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?

Brisbane Property Market: The Outskirts

And the winner is: Housing Commission House of the Year, 2012

Recently I've had a fascination with trying to secure a cheap property in one of the fringe suburbs of Brisbane. When I mean 'fringe', I mean fringe. I mean 'fringe' like Caboolture, Moronfield, Kingston or Woodridge. These aren't technically "Brisbane" but they are not far away. It's the type of suburbs that are chosen by those who couldn't be bothered; just a place to live, no McMansions around here. 

And the entry prices are dropping. I mean $220,000 dropping. This is good news for me, as I'm in the 'couldn't be bothered' category at this stage of my life and I live in a Toowoomba suburb in such a house. So the question is, should I buy? Are these properties worth it? Is an investment NOW in one of these 'burbs  going to pay dividends in, let's say, 5 years? 

All very tough questions with unfortunately ambiguous answers. Stay tuned, I may be reporting a new acquisition soon.

Are prices getting cheaper or are we paying too many peanuts?

When it comes to house prices across this great brown land, there are many sources of confusion in today's mad media world. Are prices going up, are they stagnant, are my farts stagnant? Unfortunately there are contradicting thoughts coming from different commentators and nothing is as clear as they were lets say 10 years ago.

Prices get an erection, prices go limp...

The suburbs that I'm watching are no help either. One suburb in Tasmania seems to be on the up up and away, yet another suburb in Brisbane is probably THE definition of 'stable'. Reading into these two suburbs is a bit silly, it does however show that different markets still operate amongst not only our states, but within our cities and even sometimes within a suburb on different streets. 

If I try to sum up all that is going on with buying an investment property right now, I would say do A LOT OF RESEARCH. I don't mean like hours and hours on the internet, I mean days and days and weeks and weeks until you realise that you are doing the "haven't had a shower for a while and the skin on your arse is starting to rot from your computer chair" type of research. 

There are bargains out there everywhere at the moment, it's just a matter of picking the right suburb to go with it for future growth. 

Happy hunting.

Property Investing in 2011

I have been wondering for a while whether investors in 2011 are active. As no doubt you know the market is having a breather and there are A LOT of properties for sale. So, I posed the question on Somersoft and here are the results:

As you can see, 11% of people who have read my post are still buying, and not just one, but multiple properties. In fact, some are buying whole complexes and one investor has bought 14! He is an exception, but 44% of respondents have purchased already up to June. This does mean that 56% are either sitting on their hands, consolidating, offloading, or going bankrupt.

There is much to read into this data. If we do in fact have almost half the investing population still active, this should echo the sentiment of real estate agents, who, as far as I've experienced in my investing regions, are all saying the market is flat, only JUST becoming a little bit busy. So now I'm confused; is the market flat, or is the market busy, and perhaps more importantly, is the market moving ahead?

While I don't tend to analyse this area too much (as I believe property markets move ahead for medium to long term investors, which I believe I am), if the market is flat, now is the time for investors to pick up bargains. Now is the time to see if, even at 7% interest rates, you can find cf+ properties. Now is the time to see if an investor can try to penetrate inner city, or exploit regional/rural areas. It makes sense for cashed-up investors to be active, to put in ridiculous below market offers to see if they can catch a beauty.

Until next time!

realestate.com.au: PLEASE WORK!

I don't know about you, but I love the 'Map' feature on re.com.au, which has now been around for quite some time. What I ABSOLUTELY HATE about it, is when I choose to limit to 4 bedrooms, that's right, 4, and i get a gazillion 3 bedroom properties. That's right, 3. So what gives?

Please fix this re.com.au, I love the new functionality, but something this simple needs to be addressed.

Buying a PPOR - emotional stuff.

The time has come to buy not a house, but a home. A place that we will live in for a while, a place that we can shape and mold over the years to make it our own. To give you an idea, I'm already looking at iPad wall mounts for our kitchen so that Melinda can use it as a recipe book. THAT SERIOUS.

So we've been looking around Toowoomba and to tell you the truth, house prices haven't changed much since we put a contract on a rental back in 2007. Luckily the sale fell through, I doubt we could get much more for it now. We're in the market for a 4 bedroom place, not a big yard, somewhere near a park and easy commute to my work. We are also thinking that this may still be a 'transition' house; a house that we will be in for about 3-4 years, before buying something even more to our liking.

I have made peace with one aspect of my current stage in life. I do not want a big back yard. Not now. I am busy enough. I have other stuff to do on the weekends, rather than spend countless hours gardening (even though I do love it).

So this one decision has taken a huge factor out of buying a house; the size of land.

We will most likely end up on a 600 square block, which, now, is fine with me.

realestate.com.au just got more wicked!!!

I'm sure some of you may have noticed the cool new functions that www.realestate.com.au have slowly rolled out over the past few months.

