Thanks for the advice everyone! I just have a few more follow-up questions.

1. Regarding the idea of creative financing for my first IP. Since I’m still a student, most of my income is from a non-taxable scholarship that runs out in mid 2013. This is non-taxable and by ATO standards is not even considered income. My actual taxable income is only around 10k pa. I’m guessing this would hurt my ability to secure financing. Is there any way around this? Or do I just have to wait it out until I get a “real job”.

2. Also, given that my next purchase will be my first, I want to use the first homeowners grant. However, as I understand it, if I use this, I have to live in the property for 6 months. My problem is that I live in the western suburbs of Perth and will need to stay around here while I’m studying. This is not anywhere close to a positive cashflow area. But I don’t want to compromise my strategy of trying to achieve positive cashflow. Are there any loopholes that will allow me to use the first homeowners grant to purchase an IP?

3. I’ve been trying to follow Margaret Lumas’ strategy in the 20 Questions book. I’m finding question number one very time-consuming, She says to do a search within your price range of the entirety of australia, and keep any suburbs or towns within 20-30 minutes of a centre of at least 50k. For the other people out there who are using this strategy, are you all literally just going through the suburbs one-by-one, seeing how far it is from the nearest urban centre and then making the decision of whether or not to keep it? Surely there is an easier way! I’ve been trying to find a real estate search engine that lets you search within a given radius (e.g. 30k) of a city, but have not much luck. What is everyone else doing?

Cheers,

T