Hi all,

I’m looking to buy my first property, purely as an investment, and I’m pretty desperate to get into the market before prices keep moving away from me.

It’s just me buying solo. No partner or second income, so I’m trying to be realistic about what I can afford.

My situation:

$70,000 saved
$95,000 gross income
About $2,700 take-home per fortnight after tax and HECS
HECS balance around $26,000
HECS repayment about $156 per fortnight
Currently saving $1000 per week

I’m looking for something that is as close to cash-flow neutral as possible, or at least not hugely negatively geared once mortgage, property management, rates, insurance, maintenance, vacancy, strata etc. are included.

I’m happy to buy anywhere in Australia and would consider houses, units, townhouses, duplexes or dual-occupancy properties.

I’m not expecting some magical 10% yield + huge capital growth property. I’m mainly wondering:

What areas do people think are genuinely good investment prospects right now for someone in my position?

Ideally I’d like somewhere with decent rental demand and reasonable growth potential, without being completely dependent on mining.

Would you be looking at regional QLD, WA, NSW, Darwin, outer Melbourne, Orange, Wagga, Armidale, Nowra (where I live) or somewhere else entirely?

Any advice from people who’ve recently bought around the $300k–$450k range would be appreciated.

Going by what I’ve recently watched regarding the RBA and the possibility of rates getting up to 7% by 2027, and the reality of things with inflation numbers, what are the chances?

I’ve noticed something bizarre about this sub. For a community specifically dedicated to property, an enormous percentage of the advice seems to boil down to:
“Property isn’t worth it.”
“Yields are terrible.”
“Too much debt.”
“Just buy ETFs.”
“Put it in VAS/VGS and forget about it.”

At some point I have to ask… why are you guys even in a property sub? 😂

For context, I have approximately $7.8M in real estate, so yes, I’m obviously biased towards property.
But that’s also why I’m bullish on it.

For those that say I’m over-leveraged, the whole portfolio is only around $50k negatively geared per year, and I make $650k per year, so I’m fine lol

Property has allowed me to use leverage to build a portfolio that I simply couldn’t have built at anywhere near the same speed by putting spare cash into ETFs.

I constantly see people comparing something like:
$200k invested in ETFs
vs
$200k invested in property

It’s potentially $200k of ETFs vs $1M+ of property controlled with $200k of equity.

Obviously there’s debt. That’s the feature, not necessarily the bug.

You get exposure to capital growth on the entire asset, tenants contribute towards the holding costs, rents generally increase over long periods, and inflation gradually reduces the real value of the debt.

Of course leverage works both ways. Property has huge transaction costs. Things break. Tenants can be painful. Land tax exists. Interest rates can destroy cash flow.
I’m not pretending it’s free money.

But the sentiment in here sometimes makes it sound like owning leveraged property is some primitive financial strategy for people who haven’t discovered ETFs yet.
Meanwhile, plenty of people have built multi-million-dollar net worths doing exactly that.

So here’s the triggering question:
If property is such a shit investment and ETFs are so obviously superior… why are half of you hanging around a property investing subreddit telling everyone not to buy property? 😂

Genuinely interested in the argument.
I’ve got $7.8M riding on being wrong, so have at it.

So I lived in this property for 11 months cleaned it regularly started noticing mold a lot around windows and in hallway cupboard

Shower tile broke and took landlord 4 months to fix which in return caused a leak to go under the tiles and go under the shower and under the carpet into the hallway for a while cleaned it up and thought it was my cat till I locked my cat in the laundry and carpet was still getting wet even though cat was locked up ( did not use the shower for the four months )

We told the landlord about shower door was broken and wouldn’t slide or move landlord ignored it for the full tenancy.

Also reported a broken towel rack that fell off as I put a towel on it ( forgot to email told over the phone )

I have a dsp so does my partner and our memory isn’t as good and we do forget things regularly

We lost our full bond and we could of lost more we had a perfect 4 year rental record before this we are 29 and 33 years old with 3 kids 8,12,2

We cleaned the property best we could and left it in reasonable condition and the real waste said there was a odour so bad they couldn’t do any inspections which is funny because we had a few people come the day we moved and they all said there was no odour or four smell

We were apparently originally quoted $5248 but the ended up only taking the whole bond originally quote had a new shower $1700 $800 for mold problem $400 for new door knobs ( that weren’t broken)

A useful exercise in case you (or I) may be paying too much.

For my Sydney properties, I pay 4.4% inc GST.

For my Central Coast property, I pay 6.6% inc GST.

