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  Soarer Central * Off-Topic * A cautionary tale. Learn from my mistakes, for God's sake.... * Archive through December 19, 2007 Previous Previous    Next Next  

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Brenton Trafford
TryHard
SA
V8 Limited - UZZ31

Posts: 356
Reg: 08-2005

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 09:21 am, by:  Brenton Trafford (Traff) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

So my girlfriend and I decide that as we're talking about getting married and doing all that grown up stuff (like having kids, buying a house etc) that we had better start looking at the property market to see what's around in our price range and in the areas where we'd prefer to live. We looked in the Real Estate section of the paper and found a few places that we thought would be worth checking out "just to get an idea of the market". This was on the 1st of December, 3 days prior to my birthday (not that that has any relevance to this story).,

We looked at a few places on the Saturday and had fully booked up Sunday to get around to about 12 other properties, including one that we thought would be out of our price range, to see what the next level up would get us. The house was not really in the area I wanted to live in (Norwood, Kensington or around there) and is up in the hills, so I'd pretty much ruled it out but She Who Must Be Obeyed said she wanted to see it. After a short drive up the hill, shorter than I expected, we arrived and fell instantly in love with an absolutely amazing house. We went through the open inspection and each time we went to leave we decided to go and take another look at it! I think we went through about 5 times before the Agent kicked us out as he wanted to close up and get to his next open.

After much deliberation, wailing and gnashing of teeth, we decided to see if we could afford it and went of to see our friendly mortgage consultant (sorry Ken, SWMBO has one that she wanted to deal with or you would have got a call). Much to our delight we found that it was affordable and we decided to put an offer in. This is after only two days of looking under the guise of "getting a feel for the market"!!

However, before we could put the offer in, we had to inform our parents of what we were doing. Before we could do that though, I had to sit down with Mary's father and ask for his blessing to ask Mary to marry me... HOLY CRAP!! So that was done, blessings were given, her parents told about the house. All on Monday.

Tuesday was my birthday and it involved dinner with my parents where we informed them of our decision to put an offer on the house. Again, much wailing and gnashing of teeth but they eventually saw our side of it all, especially after viewing photo's of the house on the web.

Wednesday was off to the accountant to run figures past him and make sure we not going to cut our throats by buying this place.

Thursday, offer went in (all offers were closing on the place by 5pm that day) and a nervous wait followed. Everytime my phone rang my heart jumped into my mouth and my nerves were almost shot by 5:30. At 6 o'clock, almost on the dot, the phone rang and it was the Real Estate Agent ringing to tell me that our offer had been accepted. Much cheering and happy dances ensued. Mary and I both got on the phone to our respective parents and told them the good news, then we decided to head off to our favourite pub for a bit of a celebratory drink. Whilst we were sitting in the beer garden unable to wipe the grins from our faces I decided the time was right and popped the question to Mary. This was about 9pm. So in the space of 4 days I'd bought a house, gained a year in age and become engaged. Quite a big week!!

Moral of the story: If your girlfriend suggests going out to look at houses to get a feel for the market, find something urgent that needs to done to your Soarer!!



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Brian Timms
DieHard
New South Wales
TT Soarer Goodness.

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 10:15 am, by:  Brian Timms (Turbo_brian) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Mate, congrats on all fronts!!!!

My girl is starting to suggest the same stuff with me, we got engaged a few years ago when we both moved to Sydney, but have put off weddings and stuff due to funds.

Lately, I have noticed the net logs looking at domain and some of the realestate sites, and the better half has also said "I want to move to a house, but dont want to pay someone elses mortgage off", so it's the hint she wants to buy.

I put our credit card values together and told her between us there is over $17,500 in debt, so we get this down first, then we can look at houses, so suddenly all my drinking funds have been cut, my modification funds have been cut, and the credit card bills seem to be getting lower and lower very quickly (a good thing to an extent).

Looks like she's serious, but she's already cut my Soarer fund, so cant find anything urgent that needs doing.

Anyway, looking at the house photos, it's a damn nice place, so I wish you both good luck in the future.

Cheers,

B.

Ohhh, MERYY XMAS!!!
Peter Keen
TryHard
NSW
TT

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 10:44 am, by:  Peter Keen (Slaughter) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

OMG that is the nicest house mate, Good buy.
Damn you have good taste, more photos please.

