State of Affairs, October 2014

They say variety is the spice of life and so it has come to be for my family over the last few months. Throughout the last 4 years or so I've often blogged about the tiny little insignificant thing called 'life' that often gets in the way of my ambitious investing strategy and again, it has proven so.

A few thing then. We have sold our PPOR in Toowoomba. Sentiment in the Garden City boomed after the airport announcement and, when news of the bypass started spreading, the proporty market went into a sort of weird piranha-like eating frenzy where everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING, was getting snapped up quick smart. We jumped on the bandwagon and surprise, surprise, we ended up about $20,000 ahead of my best-case-scenario amount when it came time to order the removal truck. It took a grand total of 3 days to sell our comfortable home and I have to thank Ray White Toowoomba for the wonderful job they did for us. 

Just prior to this, we also bought a modest, tiny little three bedder in Caboolture. Remember that little thing called 'life' I was talking about? Well, when the planets aligned nicely for me to leave my job, this little Caboolture residence was (somewhat) ideal to shift into. And, it came to be, that after a short stint in a govy provided residence, we moved again. 

Kicking out the tenant was a whole new world of pain. I won't go too much into detail, but let's just say that SOME property managers have no idea what they are doing (shock horror) and in reality, since we began our investment journey back in 2004, this was the first time we were left with a very sour taste in our mouths. Luckily it all worked out satisfactorily in the end, but it was a close call. 

Caboolture is an acquired taste. The house itself is tiny and we are surrounded by EVERY neighbour having a dog, which of course is not a real confidence booster. On the plus side, we won't need a dog. The clientèle is very much mixed, low and medium socio-economic families, single mums and a lot of renters. Our street seems leafy enough, quiet so far and, the best part of it all, it's a hell of a convenient location. Besides, we've lived in Kingston in the Logan area south of Brisbane and we survived that experience. 

So where does this leave our portfolio? 

We are still in the process of consolidating. We have:

PPOR: Caboolture (QLD), 3 bedroom brick and tile, small suburban block.   

IP 1: Launceston/Invermay (TAS), 3 bedroom plus sleepout, tiny historical block of 405sqm, weatherboard, competitively rented with some renos completed mid last year. On the market, but no bites. 

IP 2: Ingham (QLD), 5 bedroom typical fibro, undesirable street, on the market, DEFINITELY no bites, but we can hang onto it as it's also strongly rented. Both of these IPs are just negatively geared. 

IP 3: Glen Aplin (QLD), small block near Stanthorpe, on the market but again, no bites. There has been some movement in the area where our block is and if the street is finally developed from dirt to asphalt, we may be in luck to make a tidy little profit. A lot of little houses popping up around our block. 

All of these are becoming very hard to move. Ingham is floody, Tasmania has a job crisis and the Glen Aplin block has it's challenges to develop. Hopefully we have a win on one of these soon. 

Upgrade Part 2

Yesterday we had a few hours to kill so we went and had a look at a property on our "upgrade" radar. 

Here is a link to it on re.com.au. 

We had mixed feelings. Yeah, it has four acres, but it's sloping away. 

It's in a great spot close to Toowoomba CBD, but it's next to a dry creek bed. 

It had plenty of bedrooms and a study, but it's hardyplank. 

It has a large kitchen, straight from the 80s. 

So it was mixed thoughts. Prooobably a no goer. Your thoughts?

Sweat Sweat Sweat, Toowoomba Edition!

Wow, this latest heat wave has really hit home here in Toowoomba and even I, the official air con Nazi, has had to yield. 

I just finished saying how climate doesn't really influence house prices, yet, here we are in a town often referred to as "the fridge on the ridge" melting like snowmen taking in a sauna. So I suppose the climate up here on the Toowoomba range is no different to anywhere else is South East Queensland, although I do have to say, the humidity is not as high as it was in Brissie when I was down there a few days ago. 

On the plus side to all this warm weather is the fact that my front garden, the one that will ultimately provide SOME street appeal  come sale time (I say 'some' because the house is only kind of appealing form the front, no matter what gardens will be in place) is going great guns. My hedging plants are doing well and I'm contemplating putting up a small  hedge boundary, as we have open council strip front gardens on my side of the street and I don't really like this concept much. 

"Permission to land in Toowoomba."

I wish it was a bit cooler so I could go and do a bit of gardening outside...maybe after New Year. 

In other news, it dawned on me that my little nuclear family is staying in this house for at least another year, if not longer. Not a bad thing, but it does mean that I can go ahead and try to make our house a bit more homely for the year ahead. I'm installing more permanent storage, looking at setting up the backyard for the kiddies a bit better and generally trying to fit into this house a lot more. 

Ciao.