jalfreziboy

Hi. My wife and I live in the UK, are in our 60's in relatively good health and have a daughter living in the UK, a son living in Australia with his Australian wife and our only Grandchild. We have been to Australia 12 times now in 6 years and wish to spend more time there with our 6 year old Grandson before he gets too old to tolerate doting Grandparents!

We are considering downsizing in the UK to free up some cash and buying a 3 x 2 x 2 house in Busselton WA where they live. We intend to spend 7 months in the UK and 5 months in Australia using a 6 or12 month eVisitor (subclass 651) visa each year, .... Firstly is it possible to get that visa every year?

Leaving the cost of buying the house aside as I think I understand the process and costs, I now need to estimate what monthly / Quarterly / Yearly bills will be in Australia. We are a pretty frugal couple and would live in Australia during November to march so would probably not need heating but probably Air conditioning. As we would be running 2 households on fixed incomes I need to make sure we can survive without making our lives impossible financially.

So just the 2 of us living in Australia for the summer months excluding food and Petrol, can anyone tell me the average costs of the following:-

Rates
Water (Drinking)...Standing charge ?? consumption
Waste water charge ???
Electricity...Standing Charge ?? Consumption
Gas... Standing Charge ?? Consumption
Internet without phone or
Mobile broadband dongle
Rego for a used car value $7000
Buildings / contents insurance

Anything else I have forgotten or dont know about?

Thanks

Tuxtrip

I wonder, would it not be better to perhaps rent a place for 6 months, or to find a house swap? (You would need to check out the foreign ownership rules.)
With renting, all you have to consider are the utilities charges - electricity, gas, excess water, etc. Rates and insurance (including furniture of supplied), waste water, etc are the responsibility of the home owner. To save the cost of a land line, it would be advisable to purchase a wifi cube (I got mine for about $120 at Retravision Busselton). It works brilliantly and you only have it on when you need it, re-charging as required. Telstra have a very good $30pm PAYG mobile deal which includes unlimited texts and local calls, $250 international calls and 2g of data. I call and Face Time the UK each week and have never used all of the data, which rolls over to the next month.
Busselton can be expensive in the Summer months, as I'm sure you're aware, but a 6 months lease should not be a problem. Something to think about anyway.

jalfreziboy

Thanks Tuxtrip for your reply. Yes we have researched the foreign ownership rules, you have to gain approval from the Foreign Investment review board (application costs $5000) before you can buy a block of land and contract a builder. We can only buy a new house off plan or buy an existing house, knock it down and build new.

Renting could be a possibility but not keen on house swaps. A friend of mine has mentioned "house sitting". Apparently there are quite a lot of Australian couples who holiday in Europe & UK for 6 months at a time and would welcome a house sitter, so might be worth exploring.

However I think that house purchase will remain the long term goal but thanks for your contribution anyway, the information on the wifi cube wil be useful in any case.

mulben

Rates av. $1878
Know Your Council - Know Your Council WA – Rates
Water - $198 min then usage added
- depends a lot ( do you have a bore ) gardens use the most.
Busselton Water Board, Busselton Western Australia
Sewerage - $286 min.
The sewerage tariff is 2.401 cents for each dollar of rateable value
Remember not all Busselton is sewered some is on retrieval (pumped)
Gas
approx. $26 qtr. + usage (13c to 14.5c a unit )
Electricity
approx only payable 2 monthly
standing charge $15 month
usage 24c/kWh av. two person household 14kWh/ day
Rego
Based on weight of vehicle
1 tonne approx $770 ( includes motor injury insurance + third party )
Building + Contents Insurance
$600 for $700k but address will make it differ

If only there for five months just use gas bottles , no standing charge.
Install solar PV would reduce you power usage to 4kWh/ day(night actually) and heat your water ( no need for expensive gas )

You also maybe able to claim a seniors card (over 60s )
Which saves on Rates / Water and Power.
If you need a WA Drivers License it saves there also.

You would also need Health Insurance as reciprocal benefit may not
cover drug price under our system which generally applies to short term visitors ( may need seeing into if you can get temporary medicare coverage)

jalfreziboy

Hi Mulben Many thanks for your reply.

Some really useful information and URLs in your post.

