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Originally Posted by Ric&Martha
Thanks Karen,
That paints an interesting picture from my perspective. It sounds as if its a reasonable thing to rent a home and purchase a rental thereby taking advantage a negative gearing (if you setup the rental in that way). Is that the case?
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You can check that with an accountant but it seems reasonable. You can only buy property with FIRB (Foreign investment review board) approval until you are a permanent resident. When we were in the UK it meant that we could really only buy apartments since a lot of them came with FIRB approval from big developers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ric&Martha
In terms of the first home purchase grant, this would be a first home purchased IN AUSTRALIA, correct?
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Correct. We had 2 investment properties here that we had not lived in at any time, and we got the first home owners grant when we bought our first home in Oz. The grant is only available the first time you buy a home in Oz and it goes directly to your bank account if that's what you request.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ric&Martha
And to that end, I and my family are coming over on a 457 visa--how long will I need to be in country before trying to convert that to a permanent visa?
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That I don't know since we came in on a skilled independent visa (permanent). It may say on the immigration website (see the "PLEASE READ" post).
A good property investment magazine for Australia is
Australia Property Investor. We subscribed to it from the UK and it kept us up to date with what's going on and also the Australian Tax Office (ATO) regularly write articles in there to help investors with their taxes.
Regards,
Karen