Kim67

I would got the fixer upper in Palmyra. Anywhere near Fremantle is always a good choice. I know a few people who just buy the old state houses around there and do them up as a sideline living. East and West Perth are great but you'll pay top dollar for any type of property in those areas.

Balga and Westminster are both the same suburb, a number of years ago they split Balga in half and renamed one half Westminster in an attempt to lift Balgas image. Balga is traditionally renowned for being the worst place to live in Perth. They could bulldoze every house in Balga and build multi million dollar mansions and most Perthites would still not go anywhere near the place.

jimbo_d

If you're looking for near CBD with affordable housing then look at Yokine, Dianella, Inglewood, Osborne Park. They're all up and coming (Yokine/Inglewood already are suburbs with a previous dodgy rep that have nice houses for sale within reach of $500k and will rent easily. I think Dianella is rated as being one of the most underrated suburbs on RE.com.au if you get what I mean.

Kim67

Yep, I'd second that.

spouse of scouse

Dianella would be a great choice, although if you want a 'proper' house (not a strata villa or unit) it would be pretty basic/a doer upper for $500,000. There's no way you could buy a house or villa in Inglewood for the money, or even a decent sized unit. A decent 2 bed one bath flat is around AU400k. Yokine's a good choice in this neck of the woods. I live in Morley, which used to be very reasonable, but prices have boomed in the last couple of years. I'm not a fan of Osbourne Park, too much light industry, although other people swear by it.

For my money, the best investment suburbs north of the river at the moment are Embleton and Dianella.

Agree with other's advice about not so good suburbs, and about Nollamarra being a good place to invest in a unit. Areas to avoid south of the river include Armadale, Kelmscott and Maddington. Don't get me wrong, many of the people who live in these suburbs are salt of the earth, but the suburbs don't have a good reputation and you wouldn't achieve as good a rental for your dollars.

Turban Explorer

Embleton is particularly cheap and looks tempting. Does anyone know what the standard estate agent fees are? What does the landlord pay in terms of rates etc?

spouse of scouse

As the owner/landord, you'll need to pay Council and water rates. In Embelton it's around $1,000 a year for Council rates and somewhere in that vicinity for water rates, too. You'd also have to insure the property if it's a house, this covers the building and anything that's 'fixed' in it, such as stoves. These things are only covered for damage by fire etc, you need to pay for maintenance and repair of the building and fixed items as the landlord. If you're going to buy a house you really do need to either buy a relatively new one, thus reducing your future maintenance costs, or 'do it up' before renting.

It's up to the tenent to get contents insurance, which covers furniture, clothing and the like, and to pay for electricity, gas, phone, internet.

Most villas, units and flats are managed by a strata company, you pay quarterly fees to them which cover building insurance and maintenance of common areas. You're still up for Council and water rates though. However, there are increasing numbers of units being built that have no common property such as gardens and driveways, in these cases the same insurance conditions as a house apply.

Sorry, no idea about real estate agent fees to manage the propery.

Ballys

Spot on

the troubadour

Why buy in the over priced Perth market in the first place? Do you feel the yeilds bring a satisfactory return on your investment?

Japonica

Can't say what all the fees would be, but when we broke our lease and left six months early (18 months into a two-year lease; our build was complete and we didn't feel like hanging around in the rental for six months), as a condition of breaking said lease, we had to pay the landlord's leasing fees for the remainder of our agreed contract period. It wasn't excessive, something like $180 for the six months, if I recall. Now there could be a whole host of other fees involved to cover admin, inspections (the three month variety, move in and move out), whatever. That's just one portion that we paid for that the landlord is normally expected to cover.

spouse of scouse

They do at the moment, I think so anyway. Rentals are incredibly scarce, not surprisingly since our house prices have risen so dramatically!

You do need to pick your area carefully though. You could spend $400,000 on a very nice 3x2 house in a suburb with a poor reputation, and only get $300 per week in rent. Or you could spend the same amount on a dinky (by Oz standards) 2x1 flat in Mt Lawley and get $500 a week.

Location, location,....you know the rest

the troubadour

I wouldn't touch Perth these days unless it was a house I wanted to live in. I do believe the days of sitting back and watching the price go up is largely a thing of the past. Of course there will be blips but Perth saw such massive raised from 03 to 09 I do not believe it will be repeated again or even or even close in this cycle.

The mining seems to be shedding numbers of staff and the boom was after all the reason for Perth prices to go sky high in everything including housing.
Without a boom I don't see a lot of folk remaining here as there are plenty of other places paying big bucks for those in the area.

I know folk here seem to have some blind soldered faith in housing but I've the feeling it's been done. Anyway I have been looking at investment for sometime and shyed away from Perth prices.

jimbo_d

Along with Darwin it's just about the only major city in Australia with house prices moving in a postive direction though? Rents can also be postivly geared in some areas, I think from 2010-winter 2012 would have been a blinding time to buy an investment property as the prices dipped a bit. Mining still may have some wind in its sails yet, if the iron ore prices remain above $120 for a while the projects put on hold will come back on line.

the troubadour

One should also factor in the costs around buying and which are considerable along with having the houses managed.They are not inconsiderable. I do speak from experience be it in international property.
Perth rents have picked up a little and may well increase but I would not place my money on a boom bust cycle sort of place.
Sydney though very expensive being Australia's gateway to the world and international city is to my mind the longer term best option.
I actually quite like Hobart as well for quality of buck and future growth....

I would not choose tax incentives as a prime reason to buy myself. Over priced property is but that overpriced. Perth may appear to be booming to some but outside of mining is still a little of a branch office sort of place.

My bank manager recently was telling me how aggressive the Mainland Chinese folk are in the local Perth market....(he is Chinese himself,but not Mainland) Pretty much been the case for sometime in Sydney and Melbourne but far more recent to Perth.This factor could well see prices inflate more..bit of an unknown for how long and how many...
Two plus years ago in London searching for an investment place was shown some real awful places. At that time more than 75% of sales in that city was going to overseas investors......highly inflating the market and disallowing many locals to get a foot on the ladder......
Same applied to a recent visit to Namibia....thanks to overseas investment from neighbouring Angolia and RSA as well as German and Russian buyers the market is at least in Swakomund too expensive at the moment for locals......
Hence factors can indeed influence the market of an external nature but I wouldn't run with Perth myself.

Turban Explorer

Yep. Should be better than 4.85% term deposit plus the aim is to buy a fixer upper or one with land to build a second home - all tax deductable. I aim to negatively gear the purchase to offset tax owed and storage costs for my furniture (500 per month!!). Happy to be convinced its a crap idea....??

Amazulu

One thing I learnt a long time ago - never seek, or listen to, financial advice on BE!

You're a smart girl. Do what you need to do.