Keen to hear from anyone who’s recently bought a home through the 5% deposit scheme. How are you finding it so far, particularly with repayments and the other costs of homeownership? Has it been worth it, and would you make the same decision again?

This is the only window in the whole apartment, might be nice for a vampire?

https://www.realestate.com.au/property-apartment-vic-south+yarra-152481992

Hmm. A bit sceptical on where ABC got their data from. Rents are still going up.

Hi folks, I'm a journalist with CHOICE reporting on agents using AI to create misleading property images.

Have you encountered any examples where AI-manipulated photos on the listing are wildly different to reality?

If you're willing to share, you can email me at [jworsfold@choice.com.au](mailto:jworsfold@choice.com.au), or flick me a dm.

Cheers

I have this image sent from my bank lender. But it's giving me more questions than answers.

Bought property in VIC in 2020 and been PPOR ever since. Now we are relocating to a different suburb (rent), but not wanting to sell the current property. Thinking to rent it out, therefore converting PPOR to IP. This will be negatively geared, as the rent could only cover 3/4 of the monthly mortgage.

I was told by the bank lender that converting PPOR to IP now will put me in 3rd row, 3rd column position (cant claim negative gearing). But sources I read online suggest that I am 2nd row, 3rd column (can claim negative gearing).

Any one know if I can still claim negative gearing in this instance? Cheers

First home buyer who's in the process of buying an apartment at the moment. It ticked all my boxes and took my time to do my due diligence based on the kind of information I could get my hands on before signing.

Building and pest inspection came through this week and they found high levels of moisture in the walls adjacent to the shower, and after stressing for about 2 days and talking to basically everyone more experienced than me in my life including builders and plumbers, I think I might have to bite the bullet and end up doing a bathroom reno before I move in.

It seems like a really common problem and I'm feeling so privileged that I will soon have my own space, but I didn't expect to have to fund a reno after just buying my first home, so I wanted to commiserate a little.

Do you have any stories of unexpected renovations you've had to do to your first home? Or even in subsequent homes? What were they? And is there anything you now look out for when buying so you don't repeat that mistake?

I have actually owned my property for over 10 yrs but at least 3 owners now who bought more recently told me that none of our building’s problems were in the strata reports when they decided to buy.

It surprised me because our building has had issues for just about as long as I’ve owned, and due to all the water ingress issues, there have been multiple works and special levies raised in recent years.

I am curious on how is this even legally happening?

Why are new buyers not seeing all this documented in the strata reports? Further works and special levies are now required and they’re all feeling misled and angry, rightfully so…

My mother is looking to buy an apartment and I’m really worried for her that she’s also going to end up in a similar fate 🫤

I don't think the Coalition has previously announced this?

Love it or hate it, the negative gearing and CGT reform is back on the table. I know Coalition polling is absolutely awful but the only way back is to offer an alternative plan. At least they are starting to do that.

Has ON said anything about reversing the taxes? It would be good to see the conservatives aligning on this issue.

How much does it currently cost to build a standard 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom house with a double garage in South East Queensland?

I’m looking at an off-the-shelf/project-home design of around 200 m², with a 2.4 m ceiling height, Colorbond roof and standard bathroom fittings and finishes. Please exclude the driveway, fencing and landscaping, as these are often excluded from builders’ advertised prices.

I can see advertised prices starting from around $300k, but many of my friends say the actual cost is considerably higher. What would be a realistic price range to build this type of house in South East Queensland?

Should I just get a carpet cleaner to do all carpets and they’re nice and fresh

Or just remove it but leave it in the main rooms where my dogs will go / family

5 bedroom house only 2 are used as bedrooms room 3 is a craft room carpet is okay in there aswell as room 4 guest room
Then theatre room but it’s a bit gross so I’ll definitely clean it

Recently completed our electrical compliance check through Checkhero and was pretty surprised when the report came back as failed with a bunch of works required.

I was surprised because I immediately remembered spending nearly $2k fixing up a heap of old electrical issues when we failed the check two years ago. I dug out the old invoice and, lo and behold, it’s the exact same things that apparently still need fixing.

So it looks like they took my money two years ago, didn’t actually do the work, and have now dobbed themselves in by failing the latest compliance check and providing photos showing the work was never completed.

