getting a tax deduction on your income?

You only get a tax deduction on your regular income if the property makes a loss. That is if your expenses are higher than your income.

Generally this happens when you have a mortgage and your mortgage payments (and other expenses) are higher than the rent coming in. Say mortgage+expenses = $500/week rent=$400/week. You would then be able to claim $100/week as a tax deduction. Plus you can add in capital expenditure and depreciation.

Don't take this as financial advice though, every situation is different and this isn't the case for every property. See a financial advisor.

I think that a lot of the things you mentioned are stock standard and to not have them would be an insult to modern day living. So you are right, you need to pay attention to that detail.

I must say I have only seen a couple of bathrooms without towel rails and I was not impressed.

Yeh you can get lino that looks like wood…technically not floating floorboards but people call them that anyway. It's pretty cheap to do that.

The floating floorboards you are after slot together and will just sit on top of your chipboard.

Personally I think carpet is better for bedrooms (and rentals), and carpet is generally cheaper. Best idea (to find out price) is to get a quote, or are you going to install the floating floorboards yourself.

Can't really recommend a local builder because it probably won't suit, and prices always vary. Sorry if that's not what you were looking for.

I have this situation. My wife doesn't care about investing or business or anything to do with money really (except maybe spending it).
Luckily she is supportive of me and lets me invest our money.

It's much harder doing it by yourself, but maybe with the support of your partner (but maybe you the help of your partner) you could achieve great things. Then once you get started and start seeing some results I am sure he will want to join in.

When money is being made and you are having a great time, people can't help but want to get in on the action

What kind of advice are you after? What suburbs to look in? What houses to look for?
What investment strategy to use?

5% is a massive rate if you are selling your home. Generally commissions range between 1.1%-3%. The lower commissions are generally smaller agencies, but you should be able to easily get around 2% just by asking for a discount and saying you will go with someone else if they don't lower it (and be willing to go with someone else).

My parents and their next door neighbours recently used the same agency to sell their home. My parents paid .2% more than their neighbours just because they didn't push for a discount.

I don't have any builders for you, but just some experience to give you some ideas.

If there is already a house on the block you might just be able to build up a story and turn that into dual occupancy. Generally this is pretty cheap as all the plumbing/sewerage/electricity is already there all the have to do is mimic it upstairs. Just make separate entrances and you could have dual occupancy for a fraction of the cost of building a completely new dwelling (plus later down the track you could sell it as one home, rather than trying to sell a dual occupancy block with two homes.)

Just an idea because my mother in law has done this and I know it was pretty cheap compared to building a new dwelling. Depends on what house is already there though. Good luck with it.

Wait, my wife just told me the company that adds stories is call raise-a-roof (or maybe raise-the-roof). You could have a look at them.

Glad to hear you are getting your head around it. Hard to put a figure on 'risk' though.
The more you know about investing the more you can be aware of and the lower the risk it. Some of that comes from reading books etc. some of it comes from life experience.

I don't know anyone who got rich by sticking their money in a term deposit though.

Just a note. Discretionary trusts are great but they don't allow you to negatively gear. So positive gearing is a (near) must if you are wanting to invest using a trust.
Using a trust gives you much better asset protection and if you are looking to buy a lot of properties then this will become important down the track.

Good work buying your second property though. Most people get stuck at one and never move forward from there. Good on you taking the leap.

Hey Eric,

Discretionary Family Trusts do tend to offer the best asset protection, especially when they have a non-trading company as the trustee. But like Richard said you can't negatively gear them.

You can always restructure the title of the home later down the track, when you are becoming successful as an investor, but it can cost a lot of money. It is good to get things right first.

With the amount your wife is getting paid it looks like you guys probably have a fair chunk of disposable income, but it still might be an idea to look for positive cash flow properties to balance out your negative gearing so you aren't too out of pocket.

There are so many strategies such as wraps, renovations, positive and negatively geared, subdivisions etc. None is the be all and end all of investing. Learn as much as you can about the different strategies and choose the one that seems right for you.

ps. This is not financial advice, always seek the counsel of a professional financial advisor.