My favourite so far has to be the "reviews" section. Not only can I now read about the awesomeness of a town, but thanks to some realistic individuals, we can all find out about the crap side of things as well. Upon clicking on a listing, voile, the towns score, based on feedback, is revealed. You can then click the relevant links to see more, get into the nitty gritty of a suburb/town to get a REAL feel. For example, I LOVE Toowong, a smallish mainly university occupied suburb not far from St Lucia (Brisbane). I have been looking for units there, but upon reading the reviews, I was surprised to hear about how bad traffic had gotten recently, which I hadn't really thought of much. So in essence, it's a great tool, especially for investors.

On the flip side, this could mean the end of little towns. Why you ask? A lot of the little towns I have checked out have very unfavorable reviews, mainly of course because of a lack of jobs and/or facilities. This may, and I must stress, MAY, drop house values, reduce the attention of investors, put a negative on "spin," which the real estate so often rely on, etc. etc.

Let's hope this isn't the case and hope that we get balanced opinions...

Something interesting for us all...

If you're like me, you like KFC. But if you're also like me, you will also like numbers. This may be handy for some of you:

Except for that one Sydney suburb for units, this shows how difficult it is to acquire positive geared IPs in inner rings of the major three...

For all of the capitals, click here.

Just a reminder...

For those of you who have not seen my website, www.ozmadeshop.com.au is "packed full of information" about property investing. In reality, it's just a crappy new site that you may find useful. Let's call it a "mini portal". The one part that I did want everyone to know about it the "properties to consider" section, where i have personally picked a few properties which I believe, yes, I, just an everyday joe, that may be suitable for investing. I personally would buy these, but my current LVR does not let me. Real estate such as the ones on this page are what people often refer to as "bread and butter", typical easy maintenance or easy reno and are sitting within the market, not outrageously cheap, not too expensive.

Have fun everyone....let's ride the waves together....

The Great Aussie Dream....or is it?

My mind often wonders off at little tangents and this morning, I contemplated home ownership, which, as most of us know, is often referred to as the "Great Aussie Dream." Home ownership is great. It's your little world, yours to mould into whatever you desire, a reflection of how you want to live and the things you like. On the other hand, I really do wonder about the modern version of what this so called "dream" really is.

While Australia has suddenly, since 2000ish, been at the receiving end of economic prosperity, a lot of people now call Australia home, but I contemplate what sort of home.

For example; a lot of people, especially new immigrants, rent. The Aussie dream is not alive for these people. Those fortunate enough to have bought and paying off a mortgage, the dream is coming to life, but what sort of dream? I mean, seriously, what is the average dream property for Australians? To me, it seems to be the 3,1,1 (3 bedroom, 1 bathroom, 1 living area), or the 4,2,2 (4 bedroom, bath/ensuite and 2 living areas) which, on the face of it, seems great. The part I have trouble with is the size of the land. I mean seriously, does the Great Aussie Dream (GAD) involve a 600 square block of dirt, or even worse that I have seen recently, 420 or 330? What about terrace living? I mean, who really wants to live in a place where you can't go outside to have a fart or burp, without 8 of your neighbouring house dwellers hearing it? That is my definition of virtually no provacy. It's hell.

You see I have a problem with this. Australia is a vast, untapped country, with cazzillions of acres right across each State. So why do we end up in a house with a backyard where the dog has to strategically pick where it shits just so it doesn't step in it when walking around? And further, guess how much we are paying for these blocks, just for the convenience of urban living? Big money...

On the other hand, I have just completed, for fun, a little research in areas that are not in urban hell, but in a place where the GAD can become a true reality. For example, you can buy 100 acres in outback Queensland for about $150,000....with power and a bore. Why are these sitting there idle, no interest and no one buying, yet a 600 square hell block for 250K in urbania gets snapped up faster than I can say, STOP!??? I mean, I myself do the same thing, but why am I scared to buy in rural areas?

Have we became a fully urban nation? Is the convenience of having things at your fingertips that important? Obviously, or I wouldn't be having this rant. But I challenge the need for 99% of the population to live in suburbs rather than Aussies spreading their wings and looking for land. There is soooo much out there, un-used, left alone, forgotten.

The GAD, is living in hell. The GAD is dead. Long live land.

www.realestate.com.au has changed a bit....

Nothing Earth-shattering, but a slight change to the layout, colours and font has given our favourite online property listing website a mini-facelift. I still think that a keyword search would be great, but you see, that would make too much sense...and now I see that www.domain.com.au has got rid of it's keyword search too....bugger.

Anyway, it's the same old same old, but somehow new....

Online treasure hunt the way to property.

When I am not hunting KFC, I am usually on my computer either playing chess or searching for property. Therefore, I am not surprised that most investors do the same. This poll, while sadly not including "Over-hearing a bargain deal discussed at KFC" shows that investors, on the whole are lazy SOBs who sit in front of a computer (like me) and search and search and search.

I was always under the impression that the really successful investors have real estate agent friends who "alert" them to properties, even before they hit the market. While this may still hold, it appears most search online for bargains.