paisleylass

We are finally in a position to buy our own place, yay! We have enough cash for a 20% deposit and other costs like stamp duty, looking for a house on approx 600sqm with at least space for a pool, if not an existing one.

We are currently in a rental contract until October, and plan to go viewing houses just after our holiday in June, and maybe just before the holiday. But I am already combing realestate for suburbs of interest, and seeing what houses have sold for. It's interesting to see some lovely ones go for a similar price to crappy looking houses!!

We are looking northside - maybe Aspley, Carseldine, Chermside West, McDowall and over at Nudgee, Banyo, Sandgate (may be out of reach), Deagon. Flood maps are coming in handy as parts of the latter 4 can get a bit damp!

Anyone here been in the buying market in Brisbane lately? We only know folk who bought years ago! I'm hoping it won't be wildly competitive. I won't talk figures but we should be able to afford at the nicer end rather than the lower priced places that get snapped up as investments or developments.

Oh, and auctions are a no-no, we just want a normal sale. Do you just make an offer over the phone to the real estate? In Scotland it was all done through a solicitor!

My super scheme has a free mortgage broker service, so will book an appointment soon.

Any advice or tales of experience welcome! Cheers!!

All very well while you are working, but a bad idea to be heading into retirement or unemployment as a renter only.

 

Also, I think it is always more expensive to buy a home than rent a similar home.

That is to be expected actually or everyone would buy rather than rent.

Hopefully won't come to that, but we are also aware we should avoid having too much to our names by the time we die as we have no close younger relatives to bequeath to. I despise equity release schemes but maybe we'd have to go that avenue. We would have to spend a lot of money in a short time haha!

Not quite true that it should necessarily be cheaper to rent, many struggle to save a 20% deposit in the first place. I believe that once you have put down such a large sum, the mortgage should be at most equivalent to rent. I'm not even including rates, water, maintenance and other costs renters don't pay.

We will buy, but the proportion that house prices have outgrown earnings is awful and very unfair to owner occupiers. I would like to see less favourable conditions for investors, and it has already started with interest rates.

As for the oversupply of apartments, I read yesterday that the problem will be particularly bad in Brisbane due to the relative size of the market. On the same page, an article about a horrible new development planned for Kangaroo Point clifftops, which will ruin the landscape. Also, an apartment-only 'city' is planned for Ipswich. Every day more plots snapped up for development. Houses disappear, ugly high rises replace. The warnings are clear, but developers seem blind to them.

100% agree petals. We are soon to buy our first house in Aus, and absolutely will NOT downgrade for the sake of owning. We live (renting) in a 4 bed standalone house with pool and it is completely affordable. It is crazy that it will be a squeeze to afford to buy a similar property. But we don't want an apartment, town house or even a skinny standalone on a 400sqm block with a crappy strip of grass at the back.

We would rather rent forever than downgrade, which unfortunately is what the investor-biased establishment wants.

I don't know about shipping, but when travelling with cremated remains you need to have them with you as hand luggage and not check in. It's also useful to have documents but I've travelled twice with ashes and staff have been discreet and sensitive and not asked to see anything.

It won't be uncommon, so please don't feel embarrassed about asking shippers, but if unaccompanied then you will probably have to declare on a form.

M&S now has an Australian site! Free delivery over $50 and local returns :-)

Silks curry sauces with spice pot from Aldi are the closest we've had to the curries we ate in the UK. Jalfrezi and dopiaza both delicious, just add meat or veggies. They also briefly did a gorgeous rogan josh for a while. $2.99 each, not bad at all :cute:

Fish and chips at Gilhooleys in Brisbane CBD are the best I've had in Australia! I don't much like British style chips either, way too greasy!

Well both my parents died long before I moved to Australia, so that wasn't an issue. My only remaining relative was my younger brother, who came out to visit twice. He died suddenly last year, which was absolutely gutting. But I have no regrets, on those visits we probably spent more time together than if I was still in the UK.

I feel sick cos if we had transferred all our dosh last week we'd have been a few thousand $$$ better off! Cry! Reluctant to move it now...!

I feel sick!!

I think we'll wait. We start house hunting late June/early July after our holiday - we're in Hawaii for the referendum! Hope I still get to use my postal vote!! We have enough funds for deposit, the remainder is for renos/adding pool - or topping up the deposit if we find somewhere perfect but more expensive!

It's a tough call and risky, but interest earned in Aus wouldn't compete with a more favourable exchange rate!

Well David and most of his cabinet are backing staying in the EU, I suspect Boris Johnson's stance will be influential when he reveals his hand.

A move back to the levels we saw last August would make a huge difference to the sum we can transfer over, enough to buy a load of nice furniture or reno a kitchen when we buy a house! Gonna be a tense few months!

Doesn't the ERC diminish over time? We had a 3 year fixed rate, and the penalty reduced each year until it hit zero when the fixed term expired.

In terms of timing, our tenants disappeared in April so we thought great, good time to sell up. Except it took several weeks to get all the repairs and cleaning done. So we finally got the house marketed late July, and got an offer for full home report value three days later. That was last year. So it was past the 'prime' selling season, but we still did good. Plenty of people out there not tied to school terms etc.

To some people a dog is just a dog. But to others that dog is like a child. A major part of the family. Kelly go home to your parents, bring your fur baby and when you get on your feet in the future look at paying back your loans. I wish you all the best.

 

And dont take to heart what people say here. Some people might find it hard to empathize with other people.

My thoughts precisely. A pet is a family member, at least to those who care enough about the pet. The expense of shipping the dog is a priority.

Jeez, I can't imagine being without my cat! I would sell everything I own to have him with me.

As long as you take thyroxine supplements to regulate your metabolism you shouldn't put weight on unless (like me) you simply eat too much! I had my whole thyroid removed due to cancer and take 200mcg thyroxine a day, and have no trouble losing weight... when I make an effort!

We recently sold our house. We completed our own UK CGT declaration which was easy as we made a loss. That has to be done within 30 days of completion. GM Tax is handling the Australian side, but there should be no liability because it was our home until we let it out, and we only let for 3.5 years.

Just glad to be rid :cute:

Just me, hubby and meow features this year, same as last year. We'll have a full roast dinner on the deck unless it's too hot (was fine last year), then drinks and tunes in the pool. Cat will get a bowl of whatever we eat, so he can eat with us. Ace.

Loads of backpackers work in the Whitsundays and Airlie Beach, that would be a lovely option to make money in fab surroundings!

I use Unblock Us. It's been great, you can switch between countries as you wish. Had to change some settings on my ipad, no issues since. Even better on my android phone, I can watch stuff on the big screen using Chromecast for some reason Chromecast doesn't work with BBC iplayer downloads, but Android app allows you to cast anything to the telly, unlike ipad.

Try mortgage broker John Charcol, they helped us though it was 3 years ago, and we only paid a fee cos it was a small mortgage, otherwise would have been no cost to us. Things have tightened up a fair bit since then, but they are good at working with expats!

What's wrong with wanting a private home, at any age? By the age of 20 I was sick of student-style house sharing and would have rented a place all to myself, but couldn't afford it til my mid 20s. Even then I struggled for money but it was worth it. To be able to rent a 2 bed home and have spare cash at 20 is great, go for it!

It's not, and shouldn't be, so one-size-fits-all in Australia. Back in the UK we were restricted to borrowing far less than we could actually afford, which limited our budget considerably. As a double income no kids set up, we can clearly afford more than single income three kids families. The only upside was that we had an offset mortgage so could make unlimited overpayments, but having had to buy an ex council house in a not so great area really disadvantaged us following the GFC, and we made a loss of roughly 15% when we sold recently.

All of this said, we don't want to stretch ourselves here and will borrow just enough to get the suburban 600sqm plot with pool that we want. I wanna be able to give up work before it kills me :wink:

We were in this situation a couple of years ago, and managed to remortgage with Lloyds just before they withdrew the product from non-UK residents. It's a tricky situation and I do feel it is harsh on those who never intended to be 'investors', and just want to let their home out while they try living abroad. Good luck to all!

We did a similar flight in June, Manchester to Brisbane! I don't have the boarding passes to hand to let you know which gate we used, but the onward flight to Sydney will depart from the same terminal as the arrival from Manchester.

The routine is: get off plane from Manchester, walk along fairly long corridor towards transfer area where there will be screens listing departure gates, then there are stairs/escalator down to the actual transfer area. As a queue forms directly at the bottom of the stairs, I recommend NOT using the escalator. I am not exaggerating when I say that we witnessed utter chaos when people on the escalator got backed up as they couldn't get off the damn thing due to the queue/crowd at the bottom! Crazy.

Next up they will go through security, which is quick and painless, though the metal detector is very sensitive so take watches off!

Then you are through to duty free in the departure area. The gates are set along a rather long corridor. There will be another security check here, they go through everything in cabin baggage by hand. They managed to destroy a chocolate muffin I had in a napkin and got crumbs all over my stuff, cheers!

They are unlikely to miss the connection, even if the first flight is running late they tend to hold back the next flight until everyone has boarded :-) how long do they have to connect?