scampie

we have had our visa for over a year and cannot sell our house, have dropped it 69000 already although been told its immaculate. cant even rent it as rental for four beds is deterioting. We dont know what to do? husband has a job to go to butcannot afford to keep this property and rent over there til it sells. we are so fed up thought getting the visa would be hard not actually leaving. any ideas???

mindblower

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Rent it out until eventual upturn ?

scampie

we were told by rental agents we need ten months rental in case house is empty? trouble is we have not got !0,000 to put away and we need money gto get to oz?

Lornagoingtobrissy

Hi Havent got any ideas for you as we are in the same position. We to have had our visa a year cant believe we are still here, i'm so fed up begining to think it will never happen keep dropping the price on house but still nothing tried auction no bids but cost us £700 for the stress. Not going with any deposit for a house in oz as lost it all with prices dropping and if they drop much more wont be able to go at all. Getting quite depressed with it all.

Lorna

Ben F

Hi All
The same for us. All going well, got our visa and sold our house only to find our buyer didn't have the deposit and so has pulled out. now have until the end of march to sell or will have to go and validate. thought about renting but want the money from the house sale. Hopefully something will turn up between now and then. Just playing the waiting game now

markandgill

You are not alone, we have had our visa since May 08, have had our house up for sales since July 07. Our last viewer was in Aug 07 , We have dropped our price by 30k, we cannot afford to drop our price any further, have just booked our validation trip for March, and we cannot afford to rent our house out, it isnt always as black and white as some people think, people make is sound so simple and easy. I am so fed up with people saying just rent you house out and go!!!!!!!
Unfortunately there isnt really anything much you can do, unless you can afford to go and rent out your house, I know if we could afford to do that we would be away tomorrow, but unfortuntely we cant so we are stuck here until we finally sell
All we can hope for is that the housing market does pick up in the new year

Gill

bluekipper

Its taking the risk to rent out aswell,, I know quite a few who have had there houses trashed by tenants,, and its not as if your just round the corner to keep an eye out on them! agents are a waste of time also!

Stay positive to all of you still waiting to sell,,
wishing you loads of luck

Bluekipper

chocciecake

we are keeping a years rent up our sleeve for good measure, as we lost our buyer and are already now below what we paid for the place, so we have no choice but to rent it out unfortunately..
i would feel alot more comfortable not having a liability back here , but theres no other choice...
we just have to cross or fingers and hope for the best, and hope we'll never have to use up the buffer money either...
surely theres a good tenant out there???

Molko1974

We tried to sell our house back in May but we had tenants who wouldn't let anyone in to view. The agent didn't push it which was a shame as we had some interest. Our tenants moved out in June and so we kept the house on the market dropping the price every month. Our house didn't sell and was empty between June and December. We finally found tenants to move in a couple of weeks ago.
I would try a different agent and try to rent your house. It may take a while but tenants will turn up eventually.

chocciecake

it definately might be worth thinking about whether giving the house a nice neutral paint, and maybe even some typlcal ikea style furniture,would be helpful too..
obviously i have no idea what style your house is, or the target tenant type, but i do know that when i was a tenant, i would go for a house that wouldn't clash with my stuff, and would have been put off by different coloured carpet in every room, old curtains, floral sofa etc, and we always went for basic coloured places, so all our own colourful soft furnishings didn't clash...

if you have a good "rental look" to attract tenants as opposed to "this was our owner occupied place that we are renting out" look, so in other words ,something that other people could make look like their own very easily, then you will rent quicker and have less voids...
hope i got across what i mean, as i was confusing myself...but we are taking all our stuff and will raid ikea for a decent house setting that will suit most tastes (although not mine) and it will also be easily replaced at a lowish cost if need be later on...

you just want to make ours attractive to tenants...

what are your sums...
you said you can't rent it out...is that because the rental yield is too low compared to the mortgage and costs??
we also took in mind that the place we would rent in aus was going to cost us less, (although not really now that our monthly mortgage payment has dropped by 50 percent!) but may be someone could help you number crunch and see if it is workable....???
i was determined that we we not going to bring our kids up her any longer than necessary, and we had to go, so ,fortunately as we have been so tight lately, and my husband works for himself ,so is not on a fixed wage, we have been able to squirrel money away to hopefully make it work....if it doesn't bankrupt us down the line...i am worried about the what if's..interest rate rises, dodgy tenants etc, and also the fact that this was our home and i don't want it wrecked, but we will get landlords insurance and then just hope for the best....prices go down and prices go back up...eventually, so if you can hold on, and also achieve your dreams, it will have been worth it one day...despite the grey hairs!

noidea

Have you looked into negative gearing your rental, you can now do this with UK properties. Basically you can claim back losses as tax returns.

I am not an expert but try looking it up.


"Deduction of negative gearing losses on property against income from other sources for the purpose of reducing income tax is illegal in the vast majority of countries, the exceptions being Canada, Australia, and New Zealand." from wiki.

link below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_gearing

hope this helps

chocciecake

yes that is true..you can negative gear and claim your losses against your australian income....it can be quite good to do....
of course you will also be liable for tax on any income you make on it too:curse:

coolerkingcooler

Sorry if this has been mentioned or is irrelevant. If your mortgage is repayment, could you change to an interest only? Any comments on this would be appreciated if we find oureselves in this position.

Best wishes,
Cooler

Twinset

Went to interest only, meaning we can afford to rent out and move, and give someone a 10% discount for lease of a year or more....!!

Bit of food for thought....

shirlw

Also sitting with the same conundrum in South Africa but also have 2 businesses and a commercial property to sell too.It is a global crisis of monumental proportions and all we can do is sit it out.We too must validate our visa in March so that makes quite a few of us!

Good luck to everyone out there in the same boat.....may we all be there soon.........sending good karmah your way