owning a house
 

hi all :thumbsup:

just wondering how many BE forum members have went to oz and discovered they will never be able to afford to own a house again either in oz (or uk if you went back)?
do you mind if you own your own home or not?
the reason im asking is im wondering if renting a viable option long term?

cheers

Re: owning a house
 

I think renting is definitely a viable option long term, if not, forever.

The cost of renting in Australia is quite low comparatively and you get the benefits of not having to fork out for maintenance etc...and being able to move whenever you get bored or whatever!!

I am 36, have never owned and prolly never will - doesn't bother me one iota :)

Re: owning a house
 

Hey,
i have found that most Australians rent here, well in QLD anyway,. Its quite unusual to meet an Ozzie who owns their own home. Most English people i know here usually jump straight in and buy their own home.
Angela

Re: owning a house
 

Overall, about 69% of Australians own their homes as opposed to renting.

Having said that, generous tax treatment of rental houses has contributed, along with incoming cashed-up migrants, to the shortage and overpricing of homes, which are now in the top few in the world's "unaffordable" list.

Re: owning a house
 

Husband works with a chap who lives in his own home that was built by his father. He bought the land and built two adjoining houses for both sons. However he himself has never owned a home and has always lived in rented and has no intention of doing so. Sounds odd but he was able to give a decent inheritance to his sons whilst still alive and is as happy as a pig in poo.

Re: owning a house
 

If people were smart no body would be owning their own home





























However their family trusts........:sneaky:

Re: owning a house
 

There are advantages to renting but the problem comes with not being able to change anything and even if you could why spend your money on a place when the landlord can kick you out at anytime!

I guess we've never found the perfect rental so we've got fed up with it after 3 years and we are building a house.

When we first arrived we could with our equity have bought a reasonable house but as things have changed we've now having to taken on a much bigger mortgage. If we still had our UK place then maybe we might have hung on but we didn't want to be out of the property market too long as then it's hard to get back in - in either country.

A lot of people here buy a property to rent out that returns a good investment and then they'll rent what they want to live in - so best of both worlds I guess. The thing is you can live in a much nicer place than you can afford to buy.

I guess it's finding the right rental, maybe one where you can stay long term and alter things with the landlords agreement - as it's that what gets to most people in the end.

Re: owning a house
 

Very true!

I guess we have been lucky in that one of our rentals back in Oz was not quite up to our standard. The Landlord was happy for us to make improvements to it - even stumping up some cash to do so!

Unfortunately, things turned sour for him and we ended up having to move out as he needed to sell the house.

Still, I believe that it is possible to find long term rentals owned by people happy for you to make improvements/ alterations!

Wirelessly posted (NokiaN73-1/4.0750.31.2.1 Series60/3.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1)

Planning to land in Oz around July on permanent visa.
My doubt is why some refrain from buying own house & just stick to rent.? I mean why they cant route their rent payments to fund long term loan which would finance a house.?

Re: owning a house
 

I think renting would suit us better, less stress, plus well cheaper, also unless you have a very big deposit, the re-payments would be very high. I dont think its worth going to the other side of the world to be stressed to death over money!

Make life simple.:thumbup:

Bluekipper

Wirelessly posted (NokiaN73-1/4.0750.31.2.1 Series60/3.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1)

Is this "unaffordability" motto is applicable to entire country? I mean isn't there any migrant couple, found a little nice house (which they own) in suburbs & just want to commute less than an hour to reach city to work?

Re: owning a house
 

Some people do not want to buy, they may prefer the flexibility to move around more, and renting suits them for that. Some others will be waiting (hoping) for prices to drop, until they buy.

However, in general only about one third are renters.

At the moment, the requirement for a large deposit tends to put some people off buying.

Re: owning a house
 

There are many who do exactly that.

Re: owning a house
 

I couldn't rent long term with some other landlord prodding me around.

I like to do the prodding. :D

Wirelessly posted (NokiaN73-1/4.0750.31.2.1 Series60/3.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1)

Hi Alfresco!
Either way you ll feel the excitement of migrating. Dont let your stuff to a native Australian. He ll be hopping mad.
Try some poor migrant on temp visa. (ps: Unable to put right smily as I m on mobile. Just guess what suits it)

Wirelessly posted (NokiaN73-1/4.0750.31.2.1 Series60/3.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1)

Ask from an Asian why do you migrate? Within first two priorities money is definite.
Contraraly, many british say its weather or something related.

For argument sake if I say, many Brits come & just rent out & owning a house is not that major concern for them so prefer to shift places .
Conversely Asians come & try to earn much as possible & pride themselves owning a house.?
Does above argument stand or just fall flat?

Re: owning a house
 

Thanks Charw. Yes we are looking forward to it. Will probably rent for 3-6 months then buy if we can.

Re: owning a house
 

what is the 2nd priority? :blink:

Re: owning a house
 

He clearly states:

Earning money &.......
Being proud of your house/ home!

Re: owning a house
 

Back in home after work right now.;)

Second it . But :rolleyes: you d amazed to find how many just leave original homes ( here in Asia ) just for showoff! to kith & kin.:(

Re: owning a house
 

Some people are materialistic while others are not. I know for sure that income wise I am not going to be any better off. Owning a house is not my priority but Charw, you are so right about the weather being one thing for the Brits. It is for me, amongst other things of course, but really looking forward to sunny days :)

Re: owning a house
 

We've been renting for over two years now, while we looked around for a block to build, then chose a builder, and now getting the house built (nearly there; fingers crossed).

