Forum Replies Created
Hi Onewayup,
We live in Europe as well having moved recently from Perth. We are about to settle on our first IP bought from here. I started researching in about June and we have ended up using a buyers agent. There are a few out there who will basically organise it all for you (for a fee obviously). You need to work out what you want from your investing which is usually the hard part.
Have you got finance sorted? A few of the posters are in this game and can help you with this.
Use the search features of the forum to look for buyers agents, expats, investing overseas etc.
PM me if you want some more details but it can all be found.
Nothings too hard if you want it enough.
Good luck,
Thomas
LVR is Loan to Value ratio, ie how much are you borrowing. For a lot of lenders the 80% limit is where you start paying mortgage insurance so it’s a fwe grand on top of the purchase price, often why people talk about 20% deposits. As an expat I initially was only being offered 70%, so had to come up with 30% deposit through cash or equity to avoid mortgage insurance. You can get much higher loans but it won’t be as cheap, you’ll pay mortgage insurance or a higher rate of interest.
Thomas
Hi Zaksta,
We wanted to travel but having big loans and working in Australia makes it expensive, so we are now living and working overseas. I see this as a way to have our cake and eat it too. But, buy your house before you leave, get the FHOG and then get someone in to rent it out. Once OS you can pick up the cheap deals to travel. Granted you still have to work but you’ll see a lot more than a short holiday and belive me $20,000 Aussie isn’t really a lot of money with the strength of the dollar.
As you’re under 31 you can get visa’s fairly easily to a lot of commonwealth countries for 1 to 2 years.
Look at different ways of making things happen, but I wouldn’t use home equity to fund a short term holiday, that should be used to buy the next IP!
Good luck,
Thomas
Hi Bob,
We have just come to Scotland and in a similar position to yourself, have a PPOR in Perth and wanted to invest through using the equity in the house. We are settling on our first IP from here in the next few weeks, hopefully first of many. Being over here certainly takes some of the emotion out, we used a buyers agent but you need to have an idea of what LVR you can get as an expat. We were able to go to 80% with our current lender as demonstrated that we have strong ties to Australia, Richard may be able to help you get a high LVR loan.
Good luck,
Thomas
Aberdeen, Scotland but from Vic Park in Perth.
Hi Mei,
Maybe not quite canals but you could check out http://www.epra.wa.gov.au this is the site for the East Perth Redevelopment Authority. They cut one inlet there a few years ago where there’s a lot of big houses with price tags to match. Blocks sold for under 200k in early 90’s and houses now over 2 mill. They are planning a big redevelopment of the area near the WACA, mostly apartments I think but they may be doing another inlet/canal type of thing.
Going to take some time a 10 – 15 year plan to have it all done. The redevelopment of the old power station is also part of this.
Hopefully of some help.
Cheers,
Thomas
Currently at about 73%. Have just convinced the bank to allow us to go back up to 80% even though considered an expat and outside their normal criteria – nice to have a win there and not have to pay the stamp duty and exit fees to change!
Getting the PPOR and IP revalued to go for IP number 2 to take us back to 80%. Only beginning so agree with LifeX that nows the time to do it.
If anything been thinking too much about next steps and lack of borrowing rather than what we currently owe.
Thomas
Hi Mallowe,
I think this is great, currently I’m trying to get my head around the next steps to take. Like many others I suspect around the place we took our first steps with a -ve geared property. Now looking deeper into what is the reason for investing? Trying to replace the dependency on a full time job so that time is free to do other things, also if we start a family to replace income and then pay for education etc in the following years.
Found myself recently negotiating with the bank to get access to funds but yet to answer the what to invest in.
Want to go far beyond the level that many stop at with just a second property and feel that I’m ready to take the next step, but a few questions to answer first.
Trying to keep the momentum up so that don’t come back to this point after 12 months of procrastination.
Cheers,
Thomas
I’m also an expat working in the UK. Recently was looking at a deal in Oz and asked my bank about finance. They then told me that for an expat their lend criteria changes to 70% instead of 80%.
We have our PPOR rented out and another -ve geared IP, and would be in the 70-80% range at the moment, I was looking at using equity to buy +ve cashflow but this may throw a spanner in the works.
Does anyone know of any banks/lending insto’s that have an 80% criteria for expats?
Thomas
Hi,
Thanks for the responses. We are going to get a couple more quotes, plus I’m going to look at replacing the old r/c with a cheaper evap and keep the ducting, and also just what a split system would be.
Won’t be rushing into this so we can look at options and decide the best course.
thomasp
Hi,
The place is in East Perth. We’ve had a couple of people look at it and both tell us it is knackered but so far only one quote.
The reason for fixing is mostly to do with renting it again, lease expires in January and the tenants are not intending to stay so trying to make it easier to rent in the middle of summer. Not in a hurry to spend the money and don’t think air con is needed in Perth at the moment (I’m in Scotland and our “summer” is colder than Perth winter, 20 is considered a scorcher!!).
Just tyring to think of options as a full system is expensive and I have the air con people telling me the ducting is not right for r/c but only for evaporative. I am leaning to then just installing an evap unit and using the exisiting ducting. I personally would not like evap but it does the job and as I don’t live there looking at saving money. Only other thing I’m considering is the added value (any opinions on this?) of an r/c versus evap system.
Thanks
Hi Dr X,
Property would be 95k, with rent of 777 per month (9324 pa). Management of 7% (632 pa) and fees of 2823 pa (strata, water, council).
I have had a look at the calculator by jaffasoft and it was marginal. Property in WA for stamp duty.
Also my bank manager told me they won’t use residential equity for a commercial deal, which means I would have to come up with more of my own money.
Thanks.