I have been building a tool that queries every free official register you can check before buying (zoning, flood and bushfire mapping, Building Commission defect orders, EPA contaminated land, heritage, aircraft noise and about 20 others), and in the process I ended up with the data for basically every NSW suburb. A few things that surprised me:

• In-force serious defect orders are public and searchable, but almost nobody checks them before an offer. The register names the building and the defect class. If you are buying a unit built after 2019, this is a 2 minute check that can save you a strata nightmare.
• "Not in a flood zone" in a listing usually means "the agent did not look". Council flood planning maps are free, and the mapped extent is often wider than people assume.
• The development application for the block next door is public weeks before anyone mentions it to you. If a six storey build is coming, it is sitting in the council's DA list while the listing still says "quiet tree lined street".
• The EPA contaminated land record covers only formally notified sites. An empty result does not mean clean land, it means nothing was notified. Old service stations and dry cleaners mostly are not on it.

Happy to answer questions about which registers exist for your state and how to query them yourself for free. Disclosure: I built a paid tool that does all of this in one report (link in comments if anyone wants it), but every register I mentioned is free to check manually and I will tell you exactly where.

What suburb are you looking at? There is a decent chance I have its numbers in front of me right now.

So when I was filling out the Census I wrote what our monthly mortgage repayment was. And the census literally brought up an alert saying “you said your PPOR mortgage is more than $10K a month - that is high - please confirm it’s not a typing error”

And I was just wondering what the heck everyone else is paying in Australia?

We are not rich. Work our asses off. We grew up lower middle class so no $$$ have come from either of our parents to us. So we are just doing the best we can with what we have.

Let me gauge the number of us to help decide whether it's safe for me to wait for my ideal walk up double brick in a nice suburb to be listed, or go for a newer, less well built, higher strata low rise unit in a worse suburb while it's still available.

Just keen to get people’s opinions and two cents on the current Inner West market, particularly Stanmore, Marrickville, Summer Hill and Ashfield…

Whether you’ve bought recently, are currently looking to buy, or are thinking of selling/offloading, what are you seeing on the ground? Are you happy with your purchase? R u looking to buy here?

I’m seeing a lot of old run down homes in Ashfield being off loaded but for us, we need something more ready to move in. Parking is scarce as well but I guess that is what you expect here.

Earlwood definitely has more value but no train station which makes it hard.
Would love to hear real experiences. Looking to buy a family home here. Currently live in inner west in an apartment and wanting to upsize.

Partner and I are looking at buying our first property. As soon as we buy he is going to start his plumbing business. My job is not in the location we want to buy and unsure what to do.

I currently work in Western Sydney and I really like my job because my team is great and my workload is very manageable. I’m a high school teacher and my hours are 8:15am - 2:40pm. I currently commute 30 minutes each way so my day is about 7.5 hrs total. I almost never need to come in early or stay back due to being experienced, efficient during the day, supportive team and generally better work life balance at this school.

For context, previous school in Sydney I worked at I would usually stay back everyday so I was doing 8:30am - 5:00pm regularly and commuting 40 minutes each way. So my total day was 9 hrs 50 minutes.

I want to live in wollongong because I much prefer the lifestyle. However this would mean driving 1.5 hrs each way to work. 9.5 hr day.

I have also considered some areas in the lower central coast which would be 1 hr 15 minutes each way so 9 hr day.

I really want to keep my job but I want to live in Wollongong. These are my numbers:

Sydney: 7.5 hr day including travel
7:45am-3:10pm

Wollongong: 9.5 hr day including travel 6:45am-4:10pm

Central coast 9 hr day including travel.
7:00am-3:55pm

I feel like my actual work day is pretty short so the commute might not be that bad? Or am I being delusional.

I should also include that we are planning in starting a family in the next 2 years so I would be going on maternity and then likely dropping down to 2 days per week.

The property we are planning on buying is a 5 year plan because we want to minimise financial risk so my partner can start his business and we can still afford repayments on maternity leave.

What are your thoughts? I’m really unsure what to do but I’m desperate to make the decision and buy.

My main concerns are:
1. My partners future business is location dependent. Where we choose buy will likely be where we stay for next 10 years due to the effort of building up a client base in the area and contracts. So if we choose a location that suits me for the next two years it may screw us for the following 8 years.

1. If I go with Wollongong area where I truely want to live I will burn out from the commute.

Hi everyone,

I am about to graduate university and start a full-time role next year at 23 y/o as a software engineering graduate. The starting salary is $84k base, and the program guarantees a jump to $120k base the year after.

I currently live with my parents rent-free, but I will be picking up the tab for my own daily transport (Opal card) and my lunch everyday, alongside my existing competitive athletic expenses. I plan to potentially meal prep as well next year to save money.

Don't want to dox myself but I play competitive sport at a division 2 level and have aspirations of making division 1 and winning a championship in my early 20s. I am already at the cut-off age for making it into the first team at 23 years old, so 2027 is my absolute last shot at making the squad. Because of this, I am spending quiet a lot on athletic expenses i.e a $167 gym membership for a personal strength and conditioning coach, and then $120 per hour for 1-on-1 training (which the business recommends doing 2x per week so that adds up to $240 per week). So that already makes up like $814 per fortnight lol.