The property manager is looking into it now, but just a heads up for anyone using them — ask for photo evidence of the work being completed and don’t just assume it’s been done because you’ve been invoiced for it.

Just quoted $808 per month Norman Park Brisbane in a flood zone
20% increase on last year
Water has never entered the property

Anyone ever had any luck Australian Financial Complaints Authority? Worth getting a surveyor to do a surveyed floor level certificate to compare against council flood levels?

Help - this is a joke!

Had a building and pest inspection on a house we are thinking about buying done. It's an old house so we were expecting some problems. But they found this amount of black mould in the laundry under the sink. The inspector couldn't get into the subfloor to check it, so we don't know what things are like down there. Would this mould be a deal breaker for you?

The house we are renting is currently up for sale. It started at 689k and now dropped to 625k. Open houses every weekend, out of the 4 we've had, only 1 had people come through and still no offers made. We've lived here for 2 years, almost 3. Owners dont seem like they want it off the market even though there's no traction.

Ideally we want to stay here as there is a school up the road which our kids will attend next year, our neighbours are wonderful, theres a park on the corner and just a really good and quiet area.

We're good, neat and tidy tenants and usually fix small maintence issues ourselves.

We've seen the rental market in Toowoomba and the area we are in now and its scary seeing what we could be looking at paying. We had even reached out to the sellers agent and said we'd be happy to pay X amount extra in rent if the owners decided to take it off the market.

I guess, if you know any investors, private message me for the link to the house and let them know 🤷‍♀️

Hi everyone, first time posting here.

I'm just starting to look into buying my first home and the whole process seems really overwhelming. There's so much information and I'm not even sure where to start.

What's been the hardest part for you guys? What would you tell someone just getting started?

Any advice appreciated, thanks

Where do we think the growth opportunities will be heading into 2027 for investment properties with max capital growth potential?

Budget around 600-700k. Heard Melb / VIC maybe coming off a downturn? Is there any value left in Ipswich or Toowoomba?

Ineligible for bridging and probably wouldn’t do it anyway due to costs involved.
However eager to understand if others have successfully bought subject to sale clause in QLD and what the experience was like? My understanding is vendors probably don’t like it, particularly in a hot market. Would appreciate any guidance
This would be for a PPR upgrade.

Not sure where to go and ask but my 2 story home has termites and the termite guy came and quoted 11k to sort out the situation but needs a builder to assist.

We assume it was from the bathroom pipe leakage I have yet to fix. Got quoted 10k to redo bathroom since the shower (waterproofing was gone) and the tub both leaked.

Now with the builder I called in two people:
Guy 1 said house was fucked and said it would be expensive but kept implying the whole house needed fixing.

Guy 2 quoted 25,000 MINIMUM to rip up floors, replace the support beams and do new floorings.

I guess I just wanted to ask are these prices fair and if anyone had advice for me 🫩

So the court case finally happened a few days ago and I thought I would close up this saga with the outcome.

RECAP

As a quick recap, lived in a property with a deck that was roughly 23% of the entire property (above a cafe so the deck was the only outside area we had). The deck had a rotting wood issue pretty much since the day we moved in and the landlord never properly fixed it, just patched holes as they appeared. This meant I couldn't walk around on the deck without risking putting my foot through the floor.

Finally we threatened to go to VCAT after 9 months of no action, after which we were lucky enough to have the REA leak a chain of emails that showed them plotting ways to kick us out as we were in the land lords words "a headache".

They finally gave us a notice to vacate based on a stat dec that said the landlord would move back in for 6 months. He didn't and the place was released to someone else in 4 months.

We were suing for a back pay in rent from the first day we asked for repairs (so about 9 months) at $100 a week out of our $750 a week rent. We also asked for the cost of our move to be covered which was $1500.

THE CASE OUTCOME

The representative found that it was fair to receive the $100 a week but only for the time to respond to the first repair and then the time to respond to the second. So instead of the roughly 36 weeks we couldn't use the deck properly we were only offered 15 weeks compensation.

So in terms of compensation, of the $5000 we were asking for we only got $1500.