Regarding the rates I am not sure how I can get an accurate GRV for our intended property. I have looked at a 3x2x2 rental in Busso which comes out at $350 PW so $18,200 PA. I believe that the rates payable is the rentable value of the property times the rate in the dollar which for our intended area (vasse) is 1.58c. If that is correct our rates payable are $287.56 but that cant be right. Where am I going wrong???

Many thanks

mulben

Dont know about your final rate figure but you also will have a waste levy and a SES (State Emergency Services) levy added .
At a guess another $600 , although I would take the av. Council figure as your base for working out costs.

geoff52

Have you considered building a self contained flat as an extension to your sons house. Which would solve a lot of your problems of buying a property.

Beoz

And may cause the son to get divorced in the process. Inlaws living in the garden ..... no chance.

geoff52

Love has its limits then.

Beoz

Depends if you love your inlaws or not. For me, its a necessary evil.

jalfreziboy

Thanks Beoz & geoff52 for your input. Yes we did consider the Granny flat option and also you can get a dual occupancy house design now in which you both have your own front door and space. However, although we love our family to bits we need our own separate space where we can live our own lives and see our own friends but be close enough to see our family a couple of times a week.

We did momentarily consider a Park Home but as Non residents we can only buy property off plan.

Thanks Mulben for your reply, yes I saw that there is a waste and SES levy added, which I guess is fair enough. The Gas bottle option sounds a good idea but would you need to buy alternative appliances e.g. Hot water system and cook top?

At the moment my wife and I are on a bit of a treadmill, working hard whilst we are in the UK, saving hard for each trip to Oz and then spending it all in Australia. Then back home and repeat! We must be the ideal Tourists for the Australian government

The only thing we have not factored in is medical Insurance as we were reasoning that whilst in the UK we would do Doctors, Dentists Opticians etc using our NHS but what slightly worries me is sudden illness or accident, I hear horror stories of what is covered or not covered under the reciprocal health agreement and huge bills for Ambulances, is there anything that covers this gap?

Thanks to everyone for your input, it is very exciting planning a new chapter of our lives in Australia but a bit scary too

Pollyana

Reciprocal Health covers accidents/emergencies for UK residents in Aus and vice versa. If you are living in WA you need Ambulance insurance. If you are visiting ambulances are covered by the reciprocal agreement. If you are living in WA then regular visits to GPs, dentists etc in the UK are not available on the NHS as you are not a UK resident.

jalfreziboy

Thanks for your reply Pollyana, Not sure how we figure in our status as we will be 5 Months in Australia and then 7 Months back in the UK. So officially I guess we are still UK residents visiting Australia for 5 months so I assume the reciprocal agreement would apply. I wonder if it would be worth just taking out Ambulance insurance if not too expensive just to be sure

Pollyana

To be safe, in that case, you should take out travel insurance for your time in Aus. If anything goes wrong on the trip over or back, or if anything goes seriously wrong in Aus while you are here as tourists, you could find yourself with hideous medical bills -I am talking worse case scenario of course. Reciprocal agreements will not cover repatriation, or ongoing care if one of you was disabled or too sick to travel.
I would suggest maybe talk to someone like Alan Collet from Go Matilda, who deals with a lot of parent visas, and thus would have info on travel insurance for people no longer able to travel etc. but I think you would be classed as being in Aus as a tourist and thus travel insurance is the way to go. Trying to get actual medical insurance if not resident here could be tricky.

carcajou

Many people end up undershooting their costs, sometimes by a lot. Just the start-up costs alone (everything from candlestick holders to wall art) needs to be repurchased. So if money really is very tight and the council rates and car rego costs on a used car are going to make-or-break this for you - I don't think this will work out. Especially as you have to factor in things like inflation, cost rises etc over time. Are your pensions inflation indexed? As the saying goes don't trip over pennies when you are chasing Dollars. Or in migration cases if you are worried about pennies you probably don't have enough Dollars.

Busselton is also a town where you have to be careful what neighbourhood you buy in. If you have $500,000 to drop down on a 3-bedroom house, I am a bit surprised you are fretting about things like car rego. If you are looking at houses in the $200,000 or $300,000 range in that area, think twice, and thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly research what exactly you are buying and the location it's in.