It's a little bit sad for the buyers though, although probably you'll be in a good bargaining position when that happens and you do choose to invest into those new luxury apartments. What happens when the apartments do't have any other people living in them and only a few tenants? What happens to the strata?

That's what friends are for right? Haha, I find it ironic that he was telling you off for being too pessimistic when he chose to go all in. Now when tides have turned against him for his recklessness without proper backup he has to come to you for help. I honestly won't know how to deal with a friend like this. I'm stingy as is, and lending big amount of cash I know 80% chance I won't be getting back is just not gonna happen for me. But my cousins said in life must be generous, and in turn one will receive generosity back.

Maybe you could tell him your wife is converting a majority of what you have back to RM. Haha..

Only those who built up their fortune over a period of time (unlike some of us newcomers) would have a warchest ready. I'm just hoping to find an okay cost place to buy that's within the first home buyers price range. Hopefully you guys with some reserve funds can secure your loans and get what you're after. =D

While I do agree with the sentiment and it does make sense, if the prices are too tempting for a good place you'll get even more competition. In all honesty I'd love to buy a house at its cheapest, but realistically I'd offer a price that I'd expect it to fall to in 3 months using the logic above. Maybe 30k off a 680k house or something like that. My colleague's son did buy a house for 1 mil only to have it drop to 900k a few months later. That is really painful.


Yeah, I know. An ex-coll friend messaged me to borrow money last time, but I offered half instead and he accepted. While I did not expect it back, I did ask him about it at the promised date, and he took about an extra 6-8 months to pay me back.

Based on how much your friend is able to repay, I think if he just sold his 2 properties and bought one unit in the west suburbs (even Strathfield) he'd survive based on his current repayments - if he can get another loan. 6k is massive (to me), and it sounds like two properties near 800k each. Well one way or the other, he'd have to make a sacrifice. Can't be going around expecting people to keep bailing you out of your own mess. At the end of the day he's your friend and it's your call. Good luck dealing with this and hopefully it doesn't put a strain on the friendship.

In the event he goes bankrupt, he'll still have a loan amount attached to him, and if he plans on ending the bankruptcy he still has to repay that off. Isn't a smaller amount better than having 500k looking you in the face instead? Though if the bank takes and sells his belonging/properties the loan amount will drop, I think it's probably better if he can settle it on his own terms by dictating the price of house now before it gets too bad. Otherwise, unless he plans on staying bankrupt as long as possible if it occurs...

Based on the flow of the thread, barely anyone thinks there'll be a sudden upsurge in prices of properties, especially with investor sentiment about Sydney/Melbourne. To me, even a a loss, selling off one house drops the mortgage amount by a fair amount (50%? assumptions), and repaying 3-4k a month vs 6k is a lot more manageable. If prices continue dropping, the longer he holds onto it the more of a loss it becomes unless sold off ASAP. If he could borrow from a few people to offset that loss, then he only has to pay for the house he's currently staying in. In my opinion, the denial to accept what's currently changing in the market will cost him more.

If I had kids I'd have set aside some money each month, and hopefully he did that so that it won't sting so much. Otherwise the eldest would probably have to help out with household income by getting a part time job, or even to cover her own education cost. My missus knows of a few colleagues who bought a house or two currently on interest only. I would agree it's a lot, but probably 1 or 2 out of 10 property owners would feel this.

All good, that's what forums are meant for anyway.

The company I work has a really high turnover rate, so they're always hiring. Not a great start, but it's a good foot into the permanent job role. Big, but plenty of messy processes we're working on fixing right now. Not sure if they have marketing roles though.


That's quite informative, good to know if I ever have to deal with that. So if you're a PR, lost your job and declared bankrupt, do they deport you back to the country of origin?

Some part of me really wants to see the prices of houses drop, though it'll be crap for your friends, and by extension yourself, if they want to borrow money from you. I've already seen a least 2 houses now which I was somewhat interested in drop by 15k & 20k respectively. Won't be surprised if they accept an offer of another 15-20k less.

Are houses that are part of a community levy any good? Don't quite want to be pay like 1k+ a year for a pool I may not use. Will it help improve other things besides the pool which is what the levy is attributed to?

Some of the houses have community levy, a fund for upkeep of public facilities (swimming pool, park, etc.), which is rather similar to strata. Two of the town houses we saw without strata, instead have community levy.

One house had a 200+/quarter levy for swimming pool upkeep.
Another had 70+/quarter for private road maintenance.

I'm just wondering if this is worth paying for, and if it go up like how a strata does.


I'm in the IT component of my company, which is in health food product manufacturing. FFGL Careers
Title is Project Analyst, though I do miss programming a little now that my role is no longer technical.

Checked out Randwick's price on domain, pretty much all auctions. It an indicator for me to keep away, haha..

It feels great you have so many buddies to keep in touch with. I only have a small group of pals who are all back in Msia, whom I quite miss but they have their own lives to live. I can see myself 30-40 years from now with my missus, probably a quiet life and eventually a quiet death too. That is if no major problems kills me off earlier. Maybe then I might have to contemplate if I should return to Msia or not, if there's anything worthwhile left in Msia to go home to.




