I too have been toying with the trust idea. I came out of reading Steve’s books with a different mentality in regard to the family trust idea however. I was under the impression that the trust would provide a little more security in terms of lawsuits.
I don’t plan on being used at any stage but you never know what might happen. If property is owned by a trust does that still mean that only the assets owned by that trust are susceptible paying for any damages that we may have been sued for? Thus protecting other investments/family home?

Another thing you could try is when it comes time to discuss a lease is to put the rent up to compensate for the ‘risk’ involved with your tenants not being on a longer term lease. I ended up doing this with my tenants, my agent said it was time to put the rent up and i suggested that if the tenants want to sign a longer lease i would be more than happy to keep the rent at the same price. However they could stick around month by month at an increased cost to them.

Some food for thought…

I had this same thing happen in Victoria in my IP. At the end of the day, apparently they can switch to a month-month in vic automatically however you can not continue the lease after a month and they will either have to sign a lease or find somewhere else to live. At the end of the day, are they good tenants and would you rather them stay than have someone else? Or what is the risk of long periods of vacancy?
My problem was the owner of the real estate managing my property had put is nephew in my house, so he was told all sorts of little things he could get away with. I was happy with them staying month-month, although its not 1st preference, until the rent starting coming all over the place at which point i said either sign a 6 month minimum lease or get out. My property manager told me i was a little unreasonable but at the end of the day i treat my IP as a business and i have other things to worry about than to chase my rent which was being ignored due to the nature of the tenants.
My property manager has since improved 150% after a few encouraging words on what kind of a service I am paying for and after riding them for a bit they realised i wasn’t joking and things have improved tenfold. Needless to say, said property manager will actually be getting his christmas gift this year which he went without last year. :-)

Good Luck.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 7 months ago by  Shiny_Suit_Man.

Hi Flex, i actually live in that area and there are huge amounts of houses in there that are rental properties. I’ve been watching the property there and while there doesn’t seem to be huge vacancy periods (houses for rent gets picked up quite quickly). However there is one part of the suburb which just sold for a record price 1.2+ million. Consequently the properties right next door have all been listed for sale so I’m assuming that has caused a bit of a gain in the area.
For the rental yield available i can’t justify buying there myself, i think there are better opportunities elsewhere. I’ll be in the market later this year for my next IP. Just out of curiosity, where did you get your figures from? I haven’t seen too many houses in NL that would fetch 475 a week for 460k?
Stay away from non local real estates/property managers. I had some really bad experience with our last place and the company was from down the gold coast. Rude, unprofessional and incompetent, if they were managing my property i would be devastated not to mention they market the properties poorly. There are plenty of local real estates to use and they seem to be much more pleasant to deal with and have BOTH the landlord and tenants best interest at heart.
The yards/blocks are very small in North Lakes in particular, and depending on where the blocks are located they are either noisy because of the major roads for the suburb backing onto them, or also have very little air flow so the sun tends to heat up the properties immensely. Having said that, the houses directly across the road from where we were had great air flow and always had a nice breeze rolling through them, so i would take that into account when looking in that area. I recently moved into a two storey place which has provided us with a bigger yard and much more ventilation which has made for much more comfortable living (for us anyway).
If you can get a good sized block/yard with a 4 bedroom house, 2 car garage as you can’t park in the narrow streets without upsetting the post/council, you will be laughing. The problem with the small blocks is many houses have bedroom/living areas sacrificed to make room for one or the other.
It is a great family orientated area with schools, parks, child care, shopping centres and now Costco and Bunnings/Masters have also just opened up so they have everything a person needs to live there. I consider it to be pretty central to everything around us too, i need access to the airport and city on a regular basis which i don’t consider too far away. I think it has potential to be a suburb in high demand in years to come so i will definitely be keeping my eye on it for my own future investments.

Good Luck.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 7 months ago by  Shiny_Suit_Man.

One would assume though that if you justified the $10 rent rise that VCAT couldn't say that it is unreasonable correct?

I have a friend who recently moved out of a rental property after being there 3 years in QLD.  Only received one water bill for usage after being there just shy of 12 months which was paid.  Upon receiving the all clear for the bond to be released before submitting the paperwork the agent managing the property noticed the lack of water bills and decided to take it upon themselves to calculate and invoice the tenant for the "usage" based on their own rate.  At no point did they contact the owners to talk to them about it.  Our friends contacted the RTA and after a few conversations/emails the tenants ended up paying less than half of the calculated value.

The tenants were more than happy to pay for their usage, they argued because of the manner the real estate just slugged them with 3 years worth of water without actually seeing a usage bill.  They also had no recollection of the first usage bill that was paid even though it was clearly listed on the tenant ledger.  The nerve of some property managers!!

At some point you need to get in the game but you still want the best outcome possible.  Yes mistakes are valuable lessons but other peoples mistakes don't cost you a dime!  CBarry in answer to your question about capital gains it depends on what structure you purchased the property in, e.g. trust, Self Managed super, but your definition is correct, and it is taxed on the applicable tax bracket for the financial year.  So if you were a high income earner it would be 46.5 cents of every dollar.  I'm no accountant but that is my understanding in a nutshell if your property is purchased as an investment in your own name.

The interest rate on your house is probably better than what you would get if you but the money anywhere else (i.e. term deposit) so think of it as making you money (by saving you interest), that is more or less what i do and also what Richard is getting at.

Have you been to see a financial adviser at all?  One of the first things they may mention to you is to look into some life insurance and income protection so you are covered with your investments should you be out of work.  On top of this you can shape your portfolio to be as passive or aggressive as you feel comfortable with.  It really depends on what you are looking to gain from your portfolio which should determine how aggressive you choose to be.

Good Luck.

-SSM

If your looking at unit's specifically, in that area, according to API magazine Petrie & Mango Hill are looking good around those parts.  From memory median unit price is closer to 300k however.

Good Luck.

The work to the railway is just one of the many developments that has been approved for redcliffe.  I'm actually watching that area at the moment as an area of interest.  Once the freeway is finished being worked on it will also help with access to the city from redcliffe which could also help.  I would hold, but my goals aren't as aggressive as some and i have the time to to wait it out.