stevo1885

21 hours ago, palaceboy1 said:

We got over the long wait by doing house/car swops with Australians for periods of up to 6 months every year . These were in areas near to our families and ideal to give us some down time . We have done 10 swops to date and have really no serious problems. , it takes a little organising but when we do a visit we spend a little time arranging future swops .We have stayed at some wonderfull properties and make sure we do little jobs cutting grass , garden maintenance , clean car , feed any pets agreed , etc .
We are not to precious with our belongings and take photos of all the rooms when we arrive at the swop and put any items that are not grandchild proof out of the way and recheck the photos when we leave .

There is no cost to this arrangement and we used a website “homes for exchange” which has now been taken over by “lovehomeswop”

 

Great idea and something worth thinking about in the next few years, unfortunately at minute or work/personal situations don’t allow us a few months away at a time.

17 hours ago, paulhand said:

Or look into a subclass 870 for the interim period ... but get some advice on this first... 

That would take a lottery win!!

unfortunately we aren’t in the position to be able to live there for 3/5 years without any income.

3 hours ago, LindaH27 said:

Yes put in the application and then my advice would be to forget about it and carry on with your normal lives - otherwise you will get very depressed!! 
 

There was a queue Calculator on the immi website a while ago (end of May?) but it crashed June 2nd and has never been available since but a few of us on here managed to get on. To give you an idea of wait time,  my application was June 2017 so I’ve already been waiting over three years. The calculator told me there were 22900 in front of me. Even at the maximum grant of 6000 per  year that still means a further wait of nearly 4 years - meaning my wait time is a potential 7 To 7.5 years. It will definitely be much longer for applications made now. 

Thanks Linda, as I say it’s a little disheartening thinking it’s likely to be about 10 years from now that we realistically will be there to stay but not a lot we can do other than apply and carry on as normal!!

Thanks for your replies Tulip & Linda

those numbers are mad and a bit disheartening when we had originally thought approximately 5 years or so! well at least we will see our granddaughters first day at secondary school

Think we will go down the agent route just to keep everything right and on time and will give the guys on here a shout who seem highly recommended.

Better get to it soon before waiting time gets even longer

Hi Guys

First post and great to find somewhere with so much help and advice!!

We are going to be applying for parent visa 143 in the next month or so and we were planning on around a 4 and half to 5 year wait but seen a couple of comments that it’s more likely to be 8/9 years if applying now! I know it’s not a hard and fast timeline ever but do you guys feel that’s more accurate now?

If this is the case, would applying for 173 then once (and if) approved applying for 143 once in Aus, speed up the full process at all or does it still take approx same time? 
 

Also would you recommend using an agent or doing it yourselves? I’m of the thought that using an agent should take out any risky errors or missing deadlines for any part of the process or was it pretty straightforward for anyone who applied without help on an agent?