Morbid thoughts aside, @Aussiebum, , I believe you'll need to be able to prove that you've been together for long enough a period of time, maybe 3-5 years. If you have pictures dating back to those dates it'll be easier for you. Another supporting documents like joint bank accounts or purchases will help your cause too.

This was what the agent I went with told me last time, not sure if things have changed. Both my missus and myself decided to get married while I applied for PR so that both of us would get it together, Good luck with yours.

How it Sold: Lilyfield bidder bids against himself four times for $1.795m home
Link : https://outline.com/42cd4c

Should teach us how to avoid bidding against ourselves like that article, haha..

Most agents look at me like I accidentally vomitted into their shoe when I say I'm only interested in a property if it's like 20-30k less. I was accompanying a friend who went to check out an auction, and the agent asked me where I was from. When I said "Chester Hill", he never spoke to me again after that.

It's probably good to have advice from siblings in the real estate industry, though you'd be worried for them now with the slowing down of property sales & prices. It's great having online sources to read from and forums like this to partake and learn from. Whirlpool is another good source for reading through people's opinions and dissecting them, or applying them to what you've seen so far. Feels like too many houses are still at the 2018 peak prices at the moment. Plenty of agents are also quite unwilling to negotiate or drop prices, except one or two that I've seen that said that owners are looking to let go of the unit ASAP and wiling to drop 20-30k.

Good advice, I would given a similar opinion. Do or don't depends on the person, but as long one understands the actions and the repercussions that may happen as a result. If one chooses to go ahead with it, then it's on a clear conscious regarding those actions and take responsibility for them. Also, is it worth possibly getting blacklisted from coming to Aus again?

Have not seen you around for a bit, hope the house purchase has gone well for you. Managed to settle everything?


Oh yes, the new has reported an increase of private loans as people are unable to get loans from banks. On and off I still hear private loan ads on radio "Borrow up to 5k to fund your dream holiday!". White I do get the desperation to get away from work (and lack of holidays like in Msia), I don't understand the urge to have immediate fun but lose out in the long run.

Maybe if your friend is lucky he can tag along with the "sue banks for breaching responsible lending laws", which sounds like it applies to him, unable to repay his loans unless he works till 80-90+ years old.

I don't get why these banks would loan him more money if they don't want him to go bankrupt. With the mortgage, now added with these high interest loans, there's no way for him to repay both once the new loan amount dries up. Sounds like these two loans to repay will definitely make him bankrupt, but just delayed. 60-70k CC/personal loan is simply crazy...it seems to me hat our buddy is like close to 1 mil in debt. Not sure how much he can borrow from friends and if any of that will even help him out. Sounds like he should just keep borrowing as much money as possible to survive until declared bankrupt..

So if he owns two houses at the moment, and stays in the better one; if he does bankrupt I believe he'll still be able to live in that house? Or will he be forced to give up the more expensive place and move to the other? And if after 3 years he's out of bankruptcy, does he keep whatever he currently owns, including the said house?

Sounds exciting. Do lemme know if there's anything to keep an eye out for during this transition period. Good luck with transition.


This is an interesting read from the Aus Finance reddit post on opinions of home purchase at this time:
https://old.reddit.com/r/AusFinance/comment...ould_do_in_our/

The general feel is quite the same as a number of posters in this thread. I find it useful and it's quite convincing to hold off on house purchase at the moment. Both wife and I feel that we would only go for a house that fits nearly all our criteria and is too good to pass up.

Mortgage stress map:
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/03/ma...-stress-suburb/

It looks like the majority of Sydney has their finances under control, and about 10% or less are having major mortgage stress. Not too sure what the numbers represent. I'm interpreting it as number of potential owners with mortgage stress or repayment cost per month.

Either way good indicator as to all the potential defaults, which doesn't seem too bad. At worst it'll just be a few thousand extra houses on the market, which is probably a small dent in the statistics.

It looks like there's an update for the skilled migration list:
https://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/punjabi...lists-announced

Interesting how they need these few roles:
Horse Trainer
Tennis Coach
Footballers - rugby/soccer? I thought with the number of people interested in these sports already it's a surprise for me to see this here.

Good luck to those applying.

This one does look good. Thank you very much.


The thread seems to be pretty quiet now, thought it was in hibernation.

Doesn't make sense, sounds like it's probably worded wrongly. Either that or they rushed some changes out.

Who's making bets on the election results?

Pretty surprised the Coalition won, all I was hearing recently was that the opposition would be winning, hands down.

Hopefully the new 5% deposit first home buyers scheme doesn't come into play that fast.

Anyone taking advantage of this now would definitely had to lose that % earned from SMSF. If I was doing that as well I would love to continue taking advantage of such a 'feature' too.


Haha, nah, whoever wins is beyond my say, as I'm just a PR. I can only go along with the flow.

Good to hear about the some policies staying in place, even for a short while. Just worried about the surge in first time home buyers when gov starts guaranteeing the 15% of the loan.

Hopefully with the new 5% deposit scheme may still contain the stamp duty waiver/examption. This feels a lot more impactful to me instead of a 95 loan to repay, not sure if this even includes the LMI as you are technically borrowing 95%.

Does anyone invest into Vanguard? Would you recommend it?

Though if they're not able to come up with the 100k+ after many years, it should probably flag their inability to possibly repay those loans.