Below you will find the additional bonus resources from the book that will assist you in progressing towards your own property success. All you have to do is click on the chapter title and it will take you to the corresponding resource as described in the book plus some additional surprise bonus’.

I am excited that you have decided to take this step towards achieving your goals.

Jane Slack-Smith

Founder Your Property Success

Chapter 2 Bonus Download Your Workbook
Chapter 3 Download Your Cash Flow Tracker
Chapter 4 Download Your Risk Profile Tool
Chapter 6 Understanding Calculations and Terms
Chapter 7 Understanding Buying Criteria

Part 2

Chapter 8 Understand Cross Collaterisation
Chapter 9 The Lending Process explained and a special e-book on the Ten Questions to ask                            your Professional
Chapter 10 Access a great Depreciation Calculator
Chapter 11 Some handy websites
Chapter 12 Download your property Inspection Check lists
Chapter 13 Your renovation flipping spreadsheet and your renovation potential check list
Chapter 14 Some notes on buying at auction
Chapter 17 Develop your own Renovation Rule of Thumb
Chapter 18 Download your Renovation Tips and Tricks e-book
Chapter 20 Valuation Template here for download
Chapter 21 Examples of renovation before and after photos

Your Property Success with Renovation Workbook that will allow you to keep notes of your journey through this book

Download the Cash Flow tracker and start recording where you spend your money. Once you know where you spend your money you can start working on where you can start saving money.

Download the risk profile audit Determine Your Risk Profile download here. There is 3 categories, based on your answers you can determine if you are more willing to take on risk or less willing. Your tolerance to risk will assist you in determining your property investing strategy.

The ‘ANZ asset returns: past, present and future’ report released in October 2011 showed that residential property was the highest returning asset over the past 24 years. Even when costs and taxes were factored in, owner-occupied housing generated the highest average annual total returns (12.0 per cent), followed by investor housing (9.6 per cent) and equities (8.9 per cent). Download the report Download the ANZ-Asset-Returns-October-2011 report here

Rental Yield: This is a measure of a properties performance. It is an equation that looks at the amount of rent you achieve in a year as a percentage of the property value. This % is often quoted as being between 3.5%- 5% in capital cities. Typically for properties that are cash flow positive the rental yield is higher typically 8% to even 12%pa in some cases.

Total Yield: This looks at the total return of a property as a % of the property value. This is a combination of rental yield and capital growth. The total yield by itself is a simple measure however knowing the make up is more important. ie 15% total growth could be 5%pa rental return and 10%pa capital growth or the reverse.

Cross Collaterisation – who is in control of your financial future?

Similar to building a house, building a vibrant property portfolio requires strong foundations. When it comes to mortgages the ‘right’ foundation, is the most appropriate loan structure for each investor. Spending time initially and working out an appropriate loan structure for you can literally mean the difference between achieving your long term financial goals or not.

Taking the time to get it right is something Investors Choice Mortgages specialises in. As many of my clients will attest to, developing the appropriate loan structure is something of a passion for me as I understand how it can either enable you to achieve your financial goals or hobble your attempts. With this in mind let’s discuss the cross collaterisation structure.

You can read the article here Cross Collaterisation.

Getting a copy of your credit file

Visit http://www.mycreditfile.com.au/ note that there is a free service – however they do make it hard to find on the website – persist you will find it.

Many people don’t understand the process of lending: what all the different stages mean and when your loan is actually approved.

Essentially many people believe that if their lender says they a pre-approved (sometimes called conditional approval) then they have had all the checks and balances done and they can go with confidence and purchase. The reality is that many lenders will do a cursory evaluation and ‘approve’ the loan in actually fact they have only just registered your interest they have not fully evaluated if you can borrow the amount you want.

Other lenders will do a full evaluation – even contacting your employer to verify your employment. Obviously their pre-approval is worth more than the previous case. So you need to know what lenders are saying and what you need to ask.

If a lender tells you if you have pre-approval then ask if that has been fully verified or is it that based on the information you have given that their calculators show you could possibly afford that amount.

