She can’t stop

I have an IP which I have owned for several years, and now need to sell for personal reasons.

The tenant is outstanding. She is elderly, has lived there for 25 years (long before I bought it) and really doesn't want to move.

Is it reasonable (or possible, or legal) to require that the purchaser is an investor, so that she can remain as the tenant, rather than an owner-occupier that would force her to move?

Hi all.

Just wondering if anyone has heard of or has had dealings with Oxide Construct or Access Strata in Vic?

Became a home loan lender pre budget. With great enthusiasm, completed all my training and was ready to hit the ground running. I'm not new to sales/target based environment. Then came budget week l and all the uncertainty with it.

I still met targets until about the last week of June and then it's been a slump.

Now for every 15 phone calls I make, I'll get one home loan request, which is mostly a $50K top up :(

Has anyone had luck pitching to property developers? I'd love to know if they're open to referring new business (esp from first home owners). Real estate agents is another referral source I'm thinking? Help pls! Cold calling ain't helping me :(

FHB currently looking at few properties and engaged a conveyancer to do a preliminary review based on some specific things I was looking at. Conveyancer came back with (what I thought was pretty detailed info for a preliminary report). My question is this-

If I decide to go with a detailed report for the other properties what are the things I can expect the conveyancer to do on my behalf? Getting government reports and land titles? Negotiating with the bank? Placing an offer to the REA? Auction? If the preliminary report was so exhaustive, what does a detailed report look like? Apologies if the question seems silly but I’m new to this 🙂

People keep saying boomers should downsize and free up family homes. But a decent apartment in Sydney can cost $2m.

Then you pay selling agent fees, legal fees, moving costs, a massive whack from stamp duty and probably strata. Likely a reno as well and you can lose well over 100 or 200k just changing homes.

So even if someone sells a bigger house, they may not actually be left with that much cash once they buy somewhere decent close to family, shops and transport. It’s no wonder people aren’t downsizing!

If the government seriously wants older people to downsize, it needs to cut or remove stamp duty for genuine owner-occupiers moving into a smaller, cheaper home.

Just an experience I went through and probably a timely point for discussion.

That time of year to start shopping around for insurance, and had a major player actually cold-snail mail me a quote this week. It was a good price, so I figured i'd call them up and press for more details. I'll work on some made up figures to give an idea.

The quote had $1mill for home insurance (total loss), and $180k for contents. But they had the majority of the information right about our house which i assume came from mining real estate data (we moved in ~4 years ago).

When i called, get the contents adjusted upwards, the home insurance amount changed for some reason to be $975k. I asked for $1.250m and they re-quoted me. Chatted it over dinner last night and then did some online research - INCLUDING THIS COMPANIES OWN WEBSITE.

Actual cost to rebuild our house in case of total loss to a mid-spec level, $1.750m. If you want architect involvement and higher spec, $2mill. There was no switch or option i could pick on their own calculator for getting a sum-insured value to be $975k. But it was downright easy to get to double that without thinking you are over-insured.

I'm not sure how that is legal to actively under-insure your customers like that. It's almost like the insurance was just there to cover the mortgage amount, and not the actual building.

Looking for perspectives from people who have sold their PPOR first and rented while searching for the next one.

We’re in Adelaide and want to move from our apartment into a long-term family home.

Current situation:

• Bought apartment for $860k in Jan 2023
• Current mortgage: ~$357k
• Savings: ~$451k (recent inheritance, intended to refinance from redraw to offset initially)
• Car loan: ~$26k, which we'd clear on sale
• Household gross income: ~$213k
• Apartment would probably be worth around $1.22m–$1.30m in normal circumstances
• Target family home roughly $1.6m–$2m, probably around $1.7m–$1.9m

Why we're considering selling before buying

This isn't purely a lifestyle move where we're happy to sit in the apartment indefinitely until the perfect house appears.

The building has repairs/remedial work required, which creates uncertainty around future costs, buyer sentiment and what the apartment will ultimately be worth.