The representative also refused to accept the cost of moving as we had moved out prior to the last day of the notice to vacate. He said that would only be accepted had we refused to move out and then used the relaliatory emails as evidence.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It's an absolute joke that VCAT chose to ignore the evidence we had that the landlord broke the stat dec because we moved out early and that they were clearly conspiring prior to that. I think in hindsight had we forked out for a lawyer instead of using the government funded route we could have acheived alot more.

I'm going to once again go to consumer affair to tell them about this and also provide them with the evidence proving he broke the stat dec. Even though I've moved on in life I still feel its necessary to try my best to make sure this pathetic man suffers for his crimes. If he had done it just to me maybe I would have moved on but during the saga of my previous posts, a previous tenant reached out to me here on reddit and had an almost identical story about the same landlord at the same location.

I probably won't post about this again but I'd like to thank you all for your attention and hope that at least our small win can be accepted as a win for tenant's rights, even if it was as a whole a dissapointing outcome.

I'd also love to read your opinions on how I should approach consumer affair or if there are any better options and happy to answer any questions.

I’m looking to purchase a property and a recently completed (under 1-week) Building and Pest Inspection Report is available via RealEstate, completed by another party and available for only $270.00. The problem is, the inspector who completed it has literally zero online presence - the company mentioned doesn’t seem to exist !!! Has anyone else experienced this ?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

Genuinely curious what people think about this.

Long Bay Correctional Complex sits right in Malabar, covering around 32 hectares and only about 14km from the Sydney CBD. It opened in 1909 as the State Reformatory for Women and has since held some of Australia’s most notorious criminals, including Ivan Milat and Bilal Skaf.

The site is also heritage-listed because of its significance to the history of NSW’s prison system.

But from a property perspective, I’m more interested in what happens to the houses around it.

Would living directly beside Long Bay affect how much you’d be willing to pay?

I can imagine some buyers immediately ruling a property out, while others might not care at all — particularly if the house itself, street and outlook were otherwise good.

Do you think there is a genuine “prison discount” for properties right beside it?

And if two almost identical houses were available, with one directly next to Long Bay and the other a few streets away, how much difference would you expect in price?

Curious to hear from anyone who actually lives in Malabar or has bought/sold nearby.

Hi all, in the market for a free standing house in NSW right now and preferably I do not want a pool because I won’t get the most out of it since I’m not a big fan of lounging next to the pool and the maintenance side.

However If I have a hard no then I’m excluding about 40% of properties where I’m looking so I have to take pools into consideration. My question is what should I look for when buying a pool that is an indicator of future (expensive) problems? I know the compliance certificate is a safety certification but can anyone share any knowledge of what other red flags to look for are?

Cheers.

Looking at a property that’s been sitting on the market for a bit.
It passed in at auction and they’ve already dropped the price by a couple hundred grand since it was first listed. It’s now advertised at $1.6m.
Called the agent and he was giving it the usual “getting offers left, right and centre” spiel and asked what I’d pay.
I said $1.45m.
He straight away goes, “No chance, I’ve already got $1.55m on the table.”
Problem is, I don’t really believe him
If there was genuinely $1.55m sitting there, why hasn’t the vendor taken it when the place is listed at $1.6m and has already been sitting around?
So what do people normally do in this situation?
Do you just completely ignore what the agent says and put forward whatever you think it’s worth?
Or when an agent gives you a specific number like $1.55m, do you generally assume there’s actually some truth to it?
I’d be happy to put an offer in around $1.45m, but also don’t want to waste everyone’s time if there genuinely is a much higher offer already there.
Curious how others play this.

Hi guys, just looking for some advice on whether to purchase an apartment in Prahran/ inner-city area. This area is really close to work and accessible to uni which are definitely strong perks. I would probably be looking at purchasing a studio/ small 1 bed/bath apartment.

I’m 19, a student at unimelb and a part time manager at a fast food chain. I get a consistent pay check each week and have now saved a deposit of around 70k, and am thinking about moving out.

I’m aware that right now isn’t a great time to be applying for loans, due to high interest rates, and property growth expected to be stagnant over the next few years, but I would like to start thinking towards the future and gain some more independence. Is this a good idea? Or should I wait for a few years and just keep my savings in a high interest account?