You generally only get a pro-rata refund of LMI if you are paying out a loan ( or refinancing) within the first 2 years. upto 50% within 1 year or 20% within 2 years, and the time starts from the date the loan was approved, not from the day that the loan was funded.
If the gifted property is not security over the loan then no.

The V in LVR stands for value. It’s difficult to for a lender to lend 80% if they do not know what the V is.
Many institutions will however lend 80% of the purchase price of a property. The purchase price may not necessarily equal the Value if they were to do an independent valuation. This is particulary true where there may be rental guarantees etc where the seller has effectively upped the price to cover the guatantee. Or you really have come across a bargin/ discount, maybe settled early to help the seller.

Mal

Getting out of your comfort zone, can help you become comfortable

Wayne,

Give an agent a call, and ask for a contract on a particular place.

I suggested 4870 because, sometimes its cheaper to order reports by postcode, and 4870 covers a big chunk of cairns. Here is a list of surrounding postcodes/ suburbs.

4868
Bayview Heights, Mount Sheridan , Tarrawarra, White Rock, Woree

4869
Bentley Park, Centenary Park, Edmonton, Mount Peter, Tamarind Gardens, Wrights Creek

4870
Aeroglen , Barron Gorge , Brinsmead ,Bungalow ,Cairns City , Cairns North ,Earlville , Edge Hill, Freshwater, Kamerunga ,Kanimbla ,Lamb Range ,Manoora ,Manunda , Mooroobool , Parramatta Park ,Portsmith ,Redlynch ,Stratford ,Westcourt ,White Rock , Whitfield

4878- 4879 are the northern beaches Yorkeys Knob, Trinity Beach, etc

Mal

Getting out of your comfort zone, can help you become comfortable

I don’t believe discounting in this case refers to the time value of money.
Dicounting used in relation to the other stats that are provided usually refers to the average discount that private treaty property was sold for in relation to the original asking price. Eg if a house advertised for $500000 sells for $470000 the discount would be 6%.
Have a look at an API magazine. Where it has the Auction clearance rates it usually has other market stats at a state level, two of these are Avg days on market and avg private treaty discount.

Mal

Getting out of your comfort zone, can help you become comfortable

I suggest using a broker, It’s in there best interest to find you an insurer.
You may be paying a small premium each year, but when something goes wrong the broker does the hard work on your behalf with a claim. I use Austbrokers, and they have been pretty helpful with my recent fire claim. Don’t know if they have anyone in your area, and not all brokers handle all types of insurance but you can check out austbrokers.com.au for more info.

Mal

Getting out of your comfort zone, can help you become comfortable

Hi Dr X,

As all my properties are interstate, I simply can’t attend to quotes or perform required work myself. I pay a property manager to do this. I also have a PPOR with a mortgage, i.e. personal debt.
What frustrates me is that even after talking to the property manager requesting that I be billed directly for works, that they deduct it from rent received.

They simply do not understand the benefit to me to borrow the cost of expenses as apposed to having it deducted from the rent. Say my Management and other expenses that are deducted from rent is totals $5000 pa. , If I we to borrow this expense then there would be $5000 in my mortgage and as I could borrow the expense I’d have the interest on the $5000 as a deduction. at 7.5% that is a $375 decuction that I cannot claim. It may not sound like much but after say 5 years if this expense stayed the same, then the deductible debt would now be $25000 and the decuction would be $1875. pa.

I would ultimately have the same debt, just that the % of Deductible investment debt to Total debt would be increased and non deductible personal debt decreased. How many people on this forum have asked how can they legitimately move personal debt to investment debt ? heaps, and this is an effective, although slow, way of doing it, but the compounding effect achieves the outcome if it’s implemented early on.

At worst have in place a policy that as client can specify a dollar value of an invoice that should be billed to them directly, rather than taken from rent. This obviously does not apply to many investors, however those with significant personal debt, it would.

Make is a policy to include a recommended rent value at the same time as periodic inspections done by the property manager. This will highlight any material variance to yourselves the owner. It’s in both parties interest that rent be kept at market value.

