Ausvisitor

I live in Sydney, the only people I know that are moving to Canberra are those that love Sydney but can no longer afford it. They are all gutted to be leaving the main city - the one the entire globe considers to be Australia Australia is (to the world) Kangaroo Koala Hot Opera House Bridge All easily got within 3 km of Sydney CBD, nowhere else can claim that

Yep - cos it's dirt cheap and populated with people with young families who just want to hang at home/park with the kids. It's a cultural wasteland and a place to avoid if you have any ambition in life (unless you are a politician)

I've never heard of it being a problem, but a smart immigration agent could easily decide to kick up a fuss. If the actual salary is 85k it isn't hard to see why they couldn't find an on shore applicant that would do it for 60-80. So you've gamed the system, but I suspect you'll get away with it.

If your kids are into soccer they probably should have stayed in Europe, soccer over here is about in a par with the National League North (i.e. 6 divisions below the premiership) I listened to Gary Lineker on a podcast they other day, he was talking about kids that are "very good" at football. He cited Chelsea's academy which has over 700 kids in it who are all "excellent" yet in the last 15 years only 6 of them have made it though to the premiership and less than 50 to any sort of professional role. That said soccer is the biggest participation sport in Australia (NSW certainly) by miles so they won't have trouble finding teams

For anyone starting now it's 35 years. For those who had paid in and not opted out of SERPS there was a levelling calculation done as the extra SERPS allowance you would have gotten got added back in as extra contributions. I ended up needing 25 years of contributions and I'd already done 22 when the change came in, so it's totally possible lavers might only need 30 years

It's a guide at best. If you dig deep somewhere it will say you'll get your decision in 90 days, except when you don't (or words like that). Generally the figure they quite is how quickly 75% of applicants get dealt with, with those not in that grouping (i.e. the easy ones - although no idea what makes something easy or hard) taking longer

I know it's too late now, but the better time to engage him would have been before the skills assessment. My agent gave me loads of tips on the best way to prep and submit the skills assessment, and if you get that wrong the dream is over. Arguably my agent was more helpful prior to submitting the EOI than afterwards (as in doing all the due diligence to give advice we collated pretty much everything we needed for the whole process so there were no surprises)

Which is exactly what we are doing, but moving over about $1.5m to pay for a house, so even a tiny difference makes a huge impact. Like if we'd done the transfer at the peak of the Liz Truss debacle we would be nearly $200k worse off (and that's only 4 months ago or thereabouts)

It's also not as good a rate as it was 15 months ago, so it could get better

Cashing in an ISA is never a good idea unless you need to, the tax benefits (whilst possibly negligible by now) grow every year. Depends if you think you will ever move back to UK

On the app it's around £40 or £50k - can't remember exactly. I have no trouble pushing over $50k chunks (about £28k) anytime I want to (other than having enough money to do it). You can do more but you have to arrange that with a person. You can do multiple transfers in a day that as far as I can tell has no limit. (Except for the per transfer limit above on each transfer you do) The fees are a percentage of amount transferred so doesn't matter if you do it as one bulk sum or a few smaller ones

You will struggle to get a visa based on that as what you are suggesting is bordering on illegal. The Australian childcare licensing bodies do not allow discrimination based on nationality

My timeline is as follows Feb 2019 engaged agent Apr 2019 put in for sponsorship from NSW via EOI May 2019 sponsorship granted and given link to apply for 190 visa June 2019 visa application submitted Dec 2019 visa granted

Of course it should be allowed. People should be free to buy property where they choose. It isn't just Russia and China buying up the UK and AUS, our own billionaires and companies but huge swathes of other countries property too. Just because we can't afford to do it ourselves doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed...

The reality is, in my view alone, Australia is still much better than the UK. Just a more laid back attitude and simple pleasures (heat, beach, more outdoor spaces). I probably earn less than I did in the UK (yes I'm that one guy who didn't get paid more when moving here) but it goes further. I live slap bang in Sydney's Inner West, there isn't really a more expensive lifestyle anywhere in Australia but it's still hands down more fun than anywhere in London. Is it perfect ? Certainly not, but I don't see the crime cess pit and drug addled youth that others seem to say is everywhere, yes plenty of drugs in Newtown but it's the "recreational" variety not the "life ruined" demogeaphic That said drugs in the modern world are like rats in the London underground. If you can't see some straight in front you it's because you aren't looking hard enough. That said it's mainly innocuous and certainly it is way more prevalent in the cities in the UK and US than AUS

