paisleylass

Not had this problem, and it would be for the landlord to fix anyway lol, but there are loads of pool repair companies around. One house we looked at to buy needed the pool resurfacing so have been doing my homework!

No recommendations as such, but the name of this lot tickled me! http://www.theleakypoolguys.com.au/

I go to Just Cuts, costs me $29 or thereabouts. They are at most major shopping centres, certainly Garden City and Chermside. It's a turn-up-and-wait system, you don't know who you'll get! I've never had a bad cut, just a couple where I felt maybe not enough cut off. The Japanese lady at Garden City is fantastic, in fact they've all been great there!

Thanks for the input Paul! Wow, what a nice neighbour! A colleague of mine lives in The Gap, and said his retired neighbours who are also good friends do his lawn for him when they are at a loose end - wow!! We could do with a bit of that help, hubby got so sick of mowing, when the mower broke down we hired a gardener rather than get it fixed heehee!

Traffic noise would be a big issue for us, and is what ultimately put us off Nudgee, at least the elevated parts which are not flood prone - noise from the Gateway is awful. Bloody motorbikes!!

We are happy with Aspley, the house and plot sizes are decent for the money, and the walkway around the creek is bush enough for us. Not looking east of Gympie Road though, seems prices are influenced by city views which is not something we are after. One house we saw last week had gorgeous mountain views to the west. Under offer now.

Aspley is also familiar, we have lived in Kedron and Chermside and shopped there often.

As a side note, out of curiosity we went to an open home at a swanky house in Chermside, just round the corner from our old rental. While beautiful inside, view to the front was State School in all its glory, and the fabulous back deck had sweeping views of high rise apartments and cranes. We were handed a sheet of paper listing recent sale prices, all hovering around $1m, clearly indicating the price expectation. We just laughed.

We are using GM Tax. Our first tax return hasn't been finalised yet, will be next month, but communications and advice have been good, and fees are reasonable.

You should be fine but definitely declare! I brought a bag made of tapa cloth back from the USA which I didn't declare and a biosecurity officer spotted it when I got some declared items out of my suitcase. He tapped it over a sheet of paper and, horror, a couple of tiny dead insects fell out!! All good, he neither seized nor fined, just told me to freeze the bag for a couple of hours to be sure. I genuinely didn't know tapa was plant material, and had declared other wood stuff anyway.

Dmjg lol! I had the exact same when we returned from the USA once and had a huge tube of high strength steroid cream! Perhaps it would save everyone's time if the words "(excluding topical skin creams)" were added to the form!

Offer rejected. Fair enough, it's for the best.

Today's wildcard turned out to be a great house, really great potential. But we arrived late and didn't get a lot of time to look around, So will attend next inspection.

So much fun!!

Offer is in on the house we saw last weekend, but we aren't confident as it is low-ish compared to the asking price, but it is consistent with sold prices for similar properties. And we can move a bit if given the chance. But moreover, the couple who had the original offer have 5 days to get their finance sorted if we are accepted, and this feels pretty uncomfortable. It kind of puts us in limbo for a week. It might be best if our offer is rejected and we just walk away.

Off to see two other houses today, one will be a third viewing! Not in as good shape but more spacious and lower asking price. The other is a wild card, not sure from the photos whether it will be for us! But all Aspley, we love the area!

Wow thanks folks, fantastic info! I'm happy with 7 days for finance and inspections, just have to get off my arse and sort it all if accepted!

There is a pool, it's in really good nick and I even inspected the pump/filter/chlorinator being a pool geek heh! But prob worth a look over. I forgot my test strips lol!

Asbestos shouldn't be an issue, house built 1998. So not new, but it's been fabulously well maintained, clearly owner occupied since built.

There is even a cat flap for our furry friend!

Our rental contract is until 1 October, but we can move out slowly and hopefully it will be re-let for the last couple of months of the lease. Not really too worried, at least we'll finally be ploughing cash into our own home.

Wow!

Think we found our house! Went to two home opens today, one in Carseldine and one in Aspley. First house need wayyyy too much doing to bring up to scratch. Second is spot on, ticks every box easily, and should be within budget. There is already one offer conditional on the purchaser selling their house. We have nothing to sell and have finances sorted, so kinda have the edge.

The agent has emailed me a form for making an offer. Mostly it's straightforward, but a couple of things have me puzzled. First, balance deposit $15,000 - due within 2 days of finance or building/pest inspection. What is this? I knew about the $1,000 or so, but thought we just paid the full 20% ahead of settlement?

Related, there is a box re. finance - when? Nil/7 days/14 days. Same again for building /pest inspection. Is this the expected time after having an offer accepted that you expect to have these things approved or carried out?

Many cheers!

I can recommend unblock-us, costs about $6 or 7 a month depending on exchange rate, and has been fantastic, really reliable. I tried a free one for a while which progressively got worse until it started spamming my laptop with porn pop-ups. Better paying a bit for a good service!

Ace! Good job I don't live in Melbourne, I often vacuum during the forbidden hours, especially just before 7am when I leave for work!

Wish that was still for sale Cal, it's my favourite that I've seen, even though we ideally want two-storey! The plot size allows a pretty big lowset. There's another, nowhere near as nice house in the same street now, asking for high 600s. In yer dreams! I would kill to buy a house that nice for the price it sold for!