Good luck with it.

Mal

Getting out of your comfort zone, can help you become comfortable

Check out this months (August) Australian Property Investor, there is a Investor Profile on a guy who is into Industrial Property, Dazz I believe his alias is. Land content is always the big part of the deal for him. Cheers Dazz, it’s good to put a face to the attitude.

Mal

Getting out of your comfort zone, can help you become comfortable

The wife and I few from Sydney to Perth to do up Rental house in April, as tenant moving out + wanted to top up loan.

Previous lease when 1st purchased, <1 year earlier , 85 calls to check out the property externally in 2 weeks only 2 interested parties to view internally both wanted it straight away, once they had seen inside. I declined both based on references. Found someone the following week to move in a week later. 4 weeks untenanted on purchase.

Or intention was to make the place more appealing from the street.

Mulched Gardens, cut back dead palm fronds on large trees, cut back other larger shrubs $30. Ripped out dead plants and put on succulants $50. Cleared all cobwebs from eaves. Painted fibro fence visible from the street $60. Replaced flyscreens $60. Replaced ugly/ missing light fitting internally + externally. Painted carport woodwork. $50
We purchased basic gardening tools there and left them for the tenant to use. $40.

2 Prospective tenants viewed the property the day after we finished, both wanted the place, signed a tenant the same day at an extra $20pw.

Valuation for loan topup, was 34% above purchase price 10-11 monthe earlier. First impressions make a big difference.

Got home to find I’d had a fire in a Unit in QLD…. D’oh.

Mal

Getting out of your comfort zone, can help you become comfortable

Col,

I’m in Sydney and bought in perth 12 months ago. I wasn’t really looking for CP+ property, I was after capital gains, but basically I did my homework on areas over there for a couple of months, then arranged finance, then jumped on a plane a went looking houses in the areas I’d researched.
I didn’t end up liking the area’s I’d been researching when I got there. I (I really mean we, the wife was there also) ended up completely in the opposite direction, spending a couple of days doing about 25 Open House inspection, chating with numerous real estate agents on Saturday and Sunday.
We agreed on the place we liked (plent of the 20 or so other groups through liked it also and were already making plans on where things were to go in the house, and replacing this fence with a gate to get the boat in, and so on..,) , the vendor wanted it sold as a previous contract had recently fallen over due to finance and the vendor had already moved into a new house. I had pre-approval which makes them happy and put in a serious offer that I doubted would get knocked back, but I was happy to pay and a settlement date slightly shorter than the standard. The agent knows we are from Sydney and are jumping on a plane in and hour and a half and wont be back. I signed on the dotted line at about 3pm and was on a plane home at about 4:30pm. I get a call about midnight back in Sydney to say the offer has been accepted. A recent valuation indicates that we’ve made 30+% capital gain less than 12months.

Some tips.
1. The real deals aren’t done on the web, just the research.
2. The numbers and the research might be good, but until you have been to a place you just can’t be too sure.
3. When driving around to heaps of open houses in a short period of time in a city/town you don’t know, take a navigator to look at the street directory while you drive, plus take something to drink and eat because you will probable forget to stop for it, or just wont have time.
4. Have your finances sorted out, to allow you to do a deal on the spot if you find that good deal.
5. Talk to all the real estate agents that you can, they are a wealth of knowledge and give information away that you would otherwise be happy to pay for, but just don’t know where to get it.
6. Get hold of a standard WA Contract of Sale and read to before you go, It’s not conditional on a building report like in Sydney, so be prepared to stick additional conditions into the contract if you feel that you need them.
7. Get some real estates to send you their Property Management Terms, Conditions and Prices schedules, you may be suprised at what is not included in there management fees, over there.

Mal

Getting out of your comfort zone, can help you become comfortable

I use Prime Realty at Joondalup and have found them to be very good. They service the North Coast.

http://www.primerealty.com.au

Mal

Getting out of your comfort zone, can help you become comfortable