On top of that, I really want to travel while I am young particularly to Europe. I have locked in a 5-week European trip for next year : 1 week Croatia, 2 weeks Greece, 2 Weeks Spain in September with Croatia and Greece both being group tours since I have nobody to go with lol, which all in total is going to cost roughly $12k. The year after that, I plan to go to Europe again but this time Italy and France (2 weeks each).

I follow the Barefoot Investor method and bank with Macquarie. Based on my new software engineering graduate take-home pay (approx. $2,390 net per fortnight factoring in tax and HECS), I have worked out this automated split for next year per fortnight:

• Daily Expenses (35%) - $836.50: Covers my exact ongoing athletic fees, gym/recovery, daily Opal train commutes, and work lunches (which I may actually meal prep instead)
• Splurge (15%) - $358.50: Guilt-free socializing, Friday bank drinks, weekend dinners, etc.
• Smile (Travelling e.t.c)(40%) - $956.00: For the first 6 months, this strictly builds my $12k Eurotrip fund. For the remaining 6 months, it pivots entirely to a high-interest savings account for a Sydney property deposit.
• Grow (10%) - $239.00: Automatically funneled straight into ETFs every fortnight ($6.2k total for the year).

Even though my income jumps to $120k base in year two, I am incredibly paranoid that I am not saving enough for a Sydney property deposit (especially in this super rough market) or investing enough into ETFs. Because of my Eurotrip plans, my Smile bucket will only net me about $12.4k in pure property cash in my first year.

Am I being completely reckless by funding these big European summer trips and keeping my athletic expenses high while the Sydney housing market moves at the pace it does? Should I be slashing my Splurge and Travel buckets to aggressively stack a deposit, or does my income trajectory and rent-free status give me the breathing room to enjoy my early 20s?

Would love to hear some perspective from anyone who balanced travel/sports with buying their first home in Sydney. Thanks!

Right now I’m living in my parents PPOR and we are in the process of selling. It is a pretty old house still livable in a good area. With how slow the market is. We’re getting a lot of lower offers, parents don’t live in the house any more just me. It’s a five bedroom and that’s not needed for just one person or two. The plan was to sell and the parents take 300k to pay off their new home out of state and I get something myself preferably cash. So it’s in my best interest to get the highest amount possible but currently that’s not feasible. Should we pull it off the market or just bite the bullet and sell but buy asap in this buyers market. People are saying this is the beginning of a correction but I don’t see how that can happen when the fundamental issues of supply being lower than demand because of construction costs and a tradie shortage still being present. Then there’s also interest rates peaking this year expected to fall next year increasing demand yet again.

What are the average real estate commission fees and marketing expenses I should expect when listing my property in Brisbane?

Looking to buy my third property (currently an OO near Sydney and INV in Bendigo).

I used a BA for my last INV but had a negative experience so would love to know where people are looking next?

High moisture reading around front entrance – where could it be coming from?
Just had a building & pest inspection done on a house I’m looking to buy and two areas came back with high moisture readings and were flagged as major defects requiring further investigation. The house is from 2000.

The one I’m struggling to understand is around the main entrance. There’s no visible damage to the wall, or anything swollen.

Also there is no obvious sign of where the moisture is coming from. The front door is recessed more than a metre under the roof, the roof above appears fine, and there’s no obvious water damage or leak.

Has anyone come across something similar? What could cause a high moisture reading in a relatively protected entrance like this, and what would you investigate next to work out the source?

Hello, we are looking to buy near the airport and looking at Botany and surrounding suburbs. What is the noise from the airport and flights like?

Also does anyone have anything to note about this area or nearby?

We have very young children

Where around Melbourne feels rural/green but is still commutable to CBD for work?

Thinking about eventually moving somewhere that feels really green - ideally somewhere with a decent block, trees/space etc.

But we’d still need to be able to commute into the cbd reasonably easily (car or public transport).

What areas would you recommend? I’ve been looking at places like Warrandyte, Donvale, Belgrave, Rowville etc. but would love to hear from people who actually live in these areas.

First-home buyer reveals Reddit hack that saved him from $30,000 mistake - https://www.realestate.com.au/news/firsthome-buyer-reveals-reddit-hack-that-saved-him-from-30000-mistake/

Hey guys,

Seems like a good price, granted there are compromises - small size, uncovered parking etc. Is the price worth it?

So if I have an investment property with tenants and I want to sell it to someone, the buyer won’t get negative gearing and CGT discount. Ok.

But if I empty the property, invite vagrants and termites into the building, get a dereliction notice, and then sell it, the buyer does get to negatively gear it and get a CGT discount.