If i had my time again ,i would have enclosed the pool like we did the patio (best move we made) so it would look something like the pic below. If i was loaded i would have retracting roof,lol

 

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wowwww yes! Love that idea, definitely retracting/side opening if glass roof or it could get nasty in summer heheh.

here's a house I saw go for sale last year, before we were ready to buy. Would have been fab. Pool is enclosed-ish. Not nearly as pretty as the one above but could be tarted up a bit: http://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-qld-carseldine-120389861

Thanks tink! Maybe I'm jumping the gun before we even have a pool, and best thing is to get some pool expert types out to assess our situation and get quotes. On the surface, the electric pump sounds best (esp. if we have solar power), but there may be more to it.

In winter it will purely be for exercise, and probably just me using it. I'm a tough cookie when it comes to getting out, did just that when it was 4 degrees at 6am once at Chermside, while the water aas a balmy, steamy 27 degrees. No problem!

Main thing is to get a guaranteed 27-28 degrees in winter.

Thanks folks, we really do want year-round use, I used to go to Chermside pool early mornings in winter and yes it was painful getting out but short-lived discomfort! Much less of an issue at weekends for daytime use anyway. It's really for exercise, I missed swimming so much last winter it was pretty depressing!

Using a heated public pool isn't ideal as we no longer live a short walk from one and probably won't be at our next place. I can't drive. And anyway, I got sick of super-swimmers jumping in my lane, to "share" with a slow messer-abouter like me! Always had to get out and go home.

Not an issue buying a pump, there is budget for it, but retrofitting and ongoing costs may be a different matter!

As another swimming season nears its end (cry!), I'm considering our options when we buy a house, which will be soon. One thing is not optional - we will have a pool! But I'm researching how to heat a pool for year-round use.

Currently we rent a house with a 4x8m pool with solar heating, and use a bubble style pool blanket. However, experience tells me that solar heating will not give us year-round use in SE QLD. Last year I didn't swim at all June-August and near froze my toes off in May and Sept!

So it looks like a better option would be electric heat pump. If we also have solar power and run it in the day, running costs shouldn't be extortionate?!?! Obviously we'd use a thermal blanket too, to avoid losing all the heat overnight.

Anyone have experience using this method of pool heating? Is there a better alternative? What about retrofitting an existing pool?

Cheers!

Have a look at UBank too. Which is owned by NAB but fully online.

There rates are very good.

 

I think ING's cash back on paypass transactions may only be for 6 months ? But it does sound good.

 

Just compare to ubanks savings rate and mortgage rate also.

had a look and I think ING has the edge, with all its other features. The SVR is a little higher than ubank discounted, but with all the other cashback gubbins I think it's slightly better for us. And at least psychologically, I prefer offset to redraw, cos the money is kept separate. With redraw I'd feel a bit like we were nicking money from the house heheh.

cheers lastonealive, that's a good recommendation to have, I have seen bad reviews of ING online, but then there are worse for NAB who we've found great!

My loan is with NAB and redraw is simple. You just transfer it within Internet Banking. Minimum redraw is $2000.

 

I am very happy with NAB.

I like NAB and service has been great with one cockup in 4 years, when rent bpay went out late. But the other option we're looking at (ING Orange everyday + advantage mortgage + savings maximiser) has so many pluses and savings for us, we'd be daft not to go for it. For example savings interest would be double what we get with NAB, though that won't be an issue once we draw down mortgage. 1% cash back on mortgage repayments - not much per month but worth having! And cash back on paywave and cashout transactions. Not to mention 0.24% lower mortgage interest. All up we'd be a couple of k a year better off, which is worth having.

Considering opening a joint account with ING, having one salary paid in, transferring savings over but keeping NAB open for a while as the other salary account, to make sure ING isn't actually rubbish!

Yup, I had an early discussion with NAB about mortgage options yesterday, and it turns out their best interest rate is the basic variable rate. No offset, but also no fees and redraw available. So if you were to whack all savings into the mortgage account, it has a similar effect to offsetting, and you can use that money anytime by transferring.

However NAB's lowest rate is not the best around, so we'll keep looking.

Hopefully by the time interest rates rise significantly, we'll have halved the mortgage or better, so won't be too painful.

Am looking at the ING bank account and mortgages. They have an offset account that is low fee and interest rates good. Even get cash back on paypass, cash out and mortgage payments. Verrry interesting!

Our strategy is to avoid wasting money on interest and things like LMI wherever possible. For now we earn interest (but pay tax on it, boo!), in future when we have a mortgage, we earn no interest but save on paying a higher interest rate, and no tax to pay. Sweet. Just gotta find a low-fee offset mortgage!

We've spent easter weekend in Melbourne a couple of times and found businesses as usual for pubs on a good friday! None of this silly having to buy food and must drink up within an hour or whatever. Great day for a crawl with our Melbourne friends!

Just realised my post makes Australian property sound hideously expensive, which it kind of is! But the standard of house we plan to buy is in a different world from our old ex-council mid terrace, and we are looking at a good bit above median prices. Plus the stamp duty will be a killer.

When we moved to Australia, we had about £15k in savings. Took us about 5 years to scrape that together. Sent £5k to Aus and left the rest behind, which completely got swallowed up by renting our house out and making up the equity shortfall when we had to remortgage. Plus sent nearly $30,000 back which also diseappeared into that money-pit house.

In spite of that, we have saved enough in 4 years in Australia to pay a 20% deposit on a house plus other costs, with some left for nice furniture etc. And we plan to have an offset mortgage as the savings will build up again after buying a house.

Put it another way, we have saved enough in 4 years to have bought our UK house outright, with a good sum to spare!

In conclusion, we've been able to save loads more here in Australia, and not skimping on anything at all, if we want to go somewhere we go. If we want to buy something we buy it, cash.