Sounds like you lived a life time in 4 days. Good Work!
Brenton Trafford
TryHard
SA
V8 Limited - UZZ31

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 11:38 am, by:  Brenton Trafford (Traff) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Thanks guys. Peter, if you want more photos, here's the link to all of them:

http://picasaweb.google.com/brenton.trafford/TheNewHouse
Peter Nitschke
JunkFilterer
South Australia
GT4.0 V8

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 12:03 pm, by:  Peter Nitschke (Pen) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Mike Bradberry
DieHard
Queensland
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 01:16 pm, by:  Mike Bradberry (Halflife) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I didn't see any Soarer accommodation.
Miles Baker
Goo Roo
Vic
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 02:04 pm, by:  Miles Baker (Milesb) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)


Brian Timms wrote on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 10:15 am:

the better half has also said "I want to move to a house, but dont want to pay someone elses mortgage off", so it's the hint she wants to buy




The sad part of the affordability crisis in Australia is that studies suggest many people are now better off renting and saving the house payments, rather than servicing a huge interest bill.
Vinh Bui
Goo Roo
NSW
94 UZZ31 (V8) / 96 JZZ30 (TT) / 97 JZA80 (TT)

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 02:45 pm, by:  Vinh Bui (Hyudsjk) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Brandan, congratulations buddy! Couldn't be happier for you mate. Gorgeous looking house you snapped up there! Makes me want to move to SA lol

Happy birthday also :-)
Daniel Czechowski
Goo Roo
Western Australia
Soarer GT-T (sold :-( ) & IS300 Sports Luxury

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 03:00 pm, by:  Daniel Czechowski (Dan) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Wow, congratulations!!! That is a nice house! When I first started reading it I thought you are going to tell us some dodgy thing that has happened with buying a house or something, haha, nice way to confuse peopel with the thread title haha. So when's the wedding? Next week? Might as well, looks like you're on the roll here Brenton


Miles Baker wrote on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 02:04 pm:

The sad part of the affordability crisis in Australia is that studies suggest many people are now better off renting and saving the house payments, rather than servicing a huge interest bill.




Depends who does the studies. The ones I've read you are still better off buying a house.
Miles Baker
Goo Roo
Vic
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 03:17 pm, by:  Miles Baker (Milesb) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

for starters, kochy :-)

http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/b/new-idea/4818/david-kochrent-vs-buy/

What I mean is, ya gotta do the math. With the average mortgage being well over 300k now, you're staring down the barrel of 30 grand a year in interest payments for a good number of years. Renting an equivalent property may well be way under 30 grand. Add in all the savings on maintenance and rates... anyway, we're off topic and it's all academic.
Daniel Czechowski
Goo Roo
Western Australia
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 04:01 pm, by:  Daniel Czechowski (Dan) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Hahah, Kochy!! Classic!

Yeah off topic, so I'll only post it once and that's it.

Say 350K house with 350K mortgage is mid 20K's in interest.
A 350K house will rent out for $300 p/w or so, so 16K per year in rent. So about a saving of 10K per year.

The house goes up by 40K during the year...

Doh! Yeah, I know where I'd rather be... plus, no rent inspections, can have any pets you want, freedom to do whatever with the property, better lifestyle in general.

Of course, if your local real estate market is sh|t house, well, yeah no point wasting your time when values go up 1% per year... you basically rely on good growth.
Katrina Bruns
DieHard
SD
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 04:13 pm, by:  Katrina Bruns (Katrina) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Brenton, can I clone you and implant you into my boyfriend?? Sounds corny but wow.. if you can survive those 4 days, the whole marriage and kid thing should be a breeze for you. Keep us updated!
Will Schultz
Tinkerer
new south wales
tt

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - 10:54 pm, by:  Will Schultz (Johnny_dangerous) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

My lovely girlfriend has been looking at property lately and doing her best to convince me its a good idea to commit to.
Be honest Brenton.....should i get in my soarer and disappear?
Seriously though,sweet looking house.Well done
Miles Baker
Goo Roo
Vic
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 12:12 am, by:  Miles Baker (Milesb) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Daniel, a 15% per annum price rise situation can not last forever. Current average loan rate is about 8.5% comparison rate * 350k -> $30k. Interest rates are only going up too. Figure another $1500 in rates and waste management over here. Then maintenance costs. It can easily run over $20k per annum more expensive to service a loan on an average house in Melbourne than to rent it. On the other hand, jamming that 20k in BHP really pays atm.

It's all up to the individual to assess their finances and their confidence in the local property and rental markets.

One thing's for sure.. the Australian dream of owning your own home within 20 years is now out of reach for the average young family starting out, and that is a real shame.
Daniel Czechowski
Goo Roo
Western Australia
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 01:28 am, by:  Daniel Czechowski (Dan) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Miles, all depends what area you are talking about, and at what time and so on. While the property boom won't last forever, in the meantime I have made more than enough money off it so can't complain. One of my properties, I owned for just a little over 2 years, I sold it for triple the price I paid for it. It might be a WA thing only though, have absolutely no idea about how the eastern states market is performing... either way, it would be unwise to make a general statement about property like that, and it would also be unwise to listen to what some random person says on a forum either haha

But end of the day, rent money is dead money, though we need these suckers to rent our places out so yeah...
David Vaughan
Goo Roo
ACT
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 07:40 am, by:  David Vaughan (Davidv) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

The part with one can agree is that one should do the arithmetic, knowledgeably. House prices rise rapidly in different areas at different times (most recently WA) but the long term average increase is only a couple of percent above inflation.

If you are successful at analysing and selecting houses in rising areas you will make money above the long term average. If you are less than successful then you will lose it; the same position as shares or artwork. If you have an investment pool then you can expect to make money even without special skills.

