DIG85

The only thing to be aware of if you enter the UK on an Australian passport, is be sure to leave the UK on the Australian passport too. If you enter the UK on an Aus passport and leave on a UK one, the system will at some point later trigger that you overstayed the UK visa. Whilst this is not an offence because you are a UK citizen, it can lead to questions later which, whilst easy to field, are a nuisance.

3 hours ago, Rallyman said:

 

by law we were told if you have uk passport you must enter / leave uk on that and same for entry / leave in Australia. 

That is not true for the UK. 

https://www.gov.uk/uk-border-control/before-you-leave-for-the-uk

You’re from outside the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein

You must have a valid passport to enter the UK. It should be valid for the whole of your stay.

You may also need a visa, depending on which country you’re from.

On 03/01/2022 at 19:52, Marisawright said:

But if the beaches of the UK are so great, why is there such a massive exodus of Brits to the beaches of the Mediterranean, many of them more than once a year?

I guess because there are a lot of very shallow, boring people for whom the beach is the be all and end all.

3 hours ago, Blue Flu said:

Completely different to a Bill of Rights. Few guaranteed freedoms in Australia. 

That has always struck me too. 

Many people in the UK argue for a written constitution (or, to be pedantic, since parts of the UK's current constitution are in fact written, a "codified" constitution) in the belief that it would guarantee more freedoms. But one only has to look at the Australian constitution to see that it actually guarantees very few freedoms. The Australian constitution does not even protect freedom of speech. Yet the UK, for all the hoggledy-piggledyness of its constitution, appears, to me at least, to have far more guaranteed freedoms than Australia.

It is not necessary to hold a valid passport in order to apply for Australian citizenship. 

The Australian citizenship application requires a copy of a current document with your photo and signature. That can (but doesn't have to) be a passport, but it can also be a driving licence or any other document listed as acceptable. If you do submit a copy of your current passport at the time of your Australian citizenship requirement, you will need to present it at the time of the citizenship interview, but it does not have to be valid at that time. 

1 hour ago, Quoll said:

My granddaughter gave me a lecture on Christmas day - I said Happy Christmas (I usually interchange) but she told me in no uncertain terms it was  Merry Christmas! All the other events like birthdays, Easter, Halloween etc are  "Happy". So now I know.  But never ever "Happy Holidays"

I thought it was Merry Xmas too, even in the UK.

"Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year" - just like the carol "We wish you a merry Xmas".

10 hours ago, Ken said:

Doesn't matter if the spouse has PR or not: "Spouses of Australian citizens, New Zealand citizens and holders of Australian permanent visas do not require foreign investment approval when purchasing residential real estate as joint tenants" firb.gov.au

That exemption does not apply if the property is an investment property. The OP states they are living in the UK, so prima facie the property will be an IP.

So the status of the non-citizen spouse is relevant here. If the spouse is not a PR and they want to purchase jointly, then FIRB approval will be required. 

6 minutes ago, Parley said:

The vendor sets the reserve and doesn't sell if his price isn't met.

If the property is passed in then the highest bidder has forst right to negotiate directly with the vendor.

I know how they work and attend quite a lot around my neighborhood.

But the key focus for any sale process should not be the minimum amount that the vendor is willing to sell for. It should be to extract the maximum amount that the buyer is willing to pay. A system which allows the winning bidder to pay only $1 more than the underbidder is not going to do that. That is because an auction is a comparative process, not a competitive process. The buyer is at a huge advantage - they can see exactly what everybody is bidding. 

Too much focus is paid on the reserve. You see stories in the press such as "home sells for $1m above reserve" and I think "so what? Did the winning bidder pay the maximum he was willing to pay?" The reserve generally means jack.

2 minutes ago, Parley said:

In hot markets it is the best way to sell. Nearly all homes in Melbourne and Sydney seem to go to auction.

As a vendor you just need 2 or people who really want the property and the price can run beyond many expectations.

That's what REAs and auctioneers will tell you, who just want a quick,pretty much guaranteed sale to get their fee. There is certainly a lot of hype about auctions, but only c. 30% of homes in Sydney go to auction, despite the non-stop coverage about them in the papers. 

The major flaw in selling at auction is that the winning bidder need only pay $1 more than the underbidder. A process that allows that can never hope to obtain the best sale price.

This article is useful.

https://www.revolutionaryrealestate.com.au/no-real-estate-agent-will-tell-you-this-about-auctions/

Even a permanent resident who lives abroad is allowed to acquire Australian RE without FIRB approval. The OP does not state whether the non-citizen is an Aus PR, but may be something to consider.

5 minutes ago, Marisawright said:

Buyer's agents are fairly rare in Australia

They still seem far more common than they are in the UK. I think they are a waste of money myself.

Another thing that is far more common in Australia is the use of an auction to sell your home. This must be one of the worst ways you can sell your home.

6 hours ago, Marisawright said:

It's not about citizenship, it's about residency. 

An Australian citIzen does not require FIRB approval to acquire Australian residential property, even if they live abroad.

3 hours ago, Connorhaley said:

My question is would mortgage companies in Australia look at this

Generally, no.

