G'day, Just had a grear read of all the knowledge here! my query is a bit of a repetition of scenarios already discussed but with a few variations: Our situation: House: value 400000 mortgage 60000 Income: 130000 (mine) Girlfriend (Artist -20000 to 50000) No other debts and no other serious investments My employer would like me to move and is picking up the rent or pay LAFHA (living away from home allowance) I have been looking at an investment property for a while but frankly have been to busy working ;-) We like our current house so selling is not an option renting it out is! So what to do: Buy an house for us to live in? Get an investment property and rent "the new place" use the LAFHA to pay for "the new place" and convert that into an investment property at a later stage? Stay were I am and tell my employer to look for someone else? I am intersted in getting some tax deductions and creating some future secondary income of some sort but as you can see by my current situation am not to keen to take on large risks. Your comments would be appreciated! Jasper
Hi Jasper, the simple choice is to move for the job and rent a property. Your current house (PPOR) becomes an investment property (IP) until you move back in. A significant benefit may be that you should qualify for the six-year CGT exemption on your PPOR. Do a search on this forum - there have been a number of threads on this topic. With your income and equity you should also be able to make further investments - more properties or shares etc. Read lots before acting!!
Jasper I'd go for the option above but generally IMO your decision should be driven mainly by your future family and employment plans. I wouldn't go too heavily into debt at present. As an alternative and as a higher priority If I was you I'd concentrate on building up a shares portfolio instead. There are many shares out there which have been oversold for no real reason and they'll come back hard so we now have a short window of opportunity to grab some of those at a discount. Good luck.
thanks for the responses! Flying up to my possible new home city this tuesday to check it out! on paper it looks pretty good and I like it so let's see how it looks in real life! I just made the decission to have my project bonus and retention bonus payed out in cash rather than in super contribution (i know silly for many reasons) but that should hopefully be the end of paying interest!! I'll start having a look at investment in stocks rather than bricks! Cheers Jasper
I'd glady take $75 today in the hand before taking $100 in super these days. It's what you do with the money that matters!