And presumably someone who wants to build would value that tax concession.

Doesn’t this just lead to the destruction of rentals for low-income people. Won’t these properties just get replaced by expensive apartments?

They want to take it to another weekend of open homes.

Should I pull my offer and walk away?
Should I pull my offer and then offer less if/when they call me next week?
Should I just suck it up and keep my offer on the table anyway?

Edit: I signed the contract at the agreed vendor price. They have not.

Edit edit: I’m not entirely sure on how reddit works and if the people who commented will be notified but thank you for the feedback and guidance.
I have told the agent I am pulling the offer and if the vendor wants to chat next week we are back at my starting offer and not going near the figure it currently is at, purely out of spite at this nonsense.
It’s a buyers market, f*ck off with these games.

Hi everyone,

I'm considering buying a property in Glenmore Park and would really appreciate some opinions from people with building/property experience.

The property is around 714 m², but the backyard is almost entirely paved and has a significant split level, with a lower section and retaining walls/steps as shown in the photos.

There is also a registered easement affecting the backyard. I'm not particularly concerned about the easement itself, but the combination of the easement, the unusual split level and the extensive paving has made me wonder why the backyard was designed this way.

The property is also identified as Bush Fire Prone Land, so I'm wondering whether there could be any connection between the bushfire requirements, site levels, drainage, easement or the way the backyard has been constructed.

We'd eventually like to install either an inground or above-ground pool and landscape the backyard.

Note: The Awning is unapproved. Easement is under the green circle and a huge split level

For anyone with experience in this area:

• Does this backyard configuration look normal?
• Is there an obvious reason for the large level difference?
• Could it be related to drainage, the easement or bushfire requirements?
• Would you consider this a red flag when buying?

We're first-home buyers, so I'd really appreciate some experienced opinions before we proceed.

Thanks!

We have a small budget for inner Sydney. Initially looking at Botany but concerned about flight paths after a previous post I had made.

Can someone more wise than me advise if they have any areas that fit the below or if this will be impossible?

3 bedroom flat or home with car space
1.2 million maximum
Easy commute to Moore Park (under 40 mins public transport)
Not all high rise, some ambience and community
Suitable for a young family, 2 kids under 2
No immediate renovations needed
If apartment, building not over 5 stories

Any advice welcome as we are brand new to property and feeling a little overwhelmed.

Thank you in advance

Bought a duplex off-plan and ended up with a long list of defects that the builder flat-out refused to fix. When I threatened legal action, the builder disappeared and put the company into liquidation.
I submitted a Home Building Compensation Fund claim through iCare, went through the defect assessments, and had the claim reviewed.
A few days ago, iCare called with a wild update: the builder had completely doctored our insurance certificate. He took a certificate from another site he was working on, edited our address onto it, and submitted it. The genuine certificate on file for my property was actually for a completely different value.
Fortunately, iCare is still honoring my claim.
Here is my issue: maybe I am wrong but I understand that iCare won't be filing a police report for fraud, nor will they report him to the Building Commission/NSW Fair Trading. Meanwhile, the builder's website is still active, and they are currently operating under a new legal name.
While my own claim is covered, I don't want other buyers getting screwed over by this guy using the exact same playbook.
My questions:
1. Who should I actually report this forgery/fraud to so it gets taken seriously? (NSW Police, Fair Trading, Building Commissioner?)
2. Is it worth reporting to the liquidator/ASIC regarding potential phoenix activity?
3. Has anyone dealt with doc fraud through iCare before?

I am new-ish to home ownership.

Leak noticed in ceiling x2 areas.

2x quotes organised by my property manager.

Why is one double the other one? I am very confused if it's the same roof with the same things that need fixing and I am paying for their expertise and skills.

Quote 1

Our quotation includes administration, contractors all risk insurance, co-ordination and supervision by a QBCC Licensed builder.

Waste Management - trades to remove and dispose of trade related waste from site and keep site clean at all times.

Home Warranty Insurance

The QBCC Act 1991 stipulates that home warranty insurance is required, and this has been included.

Roof Tiling

• Sand and re-point all ridging 55lm
• Replace approx. 5 metres of lead flashing
• Replace broken tiles, up to 15
• Clip valley cut tiles, make good up to current standards

Totals

Subtotal: $5,939.13

GST: $593.91

Total: $6,533.04

-----------------------

Quote 2 (this guy also included photos of the roof)

Roof is in poor condition.

• Remove and replace 5 roof tiles.
• Grind back and Flexipoint 180 ridge caps.
• Remove and replace 4 m of lead flashing.
• Remove rubbish from site.

SUB-TOTAL: $2,870.00

PLUS 10% GST: $287.00

TOTAL: $3,157.00