Anorak

What's a reasonable rent to salary ratio to aim for, allowing for commuting in to near Central station?

Congratulations! Do you mind me asking what your "substantial ties" and "compelling and compassionate reasons" were? I was under the impression you could include multiple children on a single 101 application, and when I did the calculator on http://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Visa-1/101-?modal=pricing-estimator it included the second child for $605. Even if I have to pay full price, it's still cheaper than new PR for all of us. :-) ?for you. When are you moving?

After carefully reading everything to do with RRVs, and consulting with an MA it looks like this route is an option for me. My job gives me my substantial ties to Australia, and as long as they accept my compelling and compassionate reasons for not being in Australia (new children which were dependent on extended family for childcare and older child doing GCSEs) then we should all get 12 month RRVs to allow us to make the move (as long as we get visas sorted for the younger children). ?

Urgh! Just looked at the processing times for child visas: up to 8 months (on-shore) and up to 11 months (off-shore). Timing could be a real pain! (Although our situation is about as vanilla as you can get.)

While browsing another forum I came across a thread by someone who had lapsed permanent residency, and the advice was for them to try getting a returning residents visa before re-apply for GSM, despite the fact that their visa was granted seven years ago and they hadn't been in Australia since their validation trip. I'm in a similar situation: I was granted Class VE, subclass 176 Skilled - (VE 176) in December 2008, and validated in August 2009, but we never made the move. The visa "expired" in 2013. Now I'm in the position where I work for an Australian company and have the opportunity to work out of their Sydney office and they'll sponsor me for a 457 (out of their pocket) and 186 (out of my pocket). Now I'm thinking that if RRV is a possibility after all this time, I should try for that first then we have the security of PR without the cost of a new application. Of course I would need to get an additional visas for our children who were born in the interim, but that's still a *lot* cheaper than a whole new application for the (now) five of us. Is this really a possibility? Any anecdotal evidence of RRVs being granted even after (effectively) non-residence? Oh and to complicate things I've been back to Australia in the interim on a 651 eVisitor, so I'm guessing my 176 will have cancelled. ?

Our thinking was take the 457 now, but apply for the 186 as soon as possible. We know all about the risks + school fees with the 457 etc. which is why we want to pursue the 186 (even out of our pocket). The office is in Chippendale, but we know we'd be living much further out.

I've been offered the chance to go and work in Sydney by my current employers, and wanted to get some opinions on the the deal they're offering me. They're going to sponsor me on a 457, and they're happy to also sponsor me for permanent residency via a 186 but I'll have to cover the costs if I went for direct entry now. The idea being they get me there sooner, but we'd get the security of permanent residency. I'd be getting 110K (inc super) as a software engineer with myself (working), partner (not working, maybe after we are permanent), and three school age children, and we plan to rent at first. Deal or no deal?