iPom

Yeah, but it helps if you've got enough room to put said people in.

ohippy

Our rental is much, much bigger and takes way longer to clean

We are buying though and the new house is bigger, views of the ocean and a mortgage identical to the UK one. So much for having a smaller mortgage, we should have been here 18 months ago or more for that !

Big Galah

Sounds good in principle, but see what you think when you've had a look at some of the cheaper rentals – there's some real shockers out there. Do you really want to come all this way to live in a dive? Of course not all cheap rentals are dives – only most of them.

Also, the amount of money you save may be small compared to the price of a property e.g. say in Sydney you pay $300 a week rather than $400. That's $5,000 more at the end of a year than you would have had if you'd gone with the more expensive option. With a typical house price of, say, 500,000, that's given you an extra 1% on the purchase price (or increased your deposit by maybe 10%?).

And, from personal experience, actually putting the money you're "saving" aside and not spending it is pretty difficult – there are always things that you need to buy.

Just some thoughts.

Big.

tofster

That's a great question, I have wondered that also. Looking at the real estate websites, you can get a beautiful 4 bed detached, lounge + family, dining + meals, rumpus, double garage etc etc, for between £300k and 450k (Oz Dollars - at 2.4 conversion it equates to £125k-£187.5k GBP) Find that in the UK!!. These are also "nice" areas (outside Melbourne and Adelaide - if you like those areas of course). Also, the rooms all seem to be so much bigger than UK houses, newer ones anyway. Our 4th bedroom is about 1.8m x 2.00m !!

northernbird

bigger but with 3 times the mortgage.

Madhouse!

Ooooh another one left from sunny Poole

We had a 3bed end of terraced with postage stamp of back garden and a mortgage we couldnt afford!

Renting now a 4bed two storey house with Ocean and estuary views
Debt free and money in our pockets for a very nice change.

Yea life is grand

stuckinblighty

Thats all well and good but the wages dont seem to be as good in Aus,swings and round-abouts me thinks

aston man

wendy does the interest from equity cover rental in oz,

annqldau

Our house is slightly bigger and land than UK but saying that so is our mortgage but our UK house was a revite where this house needs very little doing to it depending on what mood I'm in.

Went for an older house, as new estate just not my scene. We could have been mortgage free if we had moved further out but needed to be near Brisbane.

tofster

Yep, having looked into that also, I think you are right. Forgive me for stating "the bleedin' obvious" (copyright B. Fawlty 1975), but it appears that the property values are hugely in our favour. Obviously everyone's circumstances are different but it seems to be a big "leg-up", house wise, if you aren't completely daft! A lot of people seem to be selling up in UK, paying off mortgage and then some, outright purchase in Oz, with cash to spare.
If you are in this position, do you need to earn mega-bucks?. The "IF" word is key here of course !

annqldau

Depends which end of UK you came from and if you made a mega house profit. We made a comfortable but small by Southern terms sum but then by the time you relocate and buy cars etc. it soon dwindles fast.

Buzzy--Bee

Not Wendy, obviously LOL but that rather depends on how much savings you have.

You could do the sums - renting costs about $350 - $500 a week it seems and savings rates seem to be about 6% in Oz before tax.

Say $400 a week X 52 weeks = $20800 needed per year for rent.

$350,000 invested at 6% gross would give $21,000, so thats how much you would need but you need to take tax on the investment into consideration and obviously everybody's tax affairs are different.

I reckon invest $5 - 600,000 to take that into account.

HTH

Buzzy

tofster

Yes, appreciate that also.

annqldau

Have come across a lot from the South who made huge profits plus with house prices going up here unless you move out of town still quite high by comparison in the inner city areas to less developed areas.

aston man

i dont know if im being a thick head here.please tel me if i am..

if you have 200k here and you get 6%
that pays you over 600 quid min a month after tax.(easily covering 1600bucks)

so if you leave your money in the bank here can you not pay your landlord direct from an english account..

help please ,aston

Buzzy[/QUOTE]