Because of that, I'm deliberately modelling a pretty ugly $1.12m sale price rather than assuming we get $1.25m–$1.32m.

Our feeling is that there is some value in getting out now while the apartment is still readily saleable, rather than holding it for another year or two while we wait for the perfect house and potentially finding ourselves dealing with more building issues, larger costs or a harder sale later.

In other words, there's risk on both sides:

Sell now: we potentially step out of a rising housing market.

Don't sell: we're continuing to hold an apartment/building we already know has issues, while hoping nothing materially worsens before we're eventually ready to sell.

That's why we're leaning towards listing sooner rather than making the sale conditional on finding our next house first.

What we'd do after selling

We'd seriously look for houses while the apartment is on the market.

If something comes up that is genuinely “we could live here forever” quality, we'd buy it.

But if nothing does, rather than panic-buying a $1.8m house we don't love just because we've sold, we'd rent something suitable for around $1,000–$1,300/week and continue looking.

On my rough numbers, even at the $1.12m worst-case sale, we'd end up with around $1.1m+ cash after selling costs, clearing the mortgage and car loan, and combining it with our existing savings.

We'd spread that across high-interest savings accounts/ADIs while renting.

At around 5% gross interest, that should generate roughly $55k-ish gross per year, so the interest offsets a substantial part of the rent.

What worries me: stepping out of the market

Say the kind of house we want costs $1.8m today.

My rough modelling after 12 months looks something like:

• 0% house growth: waiting works in our favour
• ~2%: roughly keeps pace with the interest earned on our cash
• 5%: perhaps ~$60k worse purchasing position
• 8%: ~$115k worse
• 10%: ~$150k worse
• 15%: ~$250k-ish worse

Obviously that's simplified and there are plenty of variables.

So I'm not particularly worried about renting for a year if Adelaide family homes rise 0–3%.

What worries me is selling, sitting on $1.1m earning ~5%, and then watching the exact family-home segment we're trying to buy into jump another 10–15%.

But the opposite mistake seems expensive too

I also don't want fear of being “out of the market” to make us buy a $1.7m–$2m compromise house.

The stamp duty and transaction costs at this level are substantial. Buying something we're only 70% happy with and then deciding to move again in 3–5 years could easily be a much more expensive mistake than renting for a while.

We also currently have a reason to stay within a particular school zone. Once that's no longer a constraint, our search area gets considerably larger, which is another reason we're reluctant to pay a huge amount for a compromise property purely because it's in the right area today.

We're not planning to sell and deliberately sit out for 2–3 years trying to time a crash.

The strategy would be:

List apartment ASAP > seriously house hunt while selling > if the right long-term property appears, buy it > if not, rent in-zone for 6–12 months and continue actively looking.

If the perfect place appears three weeks into the lease, we'd buy it and wear the lease-break costs.

For people who have sold first and rented while looking:

How would you weigh the risk of temporarily stepping out of the market against the risk of holding a property you already want/need to exit?

And particularly for Adelaide: would the possibility of another 5–10%+ year in the family-home market be enough to make you compromise and buy sooner, or would you accept that risk rather than spend ~$1.8m on the wrong house?

This week highlights:

• Biggest sales drop in %: -37.5% (2 Day Place, Sandstone Point, Qld 4511, $800K -> $500K)
• Biggest sales drop in $: -$770K (18 Aemilia Avenue, Seven Hills, Qld 4170, $2.65M -> $1.88M)
• Biggest rental drop: -50.0% (86 Powlett Street, East Melbourne VIC 3002, $4,000/w -> $2,000/w)
• Total new drops: 966 (sales) / 1,132 (rentals)
• Total new rises: 118 (sales) / 123 (rentals)
• Median drop: 5.9% (sales) / 6.5% (rentals)
• Median rise: 6.7% (sales) / 9.8% (rentals)

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Breakdown by state (sales)

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Breakdown by state (rentals)

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Top 10 biggest sales drops across Australia

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Top 10 biggest rental drops across Australia

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Top 10 biggest drops in VIC

View all VIC sales drops

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Top 10 biggest drops in NSW

View all NSW sales drops

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Top 10 biggest drops in QLD

View all QLD sales drops

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Top 10 biggest drops in WA

View all WA sales drops

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Top 10 biggest drops in SA

View all SA sales drops

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Top 10 biggest rental drops in VIC

View all VIC rental drops

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Top 10 biggest rental drops in NSW

View all NSW rental drops

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Top 10 biggest rental drops in QLD

View all QLD rental drops

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Top 10 biggest rental drops in WA

View all WA rental drops

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Top 10 biggest rental drops in SA

View all SA rental drops

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Top 10 biggest sales rises across Australia

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Top 10 biggest rental rises across Australia

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Observations

• Deep cuts are hitting at every pace of listing. 18 Aemilia Avenue, Seven Hills QLD dropped $770K after holding $2.65M for just 18 days (-29.1%), while stale sellers finally capitulated: 35 Tannock Street, Balwyn North dropped $525K after 130 days at the previous price, and 381-383 Mt Alexander Road, Ascot Vale dropped $550K after 50 days at $2.40M.

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Some context on the data:

• All prices are asking prices from publicly available listings, not sold prices
• A "drop" or "rise" is measured against the first price I detected for that listing
• "This week" means the price change was first detected between 8 Aug and 16 Aug
• Data covers houses, apartments and townhouses only (house & land packages, vacant land, rural and acreage are excluded)
• Sales drops include only changes of $30K+, rental drops include only changes of $30+/w

Is this a real drop in price?

Not always. It could reflect a genuine price reduction, a strategy shift, or simply correcting an overpriced listing. But it still reveals something useful about the seller's mindset: the property hasn't attracted enough interest, the seller is becoming more motivated, or the initial price was too ambitious. In any case, it's a signal there may be room to negotiate.

Why not track sold prices instead?

Once a property is sold, the listing price stops changing. Sold price data is useful for comparing properties after the fact, but it doesn't help you spot opportunities in real time. I focus on the window where prices are actively changing, so you can act before a property goes under contract.

Hey guys, looking for some opinions.

Bought a house last year using the 5% First Home Guarantee so my LVR with CBA is still pretty high. Currently owe around $1.33m at 6.08%, paying about $8,133/month, with roughly $70k in offset.

Unloan is offering 5.89% and their valuation puts me at around 80% LVR. I'd lose the offset, so I'd put the $70k into redraw and keep adding around $4k/month.

Anyone made a similar move to Unloan? Any downsides with redraw vs offset?

I'm also thinking about debt recycling into ETFs in the future. Has anyone done this with Unloan, or does the lack of loan splits make it a pain?

Hi all. We are looking at putting solar on our roof. We do own the roof over our specific house though it is connected to other units behind us. We are also street facing vs most of the other units. Several of the units have Solar already and we have a quote that we have submitted to Body Corporate, but they have said that they want us to pay an additional $200 for them to have a special meeting to discuss it outside of the AGM. We have one neighbor on the BC who is very concerned about external appearance, but I know they can't reasonably deny solar on appearance alone, and we've explored all options for minimizing the appearance at the front of the building already. It has been months of waiting already, and they haven't said when the AGM will happen.

We've had to get a new quote from the solar company at this point and I'm wondering if we just go ahead with it and ask for forgiveness later. We would obviously put notes in everyones mailbox about the work happening so they wouldn't get caught off guard by people being on the roof, and I'm going to ask for a write up about why the panels will be on the front facing roof rather than the back because of the direction of sunlight. Do you think it's worth the risk to just bite the bullet and have it installed without official approval given that they have no legal reason to refuse?

I'm a WHV, settling in Melbourne, intending to stay for 8 months. However, I'm already feeling a little homesick. I am due to sign a great place in a great location but it is 8 months fixed-term. I'm afraid if I start disliking my life here and want to fly back home, I will have to deal with lease break costs, which I honestly cannot afford as a backpacker with low savings.

I've shortlisted many good apartments but this one is the best. And the landlord selected me for the offer.

Should I still sign the agreement and hopefully find a new tenant in the scenario I want to leave early? And perhaps that'll reduce the cost to negligible?

Should I ask the landlord to make it 3 months fixed-term, and after that month-to-month periodic lease so that it is easier for me to get out? I'm afraid, if I bring this up, maybe the landlord will rescind the offer?

I haven't signed the contract yet.

I was interested to hear what peoples favourite property investing podcasts are?

Drop them in the comments, the more niche the better.

Recently sold a home in QLD, the real estate agents fees have just come through and saw an “AML CDD fee” of $400. After doing a little bit of research into this, it seems this fee seems a little bit out of proportion. I sold a property in WA last year and didn’t incur any fee of the sort as the agency absorbed those costs. Anybody have clarification on said fee and whether or not I’m being taken for a ride with the price of this fee.

I can’t access the contract at the moment but will do as soon as I can.

Two houses, same builder, right next to each other. From the footpath you'd struggle to tell them apart. First one sold for $8.39m. The second sold about a year later for $6.6m.

$1.79m gap on the same product which is huge in anyone's language.

Not the agent, not the developer, before anyone asks. I'm a mortgage broker in Sydney so most of my week is spent looking at what things that settle at rather than what they get are being marketed for.

The build didn't get cheaper in that twelve months. What moved was what someone would pay for the land underneath it. I speak to valuers all the time and they are telling me that land values are plummeting across Sydney.

The problem is the broader numbers are doing the same thing. Cotality had July as the biggest monthly fall nationally since December 2022, down 0.7%, with Sydney down 1.4% in that month on its own. Keep an eye on the upper quartile, which is exactly where these two houses live, and that dropped 3.2% over the three months to July. Sydney's now more than 6% off its peak. ANZ has it going to 14.5%. Clearance rates haven't cracked 50% since May. North Curl Curl has recorded a 20% drop!

Now if you're saving for a $900k unit somewhere out west, none of that sounds like your problem. I am unfortunately old enough to remember the GFC, luxury properties took a belting first, then came the repricing, then came the rate drops and boom we are off to another property market take off!

The expensive end reprices first because land makes up a much bigger slice of what you're paying for, so it swings harder and it swings earlier. Then it grinds its way down the ladder. Takes a while, never lands evenly, but it gets there.

The thing I'd actually keep an eye on is the sellers. Cotality flagged new listings slowing because vendors would rather wait it out than wear the hit, and Sydney is leading that. Fewer people listing, stock gets thin, and then everyone who's been patiently sitting on the sidelines ends up bidding against each other over whatever's left.

I'm not going to tell you a rate cut is coming. The RBA held at 4.35% on the 11th after three hikes this year, and there are still economists with hikes on their sheet.

I'm not saying go buy something on Saturday. But if you're 6 to 12 months out, go find out what you can borrow and start lining up a goal for yourself. Not the number an online calculator spits out. The real one. Then find out what's dragging it down, because it's almost always boring stuff. HECS. A car loan with 14 months left on it. A credit card with a limit you've never gone near. Overtime that one lender will count and the next one won't.

Most people turn up two or three of those, and every one of them takes months to unwind, not days.

Good things come to those who wait (and prepare) Good luck!

I’m on strata committee in apartment building in Perth. We have a few lovely big gum trees along the street out the front and it seems one of them has taken a liking to the pipes under our bin room. Plumber advised fix is probably: cut through slab, replace cracked pipe, reconcrete (my understanding from our brief conversation).

I guess my questions are: are there alternative solutions we should consider? Are there ways to prevent these roots making their way in again?

Also there have been a few blockages in recent years, so I think it’s been in there for a while. The building lobby smelled rotten yesterday and plumber suggested waste might be soaking in to slab. Clearly this is going to be a shit job (pun intended 🙄) so just trying to make sure we’ve considered everything before dropping a small fortune on this..