Rent money is not dead if it frees capital for an investment superior to housing in the current market, where the rental cost is included in cost of funds.
David Vaughan
Goo Roo
ACT
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 07:46 am, by:  David Vaughan (Davidv) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Oh, and the thread! Congratulations Brenton it looks a nice place. Enjoy yourselves there.
Brenton Trafford
TryHard
SA
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 09:21 am, by:  Brenton Trafford (Traff) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Thanks everyone, even those attempting to hijack ;) - but just quietly I'd much rather be paying off a mortgage, even if it means building equity slowly I'm still building equity instead of throwing rent money into a hole. It's the Aussie dream after all.

Mike, there is undercover parking for two cars, one of which will be the Soarer. Katrina, clones will be available in February at a mere $25,000 (USD). LOL. Will, just be careful if you do "go looking" at properties with your lovely girlfriend or we'll be reading your post soon enough!!
Miles Baker
Goo Roo
Vic
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 09:26 am, by:  Miles Baker (Milesb) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Yes indeed, congrats Brenton. Looks like a beautiful spot.


David, I think a lot of people can't remember the last time the housing market seriously adjusted or interest rates skyrocketed, so they think it doesn't happen. There has been a lot of assumed and cliched belief of "just get in the market" without some people doing the math. Hence the credit crisis in the US market atm.
Dave Billings
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Louisiana
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 09:42 am, by:  Dave Billings (Waveman1717) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)


Miles Baker wrote on Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 09:26 am:

Hence the credit crisis in the US market atm.


It has to do with dumb asses buying on adjustable APR rates and balloon note mortgages.
Daniel Czechowski
Goo Roo
Western Australia
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 10:10 am, by:  Daniel Czechowski (Dan) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Hopefully market will be steady for another couple of years. I suppose the key is not to over expose yourself and have some buffer in place just in case interest rates do go up a few percentage points.

Having said that, property is meant to be a long term investment, even though the recent short term gains have been great, they are not normal. Also different cities have different cycles. Perth for example has only ever experienced an actual downturn twice in the last 30 years, first it was the 70s oil crisis, second was the "recession we had to have"...

And lastly, whatever investment you go with, if you do it wise, you will do well. And while shares have a higher potential to make you money, there' also more risk involved, there's nothing safer than houses :-)
Mike Beck
Goo Roo
New Zealand
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 11:21 am, by:  Mike Beck (Gold_40gt) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Excellent Work Brenton! :-)

Looks like things are working out perfectly, I mean you got 3 of the best things you can have, A Girlfriend, a house and a V8 Soarer!

Aaron Mead
Goo Roo
NT
TT

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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 07:58 pm, by:  Aaron Mead (Aaron) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

All of you, move to Darwin.

2001-Moved to this stinking sweathole. Leased a supermarket for a couple of years, pissed up most of the earnings, fcuked around, did a lot of hunting and playing with datsuns and saved a few bikkies. Should have made better use of my time.

2004- Bought Sandwich Bar. $40k. Turned over 5k week
2005- Bought unit 143k

2006- Shop turning over 11k a week. Bought duplex $232k Unit valued at almost 200k

2007-Shop turning over 16k. unit valued at $230k. Duplex valued at $270k (crap neighbourhood) Bought unit for $170k.

2008-Buying home. . Still have Soarer, a Celsior, un-married (), 07 camry, and personal debts that dwarf Uganda.

I kid you not. This is one of the few places where you can STILL make the easy buck from property and business. They seem to have no 'goodwill' concept when it comes to buying and selling businesses up here. I mean an established sandwich bar turning over 15k with our profits and overheads would command over $400k in melbourne or sydney.

And the rental returns up here? The first unit we bought for $143k in 2005 was returning $230pw. It now returns $260pw.

To get $260pw anywhere else, youd need to spend well over $300k.

I believe adelaide is going through a similar property boom.

A lady friend just opened a Red Rooster in Tennant Creek last year. Was targeting a turnover of just under 1M. Turned over 1.6M in the first year.
Cost of franchise was 360k. !!!-(moral: Black people LURRRVE the chicken)

Ive just been to broome earlier this year, and F*ck me!!!! youll pay eastern suburbs melbourne prices for the most CRUSTY youve ever seen!!! I want to open a shop there. They are screaming for business!!




Travel and see the rest of the country people. If an inner eastern melbourne city boy like me can do it, you all can.

Now.....what were they saying about the average amount of debt per person :-)??
Aaron Mead
Goo Roo
NT
TT

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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 07:59 pm, by:  Aaron Mead (Aaron) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Oh, and NO KIDS!!!
Miles Baker
Goo Roo
Vic
66 Mustang GT Convertible, 55 Chevy Bel Air, 69 Firebird 455, 73 Corvette 4sp T-Tops

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Wednesday, December 19, 2007 - 08:55 pm, by:  Miles Baker (Milesb) Edit Post Delete Post Print Post   View Post/Check IP (Moderator/Admin Only) Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Aaron,

Single
No kids

The win.

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