Property Investments?

[Guest Guest66881]

Ok we are looking at going into the property market again, but this time via investment purposes.

Any one had any experience in this area, as we have had a consultation today and are now going to the next level, but would like to hear of any one else and there thoughts please?

Does the NRAS system really deliver, and can you be virtually debt free in the process?

[Eera]

We looked at going through one of those "wealth creation" companies a while back. they wanted $9k for the initial consultation, then an additional $500 per month to monitor our bills, then they were going to release the equity in our place using a line of credit loan at a higher percentage than our variable for no advantage at all.

 

Complete waste of time and money. In the end we offset our equity against the new properties for $0 upfront and watched the market carefully, chosing houses that were underpriced for their rental return and positive cashflow if not positive geared and saved a fortune over what that company would have done for us investing in a high growth, high demand area we knew well. My experience is that you can do it way better yourself if you're prepared to put time into thoroughly researching the market; we invested in about 1.5 mill worth of property, none of which has caused us debt at any stage, and did it by having a fairly crappy residential place that we threw every cent of spare cash into paying off early, thus generating lots of cash equity.

[Guest OpenHouseRealtyGroup]

I'm sure you've done this before, but I'll say it again: surf around the 'net and you'll find plethora of websites with very good advice.

 

If you think you need to pay someone do start the process for you, well think again. There are too many people out there ready to take advantage of your lack of knowledge.

 

Philippe, for

Open House Realty Group

[Steve99]

Not a time to be going into investment property in Oz, not even if you are a 100:1 odds against gambler. It has reached peaks of price and value way beyond even Ireland and the UK, there is no positive return (2-3%net if you buy in for cash) and a very big chance of falling prices. Anything that is attached to a 3rd party is a scam, pure and simple (some of these companies also operated in the UK pre 2008) and are there to look after themselves not you. And as I said even with the cash to buy, its not worth it right now. Speculators will point out different markets etc but only a few would give you a return and only based on bubble economics (ie mining towns etc). Our money is staying in boring fixed deposits rignt now where it pays 5.5%.

[Paul1Perth]

I've seen more than one of my friends run into problems investing in property thinking they were going to make a lot of money out of it, both here and the UK.

 

We had a friend and his family emigrate here absolutely cashed up. They paid cash for their house and had a lot spare. They started with a couple of investment properties that did really well, then our friend got a bit greedy and went into more and more investments. Went OK for a couple of years and he had dreams of retiring early. Then it went so bad so fast you wouldn't believe it. He did economics at University and when I used to ask him how things were going he would always give it me in cash flow terms. Basically if he was making enough to service the massive loans they had as far as he was concerned everything was just fine. Then he lost a job out of the blue, couldn't get another one for a while, GFC hit and they nearly lost everything, including the family home.

 

They just managed to scrape through and keep their house but now have a massive mortgage and just a couple of investment properties that they couldn't get rid of.

 

The one in the UK was a bit the same. A really successful small builder/renovator. Few houses being done up and a couple of employees. Things were going so well he expanded too fast bought land, set more people on, bought equipment and again, more through bad luck and bad timing a recession hit. This time the poor guy did lose the family home and business and just about everything else.

 

If it sounds too good to be true it usually is.

[Guest paulwbafc]

Not looking good at moment for property values in brisbane anyway. For first time getting calls nearly daily about properties i have shown interest in. Properties taking longer to shift and one man and his dog viewing properties its getting quiet nobody really looking. Rates cuts on cards. New home developments slow and have seen some developments binned.

[Fisher1]

We bought an investment property as part of our pension planning. We were buying in a different country from our place of residence at the time, but did all the research and pavement pounding ourselves. This cost hundreds of pounds in transport during a period of about two years - but in the end we were in the position to look at an ad and say ''that's cheap/ expensive for that building/development' We believed that there was no substitute for personal knowledge of the market we were going in to and still think so. We have done reasonably well with our one small apartment, making an overall gain of about 8 percent a year - but part of that is paper gain dependent upon selling the property! If we had had a mortgage we would have been out of pocket overall. I am pleased with our current property investment but would think long and hard before adding to it - the time is just not right.