10 hours ago, Bulya said:

It’s a backwater.  Why do Poms move there in such large numbers?

I guess because it’s the place in Australia that is closest to the UK. Five hours shaved off a flight home is by no means insignificant.

On 01/12/2021 at 17:47, MARYROSE02 said:

I live in Sydney with 5 million people but being more than double the size of Perth does not necessarily mean double the attractions.

IMO Sydney actually has disproportionately more attractions than Perth, i.e., Sydney may be double the size of Perth but it actually has about 10x the attractions. 

Same when comparing London (9m population) with Perth (2m). London certainly has more than 4.5x the world-class attractions, cultural institutions, galleries, performances etc. that Perth has. 

Perth is a cultural backwater, which is absolutely fine if you have little or no interest in the arts. 

Makes you wonder why he hasn’t already offered to sponsor your PR.

3 hours ago, LO_in_aus said:

 Although my current employer is gutted I'm leaving and has said he would sponsor me and re-employ me if I ever wanted to return (although I am moving away to get out of this job).

 

41 minutes ago, Marisawright said:

That's a rather sad statement, which says more about you than about the state of Victoria.   Just because you had a bad experience living in a town or suburb there, doesn't mean the whole place is awful.   

It is indeed a sad statement. But Melbourne in particular is dying on its backside at the moment. The formerly fine cbd is pretty much dead. People are voting with their feet, and they’re either heading for the exit or not coming in the first place.
 

You have to wonder why any prospective migrant would choose Victoria given what’s happened in the last two years. It is going to take years for Melbourne to recover its mojo. Years.

Just move to another state. Victoria is an awful place to live.

On 24/09/2021 at 16:21, Tulip1 said:

Possibly more of a misunderstanding of what you were saying.  If you’d have said how are you or how are things the response may have been different.  I know Australians say hows it going and I understand that means how are you/how are things but I wouldn’t have known that before I had family move there.  If you actually think about it hows it going doesn’t make a lot of sense (hows what going?)  nothing wrong with it and I quite like it but if you’ve never heard it before you may have a blank face wondering what ‘it’ is.  I’ve never been to Edinburgh so I’m not aware they don’t do small talk.  I have close family living in Scotland though and have never found that to be the case.  Maybe it’s an Edinburgh thing.  

I’m sorry but this is nonsense. “How’s it going?” is certainly not an uncommon greeting in the uk and one would have to be a complete dolt to misunderstand it, even if you had lived in a cave all your life and never heard it before.

Yes, you can leave for 90 days a year after you have submitted the citizenship application.

The residency requirement clock stops at the time you submit the application. 

If you are just going abroad for a holiday here and a holiday there then it should be possible for you to demonstrate continuing ties to Australia.

21 hours ago, arkhos said:

Hi Rammygirl, thanks for the kind reply, I appreciate. Let's suppose I apply for the citizenship and leave the country a few days after. Say, after 4 months the department contacts me to know what is my intended plan. Since I have been more than 3 months out of country after applying, what will be of the residency requirement? If they put on hold my application, does that mean that the residency requirement is "frozen" and the application is restored as soon as I get back to Australia?

Is there a way to show a commitment to the plan of returning, apart from buying a property?

Thanks,

The residency requirement only needs to be satisfied at the time of the application. It is not an ongoing test.

However, being outside Australia after submitting the application may be an indication that you will not have continuing ties with Australia, and your application cannot be approved whilst you are outside Australia.

On 14/09/2021 at 19:26, Ken said:

As Marisawright has already said that doesn't make a difference. Although I said "to buy the investment property" you can have have bought it to live in and it can have become an investment property later. In that case you can only claim the interest from when it became an investment property of course. The point I was trying to make is if any remortgaging took place (before or after the property became an investment property) to release capital for holidays, buying cars or any other personal use then the percentage of interest that relates to that equity release isn't tax deductible because you didn't invest that borrowing in the property. It's something that seems to catch a lot of people out but if you understand why the tax deduction exists it's obvious that the deduction doesn't apply to the interest on this sort of borrowing as there is no connection with the income.

It should be noted that it was for many years HMRC practice to allow all interest on released capital as a deduction against rental income (up to the value of the property at the time it became an IP). HMRC appears to have amended its manuals recently to stop this.

I would seriously consider whether moving to (or staying in) Melbourne is a wise decision. It's had a shocker of a pandemic. The impact of it on the city's economy is going to be felt for a long time to come. People are leaving in droves, in particularly to Qld. 

Melbourne really doesn't offer much at all now or any time soon. As Paul Keating once said, if you're not in Sydney, you're just camping.

On 30/09/2021 at 13:04, Marisawright said:

There are strategies even for ordinary people.   My father sold the house to one of my sisters, on condition that he could live there for the rest of his life.  Then he split the proceeds equally between all of us.  Of course, the other obvious strategy is to downsize once the kids have left home and then work out a strategy for the surplus cash. 

Not sure when your father did this, but that wouldn't work today unless your father was paying market rent to your sister. If he wasn't, this would be a "gift with reservation of benefit" and the value of the house would remain in his estate for IHT purposes. Any rent received by your sister would be subject to UK income tax.