A formal approval (or full approval) is when you have had not only your situation evaluation but the property you are buying or refinancing has been validated ie the valuation has been done and you will be receiving the contract from the lender to sign so that the funds will available at settlement.

So when you are told you have pre-approval make sure if you go ahead with a purchase that your pre-approval is really worth the paper it is written on. In addition protect yourself by having a finance clause in your letter of offer so that you can still get the property off the market but you have the seller agree that the lender needs to give final approval before contracts are actually exchanged.

There are many people who will be involved in your purchase and subsequent management of your property. You need to make sure you have the best team working for you. This e-book did not make it into the book when we were on the page reduction exercise however I believe it to be necessary for any investor. So what are the questions you need to ask each professional? Selecting Your Professionals

Land Tax is one of those costs that can greatly reduce your cash flow and even turn a positively geared property into a negatively geared one. You should check out the Offices of State Revenue in each State to work out was limits, thresholds and rates you might need to work into your calculations.

ACT
http://www.revenue.act.gov.au/

NSW

http://www.osr.nsw.gov.au/

NT
http://www.nt.gov.au/ntt/revenue/

QLD
http://www.osr.qld.gov.au/

SA
http://www.revenuesa.sa.gov.au/

TAS

http://www.sro.tas.gov.au/

VIC
http://www.sro.vic.gov.au/

WA
http://www.dtf.wa.gov.au/

Depreciation Schedule

Every investor knows the benefit of having a depreciation schedule. It also helps to have an idea of what depreciation allowances you can make per property – before you buy. This link will take you to one such calculator where you can test and see how much depreciation you are entitled to.

Access Depreciation Estimator here

When you are doing your research there is many websites you can use. These are coming online all the time. Here are a few newer websites that you may not have seen before

www.ripehouse.com.au
www.suburbview.com

Looking at properties can take a lot of effort and often when you are inspecting many properties you forget many of the features you need to know. Here is a handy checklist that you can use for a House Inspection Checklist and a Unit Inspection Checklist. Happy Hunting! (shh don’t tell any one but these are usually only available to those in my advanced courses – so keep this one to yourself)

The Residex Renovation Report is truly amazing. You can purchase this report by State and it will give you the top 100 suburbs/towns that have the most streets with renovation potential.

The potential is evaluated by individual streets. Every house is split by price into one of ten price ranges. The streets with the largest differential between the lowest group and the highest group indicate some possibility for adding value and bringing the property up to that of a highest value and making money.

There is a number of assumptions in fact they use a rule of thumb that a 10% budget spent on renovations will add value of 20% and additionally, there will be less risk of overcapitalising in a situation where we don’t upgrade the property so that it is worth more than the bottom 80% of properties in the street.

Some streets as having insufficient differences between the property with the lowest cost and that with the highest cost, to allow a profit and a renovation spend. You may still make it work in these streets by spending less on renovations or be happy with a lower return. When operating in these streets, you will need to be more careful in negotiating a purchase price as your potential profits will be at the margins and if you do elect to renovate in these streets you will have higher levels of risk.

You can purchase the State Top 100 Report ad then you can purchase the actual suburb report that shows you and analyses each street in the suburb. This report actual adds so much more detail showing recent sales, a full suburb report and analysis on predicted growth, rental returns and most of all you get up to date information of the value of every house in the street.

Note: This report is no longer available for sale

Buying at Auctions

A quick comment on auctions. Your scope for adding you own conditions at auction is very small, you purchase the property at auction based on the vendors contract of sale.

Occassionally you can request special conditions from the vendor such as a lower deposit should you be the successful bidder but these must be negotiated prior to auction. Unlike private sales were you do not have to incur costs of pest and building inspections until after your offer is accepted, with an auction you will incur the costs before the property is purchased.

Hence you have no guarantee that you will even be the highest bidder. It does not take many properties lost at auction for the costs of all these inspections to start to escalate.

Create your rule of thumb spreadsheet. Renovation Rule of Thum

Renovation Tips And Tricks e-book Download all the other gems here

Valuation template post reno. Prepare this for your valuer and make sure concentrate on the positives and comparable sales.