Oh my God........

[Guest Beth&Martin]

.........I nearly fainted. It's a good job I was sitting down.

 

I have just been looking through the realesate website for houses in different suburbs and seeing what house you can get for your money - or not.

 

On their website they have a tool that lets you calculate the amount of stamp duty you have to pay when purchasing a house. So I put some figures in and I had the biggest shock of my life. The amount was extortionate. I didn't realise, til now, just how much you had to pay.

 

For example, on a house for $280,000, borrowing 80% (the maximum amount I believe we can borrow on our temp 475 visa) the stamp duty came out at $12,000.

 

I begrudged paying 1% when we bought this house.

 

What with the exchange rate being less than when we started this process back in July of last year and the amount of stamp duty you have to pay, we will seriously have to re-think about what we buy.

[Guest tigercake]

If you are a first time buyer, you can get money from the Government. I think its about $7000AUD but its going up. That should make a dent in the stamp duty.

 

I know how you are feeling. We were going to put in our application this year but now we have decided to wait and see what happens with the housing market. The window of opportunity may just have passed us by as theres no point in moving to Adelaide to be poorer than we are in the UK....but it just keeps on pulling!!!

[Guest swampo]

There is a new grant for first time buyers which can take the amount you will receive up to $11,000 which will go a long way to help with the stupidly high stamp duty you are charged in Oz. There was a thread on this site a couple of weeks ago about it, perhaps some one will emember where it was so you can have a look at the site it directs you to? Hope that helps soften the blow a little.

[Guest Guzzler&Sas]

There is a new grant for first time buyers which can take the amount you will receive up to $11,000 which will go a long way to help with the stupidly high stamp duty you are charged in Oz. There was a thread on this site a couple of weeks ago about it, perhaps some one will emember where it was so you can have a look at the site it directs you to? Hope that helps soften the blow a little.

 

 

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but this grant is only available to Permanent Resident visa holders only,

 

Guzzler

[cormcvcr]

Guzzler is right, we are on a 496 temp visa and the kind offer of the $11k doesn't apply to us, you have to wait till you have PR.

 

It is far cheaper to rent here than to buy, so my advice would be try and get a rental that you would be okay to live in for a while. We were only looking to rent for 6 months but now we are going to take an additional year on.

 

This will give us time to really get on our feet, without jumping into financial abyys too soon!

 

We want to enjoy our time here and not have to worry excessively about our financial situation, chill, no dramas, no worries......remember the motto!!

[Carole Jolly]

Yeah when we made the decision in Sept 06 we choose Adelaide because the houses were cheaper than Perth & Sydney and still are.. but last year they went up by 18% in Adelaide. Andrew Williams, Financial Advisor who appears on threads quite along, seems to thinks things are stabalising now. Check out the finance pages of this site for some of Andrew advice and calculations about how much you need to put down on a house for it to compare to rental cost. i think he worked it out around 50% deposit.

[Guest Deb17]

50%! Some of us are going to be in rentals for the rest of our lives then!

That's so depressing.

With the way house prices have shot up looks like we will never be able to buy again. For us, we're definitely a lot worse off than we were in the UK...boo hoo, blart, blart!!!

[Rachiegarlo]

Devine homes have house and land packages from $200000, sure the land might be on the edge of the city, but you can either put your money into rent or you can put it into a mortgage. Also if you have a job you don't need to be in Adelaide for consider regional towns where houses are much cheaper on the whole. Hehe there's a house for sale in Snowtown thats 3br in need of a lot of redecoration for 69000. Snowtown is about an hour out of Gawler on the freeway. I'm not kidding, but seriously houses in Mt Gambier and nearby towns are still under $200000.

[Guest salisbury massive]

Hehe there's a house for sale in Snowtown thats 3br in need of a lot of redecoration for 69000. Snowtown is about an hour out of Gawler on the freeway.

 

hee Hee, do you get a free box in the bank vault for that price

 

Jo

[The Monaghans]

I was talking to a real estate sales woman today and she told me that although house prices are static here in Adelaide at the moment, the banks are predicting a 16% rise within the next 12 months or so. I know this will pee some of you off but hopefully it will cheer some of you up as well!

[Guest weesp]

Hi, we've have only been here for nearly two weeks, it is very frustrating at the moment as we are unable to find a rental property now, as the one we are in at West Beach is expensive. Every house we get to see, which is about 1 a day, you have about 5 people also looking at them. The estate agents keep telling us that the rental properties are very much in demand, and don't I know it!

 

Lynn

[Guest deborah]

Hate to be the bearer of bad news but this grant is only available to Permanent Resident visa holders only,

 

Guzzler

Is the grant available even if you own a house in uk or are you classed as first time buyers because you have never bought in Adelaide?

[Guest Libby1971]

You have to be first time buyers here, and permanent residents.

 

Libby

[Guest deborah]

You have to be first time buyers here, and permanent residents.

 

Libby

Thanks Libby we should be ok then as applied for permanent visa.

[Guest soggy]

Hi,

you may want to think about buying a house and land package, this is where you go to a builder like Devine, and buy the package from them, this way you only pay stamp duty on the price of the land.

I have done this with investment property and can reccommend Devine, this would still mean renting for a while until your house is built but would give you time to look around.

 

Simon

[Guest graandjac]

.........I nearly fainted. It's a good job I was sitting down.

 

I have just been looking through the realesate website for houses in different suburbs and seeing what house you can get for your money - or not.

 

On their website they have a tool that lets you calculate the amount of stamp duty you have to pay when purchasing a house. So I put some figures in and I had the biggest shock of my life. The amount was extortionate. I didn't realise, til now, just how much you had to pay.

 

For example, on a house for $280,000, borrowing 80% (the maximum amount I believe we can borrow on our temp 475 visa) the stamp duty came out at $12,000.

 

I begrudged paying 1% when we bought this house.

 

What with the exchange rate being less than when we started this process back in July of last year and the amount of stamp duty you have to pay, we will seriously have to re-think about what we buy.

 

Another advantage to buying a block of land you ony pay the stamp duty on the block of land , which works out alot less .And if you have a perm visa remember the first time buyers grant. Cheers Graham

[Guest Grim2468]

hi beth we going through the same process as yourselves; the stamp duty does seem a lot over there but I've got a mate who emigrated to NSW 18months ago and he reckons the Australian government award you A$7000 as a first time buyer,if you get perm residency on your visa you should be eligible we are going on a 175 independent with gives you perm ress as far as i know hope this as been helpfull

 

 

John

[Guest graandjac]

reckons the Australian government award you A$7000 as a first time buyer

 

This is now upto $11,000 or $12,000 :jiggy:cheers Graham