I would agree, I run a whole practice on data management here in Sydney, we must have (not all work for me) at least 200 consultants actively working on this, and each of the other big-4 have similar numbers (in Sydney alone). Every client I speak to is hiring data protection people at a furious rate (the only qualification at the moment seems to be able to say data protection). It's probably the hottest career and topic in Australia at the moment - you can thank Optus and Medibank for that. If you can't get a job in data protection in 2023 you never will, the market has never been hotter... If course we don't (and most client orgs don't either) advertise these roles, we head hunt them and recruit direct from masters courses. If you are offshore you will almost certainly never see an advert for DP here, and if you did we'd take one look at the fact you aren't onshore and ignore the application we all need people to start yesterday not some point in the future. If you are serious about working in that sector in AUS then get over here quickly - as a side note the sorts of salaries being paid for DP people here right now is in the 130k-180k range, so between 2&3 times what you are getting in the UK

For a decent Sydney suburb you will need $2.5m at least for a pretty run down 3 bed house. Nearer $4m for a decent "turnkey" 4 bed option. So assuming that's you now sorted the family property, it's time to help the kids with theirs. A 1-bed that isn't completely a death trap in somewhere they will want to live (inner west) will be a minimum of $650k and more likely $750k To afford that with a $100k deposit you need a salary approaching $130k a year - so you can see it's not a simple option

Not seen any indication of a drug culture in Sydney at all, or Melbourne. Some pockets as there always will be, but it's no where near the US or UK. I think maybe @Blue Flu needs to move to a better locality if they are seeing this level of drug culture as it certainly isn't the norm

In answer to your question, Camberley in Surrey in a pretty large 4 bed on around half an acre plot. To get that within the same commuting distance of the city offices in Sydney, you are looking at 3m+ (so about 1.75m GBP)

Wading in to this discussion. We had a much better life (in terms of "keeping up with the Jones") in the UK. Huge house, nice cars well paid job. Moving to Oz (Sydney) for the adventure we managed to retain one of the three (the well paid job) but as all the other costs have rocketed we are much worse off (don't cry for us though we aren't in poverty, we just aren't saving as much). Sydney is great but if you are moving to escape the London rat race look elsewhere I can't see much difference. WFH is being faded out for a number of reasons (won't ever go back to full office life though) 1) they are about to enact legislation that makes your employer responsible if you get a "workplace injury" even if that workspace is your bedroom 2) most orgs have instigated "glue days" or "core days" basically 3 days a week you are expected in the office (note these generally include Monday and Friday) 3) the quality of the training the younger team gets is abysmal so we need people to be together If you are basing your plans on WFH be very careful I reckon what most people call WFH will be gone by XMAS (I sit on the workplace planning exec for the company I am with and that's over 15k people)

I did (well it ended up a 70 because I applied for the 190 which gave an additional 5 points). Very unlikely at 65 for a 189 visa but for the state sponsored ones perfectly doable if your career matches something they desperately need.

Whilst the buying market may seem like there is more availability (and in terms of property available there probably is) what is hidden under that stat is the 30+ prospective buyers looking at each property and the fact that most go to auction and auction prices are almost always quoted (if they even quote) at 10% at least below the vendors minimum sale price. We went to an auction last week (10 properties being auctioned on the one night) 6 or 7 bidders for each property and all went for at least $200k above guide price (one house was $600k above) Rental prices are actually cheaper than they should be at the moment, an investors cost to own has gone up over $1,000 a month for the typical $500k loan since may last year (interest rate rises) yet even the worst examples of rent increases are in the $5-600 a month increase range, meaning the landlord is much worse off than they were last year - it's the bank's making money not the landlord here When you get here you will see the housing stock is generally in a bad state, and it will take you months to adjust your standards to the available options, 9 months seems like the very least amount of time you will be renting. As others have said most employers have a 6 month probation period, no lender (or almost none) will touch you in that 6 months. We looked to arrange a small mortgage in case we needed some auction wiggle room and we couldn't get one until 6 months was over, despite having a deposit of nearly $2m and only wanting to borrow at most $200k. Three weeks later after the 6 month probation completed the same bank who refused $200k was quite happy to offer $1.4m as a loan.

It does, but as some have suggested on here IT is supposedly one of those "bad ageist careers". All I can say is that the behemoth IT suppliers (Accenture, TCS, Tata and the Big 4) are actively and aggressively recruiting older IT trained professionals. Maybe the issue isn't with age, maybe it's the quality and ethics of the companies people are choosing to work for. I for one am disgusted that Telstra employees are openly saying that their company is ageist whilst Telstra is currently spending many millions on advertising to inform the Australian public about it's inclusion policies and telling all of us we should be trying harder - whilst all along not following their own advice it would seem

I guess that's to stop people gaming the system one way or another Makes sense I suppose

Our agent fees where £2,100 three years ago. That covered three of us (Me, spouse, daughter) and our process was more complicated as it was a 189/190 rather than a relationship visa. I would suspect given your process should be easier you will be looking at about £1,500 plus other fees for visas application and medicals etc