persianharry

Don't be put off by previous poster, I've been in the same situation so can speak from experience. It doesn't matter where your employer is based, it could be Adelaide, somewhere else in Australia (think national corporations like banks), New Zealand or anywhere in the world (think global businesses like Apple). The one thing you will need when applying for 887 is a letter from your employer stating that they sanction you working in South Australia, preferably giving your home address as your place of work, and also stating your hours of work and salary. If you can get that then you shouldn't have a problem.

Hi Barry My wife and I moved here about 18 months ago so relative newbies. We live near Brighton/Seacliff and we are always happy to meet for coffee. PM me if you're interested. Jason.

Hi, I can't comment on applying for the 887 (as we haven't reached that point ourselves), but I can tell you that the surveys are not a problem at all. You are just asked a few simple questions such as "Are you in employment?", "Are you living in SA?", nothing about your partner at all. Don't worry about that side of things.

I have sent you PM about mortgage brokers.

Hi masha we got the 6 month certificate. It didn't cause any problems and I would recommend it rather than for a specific property just in case something went wrong with the purchase or the property you were interested in was being sold at auction.

This has been taken.

We were kindly given this table and chairs to use while we were waiting for our container to arrive from the UK. We don't need it any more so if it would help anyone out you are welcome to it free of charge. It is a wooden, oblong, 6 seater table. There are six chairs but two of them are quite worn, we just put cushion seat pads on the cover them. Collection is from Seacombe Heights.

Hi Are you still selling this/these, and if so how much are you asking? PM me if you prefer.

Hi We are in Adelaide on a 489 visa and have just bought a property after renting for nearly a year. You will need to get FIRB approval which costs $5000, but is just a formality. The approval allows you to purchase a single property for you live in. You can't rent out the property or any part of it and you can only have one approval license i.e. you can only buy one property while on the 489 visa. The only exception is if you buy a new build property and then you don't need the approval. The other thing we found is that some banks won't touch the 489 visa e.g. Commonwealth Bank. Some others will want a large deposit, but if you shop around there are a few organisations that will lend up to 80%. Of course as a 'foreign investor' you will not be entitled to any of the first time buyer incentives. I hope that helps.

Thanks Steve, got the pm and replied. Katie sounds just what we are looking for.

Thanks Snifter, that sounds good, could you give me the details?

Andrew replied to my pm today with "Unfortunately we have no Broker from the end of this week (I deal solely with UK Pension Transfers/Financial Planning now) so will not be able to assist", that's all I know.

Can anyone recommend a good mortgage broker? It seems Vista Financial no longer have one so I don't know where else to turn. I don't mind where particularly as the recommendation is more important than location, but we live near Brighton/Hallet Cove so anywhere in that sort of area would be ideal. Thanks

We've been given our estimated date that our belongings will arrive in port I. Just wondered how long realistically it will be after that when we're reunited ie how long does customs clearance take?

Hi, I sent you a pm a couple of days ago about car?

Hi soo_the_panda, my wife also works in the disability support area and we will be in Adelaide in the next couple of months. Could you possibly share the name of the company that you work for and where they advertise?

Can I just ask how you think this change from the FIRB is panning out? We will be coming over soon on a 489 visa and think that we might be looking to purchase a property after a year in rented accommodation. I understood that it used to be quite difficult to obtain the approval to purchase an established property, but I'm wondering if it is now a bit easier if you you have to just pay a fee?

Thanks @WGar, that's a really comprehensive answer and very much appreciated. This thread has got a bit too big, it is very difficult to find anything!

Can I just ask all you 887 people a question: We are on a 489 visa, and need to have lived in SA for two years, but does this take into account holidays out of Australia or trips back to the UK? I'm just trying to work out if it will just be the 2 years we have to wait or 2 years plus any time not in the country? I know the 4 years citizenship requirement has an allowance for time out of the country, but I couldn't find anything similar on the 887 visa conditions.

I'm still in the UK so I can't comment on your best tariff, but I used to work for one of the UK's energy comparison websites so I know a fair bit about how it all works here. IMHO you should always switch to a new deal if you haven't done so previously. The incumbent energy suppliers rely on the fact that most people don't switch and so their prices will be higher than those suppliers that are looking to attract new customers. When your initial contract term ends you may be bumped on to a higher standard tariff than the offer you signed up for, so you need to keep an eye on the rates you are paying. You may also find that there is a "new customers only" offer from your existing supplier, but if you phone up and tell them you are thinking of switching they might just offer you a better deal! The other thing to watch out for is that suppliers make their tariffs unnecessarily complex so that you can't easily compare them e.g. tiered tariffs at different usage levels. I don't know if there are any decent comparison websites that cover SA, but if there is it would be good to at least see what they offer. If I can be of any further help please let me know, but clearly I don't have a handle on the SA market yet.

Thanks Snifter, very useful information. I have worked out that a 20ft container is the equivalent of about 6 large MoveCubes, so from what you got in your cube we could get 6 double beds, 192 boxes and enough golf clubs for the Ryder Cup in a container! We aren't worrying so much now.

Thanks both of you, that's very helpful. I think we are similar to Lazy Cow i.e. we will have a lot of boxes of stuff so can I just ask: when you say "container and a share" do you mean that you had to take on extra container space in a hurry because you had filled the main container? And was that extra space very expensive?

We are just in the planning stages of our move and to be honest we have a lot of belongings! We are not attached to much of our furniture so we plan on disposing of most of it and the only big items will be beds, a sideboard, a washing machine and couple of smaller bits. What we don't know is just what else we need to dispose of? There is just the two of us (and a dog), but Mrs Persianharry has a fair few wardrobes full of clothes and lots of things like glassware. We just wondered if some of you could share what you managed to fit in your containers so we could have an idea of what we could take with us?

Hi there, we'd love to meet up, but we are in a cold, wet and windy UK at the moment. We recently got our visas and are now getting the house ready for sale and we are planning to settle in the hills, but just not quite ready for your meet up. We are coming over for a couple of weeks at the end of October to validate the visas so if you are still up for meeting then I could message you nearer the time?

Could anyone recommend Adelaide based recruitment agents that might deal with the more senior positions, particularly in IT? In the UK I've worked as an IT Consultant, IT Manager and CTO for a range of organisations and I've always been head-hunted through agents. I know I need to be more proactive in Australia, but searching the web for recruitment agents gives a very long list of general recruiters, and these types of jobs don't tend to be advertised on sites like SEEK.