Capital Gains Tax exemption

Hi

I'm an infrequent lurker of this forum but I think this is my first post. I hope you can help me and my questions are simple enough.

Is it true that if you have moved out of a property that you were using as your principle place of residence that you are exempt from paying capital gains tax for the next 6 years if you are renting it out? I have a property which I bought and lived in for the first 16 or so months and then moved out. I am assuming that this is enough that if I sell it within the next month that I shouldnt have to pay any CGT. Is that correct?

Unfortunately the property has been vacant the whole time I have moved out which is almost 3.5 months now and has been for sale for almost 3.5 weeks of that. If it does not sell this weekend then we are forced to move back into it. I just want to make sure I am not liable to pay any CGT on the small chance I get a sale as that was my understanding.

Secondly, the last few months has been a total nightmare for me. It was my first property purchase and I was going well with the grants, the capital growth and extra repayments I had put in, to give me some good equity. The property is located in Scarborough, qld, which I have had for a year and a half now. My partner and I decided to move back to Brisbane and so contacted some local real estate agents. We went with Realway from Redcliffe, who told me that she would get me a tenant in 4-6 days and I guess my inexperience in renting out and lack of knowledge of the current market showed here as I believed her. 2 months later I ended my listing with her as she had only got 1 person to inspect the property in that entire time and even dropped the price by $100 a week with no results. At this point she told me she had not leased anything in 3 months… which meant that when she spoke to me first she had not leased anything for a month already… and yet she still told me the market was good and she could quickly get me a tenant. I wonder if there is anything I can do about this obvious lie as it has now cost me about $8000 and a truckload of stress. About 4 weeks after the first listing and with no results I contacted Rental Express who listed the property for me. Unfortunately they had no results as well although they were a lot more professional and were upfront with me about the current rental market condition at the time.

The whole thing has left a very bad taste in my mouth about real estate agents and a little about property. I am still very determined to build a property portfolio but such a bad experience hasn't helped anything. I went from a very strong position (relative to what I once was) to having 0 money in the bank, credit card building up and using cash from my loan to cover my repayments.

I know I am partly to blame, due to my inexperience and my own decisions to go ahead with this but I guess I am also wondering if there is anything that can be done to hold an agent accountable when they are dishonest about such things? Surely when real estate is their industry, they should know the condition of the market and be able to advise clients honestly what it is?

As a side note, my background is that I first read Steve's book in January 2008… 2.5 years ago. At the time I was 26, living in a share house in Brisbane, working full time and generally not saving anything. The book really turned my life around (not that I had a bad life before…) because at that point I decided I really wanted to get into property. 12 months later I had saved $30k and my property purchase settled with the help of the $21k grant. I attribute that to the book and I have recently received the updated edition which I will be reading quite soon.

Thanks for reading and if you can help with my 2 questions I would be most grateful.

Cheers

Luke