We initially had a furnihsed rental but have now been in the same unfurnished one for nearly two years. It was a brand-new house when we moved in.

But renting has been a horrible experience.

1. The agent will do inspections every three month. We are not talking about a quick walk through. There is an expectation that the house will look like a show home - one of our first inspection reports said we had spider webs in the garden and that needed "to be addressed" - not kidding.

I could go on and on about the kinds of things the rental agent gets up to.

2. You are not allowed to put nails in the walls. That means you cannot put up any pictures, no shelves - nothing. For this reason a lot of our possesions have been in boxes the whole time.

It means you cannot personalise the house and therefore not make it into a "home".

3. Someone wrote above that with a rental you can move whenever you like. In reality that's not so easy. We came over with a 20ft container crammed full of stuff and have acquired a few bits of additional furniture and appliances since then (e.g. fridge/freezer, TV, bed, chest of drawers).

Moving is expensive! When our lease was up a year ago, it would not have been cost effective to move for one more year - and then move again into our own home.

I know someone else on BE who was renting through a private landlord who told them to treat the house as though it was their home. But I think that kind of attitude is pretty rare.

I am looking forward to moving into my own house and having a "home" again. :)

Re: owning a house
 

I think even if you want to buy you should rent for a while as houses here are totally different to the UK ones plus you also need to be sure you are happy with the area.

Moving here is very expensive with the stamp duty etc so you don't want to be doing it too many times! We joked with our Aussie neighbours that the Gov must love them as they've moved 19 times!

Even moving whilst renting has cost us around $1k each time with removals, reconnection fees (they sting you for everything here!) etc but renting has enabled us to find out where we want to be together with knowing what to look for in an Aussie house.

In the end we are building because we can get the layout we need (work from home) plus we've been able to get the right shape of house for the block to take advantage of the sun etc.

Actually, probably the landlords might be quite okay but you have the scary agent in the middle! Although our agents back in the UK should have been more scary with our tenants after the inspections!

Re: owning a house
 

They may have been thinking that they would look after it if they treated it as their own home, and fix their own tap washers etc :lol:

Re: owning a house
 

Yes, us in the same boat too.

We are renting here, the house we are renting is $1400 a month, however if we wanted to buy this same house and take out a mortgage, we would have to pay $2500 a month! I know what I would rather do at the moment.
We do have savings that could be used as a deposit, but I am very reluctant to part with all our life savings and then have nothing to left to fall back on as the money would be tied up in the property.

We owned our house in the UK, but sold it after just a year as it was a horrible area, hated there and because it was so difficult to sell, I would be very cautious to buy again.

Don't really mind renting at the moment, of course I'd love to own a property but might have to face up to the fact that we never will. At least until the prices have come down to a reasonable level.

Re: owning a house
 

We rent too & probably we could not afford to buy on the street where we live.
Not looked into it really yet though as hoping OH will go back to UNi next year & then we can forget mortgage for quite a while!:)
One day......maybe.....

Re: owning a house
 

I had to laugh about the inspections. We just had our second here and also had written on the letter that the house was in good condition and being maintained, but there was a single dusty vent and a couple of spiderwebs outside that needed to be taken care of. Do these agents have a life or what? I wouldn't bother ticking off tenants who are taking care of the place and save their energy for the ones damaging the walls and letting the gardens dry to a crisp.

Re: owning a house
 

Don't get me started .....

Anybody with any sense wants spiders in their garden: They eat ants, flies, cockroaches etc etc

Our rental agent can't keep hold of their staff. Whenever it's inspection time we get a new woman.

First one accused us of putting dirty finger and hand marks on the ceiling around where the cooktop's exhaust fan goes into the ceiling! I had not noticed these marks. But, yes, if you look at the ceiling at a certain angle, you can see them. Again, anybody with any sense would realise that those marks where left by the installer. I mean, what does she think we do???? "Let's get a chair, dear, and try to press out hands and fingers up against the ceiling after we've rolled our hands around in some dust to make them dirty." :blink:

Second one accused us of having knocked out some coving in the living room. I had not noticed this before either. But sure enough, in the living room there is a tiny section of the coving that is damaged. It was clearly a case of us having been bored again, and yet again taken a chair, stood on it, and then removed a tiny bit of the coving - just for a fun thing to do. :blink:

On both occasions, the inspection report noted the "damage" and then said: "Tenants claim they did not do this."

The laundry door is too small. It has great big gaps going round. As this door is on the rainside of the house, we get lots of rain come in through the gaps in the winter. Naturally this is all our fault as well - even though we didn't build the house, we didn't fit the door, but logic has nothing to do with it.

I could go on ... don't tempt me again ;)

I hope we'll be out of here by 1 May. And then I expect we'll have to go to a tribunal to get our bond back, I expect the agent to keep it just in the hope we're too busy to fight them. But I've already decided not to let it go.

Re: owning a house
 

my friend is quite comfortable and single but has bought a number of units around the place, in places she doesnt particularly want to live and rents in the type of house she wants in the centre of sydney.

she says she cant see why she would want a huge mortgage for once house when she can rent and have exactly what she wants. I think a couple of the units are now paid for and she has another couple on the go.

we rented and hated it, it was fine but I like to work on the house and the garden and never felt I could. A certain BE Family I know though have dug up their entire rental's garden and are busy becoming the permaculture capital of the Sunshine Coast.

I think the housing inspectors are too amazed to talk about it on their 3 monthly visits :eek: