Non-Resident Loans for Chinese Home/Property Buyers in Australia

Are you a Chinese National looking to buy Real Estate Property in Australia?If you are a non-resident and you want to buy real estate property in Australia then you should consider the following factors:>> Are you on a student visa and looking for property that is close to schools and transport?>> Do you want a brand new home or a home that has been newly renovated?>> Will the local Council give you approval to knock an old house down and build a new house?>> Is the property within your area of cultural connections?>> Will the property compliment and add to your current investment portfolio and goals?>> Do you want vacant land and build a new house on it?>> Is the property close to your relatives and will the property allow you to continue with the lifestyle you currently enjoy?>> If the property is for rental investment purposes, will the investment property give you the rental yield?Do I need any Approvals before I Buy Real Estate Property in Australia?According to the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB), you can buy established properties in Australia if you have a valid visa, such as:>> Work Visa, or>> Student VisaIf you are a “non-resident foreign person” and you want to buy real estate property in Australia, you must firstly receive approval from the FIRB to:>> Buy a new home>> Buy a home that has been newly renovated, or>> Purchase vacant land and build a new house on the vacant landCan anyone help me get approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB)?If you want to buy real estate property in Australia and want to save time running around on your own trying to get the required approval from the FIRB, thenwhy not let professionally qualified and experienced finance brokers do the work for you. He/she will:>> Run around for you to obtain the required FIRB approval, and>> Save you the personal embarrassment of perhaps having to try again if at first you may be refused by the FIRBHow much can I borrow if I want to buy Real Estate Property in Australia?The majority of Australian lenders/credit providers are prepared to “lend” up to 80% of the market value of the real estate property. To determine the market value of the real estate property the lenders/credit providers will request a panel-valuer to inspect the property.In accordance with the “responsible lending requirements” of the Australian National Credit Code, the lenders/credit providers will need to see proof, which evidences that you have sufficient income to service and repay the loan. This income can be earned from:>> Your employment income if you are working in Australia>> The rental income you will receive from your investment property in Australia>> Any income that you may receive from overseas to support your stay in AustraliaIf I want to Borrow to buy Real Estate Property in Australia, can the Finance Broker help me?Yes, the finance broker will help you in finding affordable loans to:>> Purchase real estate property in Australia for you to live in>> Purchase an investment property in Australia and to rent out>> Start any type of business in Australia, such as:>> Restaurant>> Jewellery business>> Medical Centre>> Chemist/Pharmacy shopAre there any Precautions for choosing a Finance Broker?Before you employ a finance broker to help you with your home loan needs, it is important that:>> They fully understand your certain preferences, which include having good “Fengh Shui” such as:>> A low maintenance house>> A new house, or>> A recently refurbished house>> They are family oriented and they know how important it is to live near your family and friends.>> They are knowledgeable of properties situated close to educational institutions, amenities, shopping, transport and other Chinese Australian communities.>> They are willing to help you achieve your objectives and goals whether it is for personal or business related purposes.>> They know how important it is for you to have access to property developers in cities like Sydney in New South Wales, Melbourne in Victoria, as well as regions such as the Gold Coast in Queensland.Such a finance broker will understand your situation in a better way and provide you with better non-resident home loan options.

Why Each Home Owner Needs A Property Tax Doctor

Because each home owner who protest their assessments, with a knowledge of how the property tax assessment system works, often receive $500 to $1000 tax savings, if not more annually on their property tax bill. Simply stated the property tax bill is calculated by multiplying the homeowner’s assessment times the local property tax rate and subtracting any tax deductions for which the individual home owner is eligible.The property tax doctor can show you how to lower your assessment and thereby reduced your property tax bill! The property tax doctor is a former tax assessor who knows first hand how difficult it is for the average person to penetrate the tax assessor’s bureaucratic jungle comprised of arcane terms and practices. No government document does this for the home owner.Just like going to a medical doctor’s office the first thing that you need to do is to gather the necessary information with which to do the paperwork. The primary sources for that information is the homeowner’s property record card obtained at the assessor’s office and comparable home sales. Most homeowners armed with one or both of these information items get their assessment reduced the majority of the time without going beyond their local tax assessor’s office.Just as you ask your medical doctor informed questions to get some pain relief, so also you must ask your tax assessor (with the help of the property tax doctor) some informed questions in order to win some property tax relief. The best advice the property tax doctor can offer is to go to your local tax assessor’s office and check your property record card for mistakes of fact! Clerical errors and plain mistakes do occur during the valuation process. Here is a partial list of common mistakes you should check up on.1. The dimensions of your home or the dimensions of your land are wrong.2. Failure to note depreciation on adverse-onsite conditions or no depreciation or minimal deprecation shown for an older home.3. The dimensions of your land are wrong.4. Check all computations, whether or not you understand where the factors came from.5. Failure to note depreciating off-site influences — a factory or landfill producing toxic fumes.6. The quality of improvements are wrong — you have a stone not a macadam driveway, or — you have the low priced whirlpool tub not the big name expensive whirlpool tub.7 Finished areas are listed incorrectly — basement is shown as finished and it is not.8. The age of the home is listed incorrectly or the number of stories is wrong.My father would not let the local tax assessor, who was also his best friend, go past the kitchen table at our farmhouse. My father was afraid he would see certain interior home improvements and he would increase our assessment. My father mistakenly believed that improvements he had made inside the farmhouse like a new bathroom sink, plaster repairs, wallpapering, new ceilings, new light fixtures would add to our assessed value. Likewise he put off making outside repairs until after the next revaluation because of fear of an increased assessment. Surprisingly, he was wrong. Outside repairs like roof replacement, repairing masonry, repair of porch, steps, stairs, etc. do not increase the homeowner’s assessment. Neither does replacing garage doors, or sheds, sidewalks, etcOften establishing the proper combined property value for your home and the land under it is the key to your property tax appeal. To win your appeal the homeowner must establish his or her property’s value at a level lower than the one the assessor used.To establish market value the homeowner can go to the web site http://www.zillow.com to get a rough estimate of the value of his home. The site uses some basic variables like square footage, number of baths, acreage and number of bedrooms to calculate a market value for the home based on a formula that is driven by other home sales in the neighborhood. Where zillow has the sales data this is a good first step to see if your home is assessed way too high.In years after the revaluation year the homeowner should find out what the assessment to sales ratio for his or her taxing district is in New Jersey. This ratio is announced each year and is available from the local tax assessor’s office. It represents the average at which the assessed value for all properties that sold in the past year was compared to their sales value in the municipality. Why is it important? It may provides a key factor in proving that you have received an unequal assessment and are entitled to file a discrimination challenge to your property assessment to win a tax reduction.An unequal assessment is one made at a higher proportion of market value than an average of the other parcels on the roll. A year or so after a revaluation housing inflation often makes the assessment your tax assessor placed on your home look low compared to sales prices of comparable sold homes in your neighborhood. But watch out!A low assessment to sale ratio in a municipality can fool some taxpayers into thinking that they are being assessed below market value and are therefore getting a break. However, if all assessments are set below market value then the tax rate must be increased in order to collect the necessary amount of tax revenue. The same amount of tax is collected, but the taxpayers are fooled into thinking they’ve gotten a break and do not search for malassessments.Now, do not forget that the assessment to sales ratio (or common level ratio) is a key factor in getting you property tax relief. Let me explain. An important test for fairness of your assessment is not just its relationship to market value. It is also whether or not it is fair in relation to assessments on other properties in your town. For example, if you have a home with a market value of $800,000, but it is assessed at $600,000, you may think you are getting off cheaply. However, if your neighbor’s house which is comparable to yours is assessed at only $200,000, you are paying three times as much real property tax as you should!When your property is under appeal the County Board of Taxation can adjust your home’s value to the common level. The taxpayer should know the average ratio in the municipality where the property under appeal is located before filing a tax appeal. Remember the ratio changes annually on October 1, for use in the subsequent tax year. Also, remember this adjustment to the common level is not used in the year of revaluation or reassessment when all properties have been brought to 100% of market value.Once the County Tax Board determines the true market value of a property they are required to automatically compare that true market value to its assessment value. If the ratio of the assessment to the true value exceeds the average ratio by 15%, then the assessment is automatically reduced to the common level. The homeowner gets his property tax relief. But watch out! If the assessment to true value ratio falls below the common level, the County Tax Board is obligated to increase the assessment to the common level. The homeowner would then get his property tax increased. If the assessment falls within the common level range no adjustment is made.Each year on October 1 of the pre-tax year the assessor establishes a value for each of the properties in the municipality for the following tax year. The annual assessment value is considered tentative during the period of public inspection of the new tax list from January 1 to January 10th. The purposes of the inspection period is to enable the taxpayer to ascertain what assessments have been made against him or her and to confer informally with the assessor as to the correctness of the assessments.At this point your approach can be informal and will not require a formal, written appeal. Taxpayers have an opportunity only once each year to file a formal property tax appeal. Get your tax form for property tax appeal purposes from your County Board of Taxation web site. Generally, it must be received by the County Board of Taxation on or before April 1 of the tax year. If the taxpayer misses the deadline for filing a formal appeal the taxpayer must wait until the following year to make a challenge for any tax relief.The Property Tax Doctor can help the average homeowner win his rightful property tax relief. Under the common level adjustment, described above, the New Jersey’s statutory standard for an acceptable property tax assessment margin of error in its calculation is 15%. In New Jersey where the average homeowner in 2006 paid about $5,000 per year in property taxes that amounts to an acceptable error of $750 in the propertytax bill. If we administered our Federal Tax bill with that 15% margin of error we would have a taxpayer revolt.Gerald Dowgin © 2006

A New Way to Invest in Property

The two most frequently asked questions by investors are:What investment should I buy?
Is now the right time to buy it?Most people want to know how to spot the right investment at the right time, because they believe that is the key to successful investing. Let me tell you that is far from the truth: even if you could get the answers to those questions right, you would only have a 50% chance to make your investment successful. Let me explain.There are two key influencers that can lead to the success or failure of any investment:External factors: these are the markets and investment performance in general. For example:
The likely performance of that particular investment over time;
Whether that market will go up or down, and when it will change from one direction to another.
Internal factors: these are the investor’s own preference, experience and capacity. For example:
Which investment you have more affinity with and have a track record of making good money in;
What capacity you have to hold on to an investment during bad times;
What tax advantages do you have which can help manage cash flow;
What level of risk you can tolerate without tending to make panic decisions.When we are looking at any particular investment, we can’t simply look at the charts or research reports to decide what to invest and when to invest, we need to look at ourselves and find out what works for us as an individual.Let’s look at a few examples to demonstrate my viewpoint here. These can show you why investment theories often don’t work in real life because they are an analysis of the external factors, and investors can usually make or break these theories themselves due to their individual differences (i.e. internal factors).Example 1: Pick the best investment at the time.Most investment advisors I have seen make an assumption that if the investment performs well, then any investor can definitely make good money out of it. In other words, the external factors alone determine the return.I beg to differ. Consider these for example:Have you ever heard of an instance where two property investors bought identical properties side by side in the same street at the same time? One makes good money in rent with a good tenant and sells it at a good profit later; the other has much lower rent with a bad tenant and sells it at a loss later. They can be both using the same property management agent, the same selling agent, the same bank for finance, and getting the same advice from the same investment advisor.
You may have also seen share investors who bought the same shares at the same time, one is forced to sell theirs at a loss due to personal circumstances and the other sells them for a profit at a better time.
I have even seen the same builder building 5 identical houses side by side for 5 investors. One took 6 months longer to build than the other 4, and he ended up having to sell it at the wrong time due to personal cash flow pressures whereas others are doing much better financially.What is the sole difference in the above cases? The investors themselves (i.e. the internal factors).Over the years I have reviewed the financial positions of a few thousand investors personally. When people ask me what investment they should get into at any particular moment, they expect me to compare shares, properties, and other asset classes to advise them how to allocate their money.My answer to them is to always ask them to go back over their track record first. I would ask them to list down all the investments they have ever made: cash, shares, options, futures, properties, property development, property renovation, etc. and ask them to tell me which one made them the most money and which one didn’t. Then I suggest to them to stick to the winners and cut the losers. In other words, I tell them to invest more in what has made them good money in the past and stop investing in what has not made them any money in the past (assuming their money will get a 5% return per year sitting in the bank, they need to at least beat that when doing the comparison).If you take time to do that exercise for yourself, you will very quickly discover your favourite investment to invest in, so that you can concentrate your resources on getting the best return rather than allocating any of them to the losers.You may ask for my rationale in choosing investments this way rather than looking at the theories of diversification or portfolio management, like most others do. I simply believe the law of nature governs many things beyond our scientific understanding; and it is not smart to go against the law of nature.For example, have you ever noticed that sardines swim together in the ocean? And similarly so do the sharks. In a natural forest, similar trees grow together too. This is the idea that similar things attract each other as they have affinity with each other.You can look around at the people you know. The people you like to spend more time with are probably people who are in some ways similar to you.It seems that there is a law of affinity at work that says that similar things beget similar things; whether they are animals, trees, rocks or humans. Why do you think there would be any difference between an investor and their investments?So in my opinion, the question is not necessarily about which investment works. Rather it is about which investment works for you.If you have affinity with properties, properties are likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with shares, shares are likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with good cash flow, good cash flow is likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with good capital gain, good capital growth is likely to be attracted to you (but not necessary good cash flow ).You can improve your affinity with anything to a degree by spending more time and effort on it, but there are things that you naturally have affinity with. These are the things you should go with as they are effortless for you. Can you imagine the effort required for a shark to work on himself to become sardine-like or vice versa?One of the reasons why our company has spent a lot of time lately to work on our client’s cash flow management, is because if our clients have low affinity with their own family cash flow, they are unlikely to have good cash flow with their investment properties. Remember, it is a natural law that similar things beget similar things. Investors who have poor cash flow management at home, usually end up with investments (or businesses) with poor cash flow.Have you ever wondered why the world’s greatest investors, such as Warren Buffet, tend only to invest in a few very concentrated areas they have great affinity with? While he has more money than most of us and could afford to diversify into many different things, he sticks to only the few things that he has successfully made his money from in the past and cut off the ones which didn’t (such as the airline business).What if you haven’t done any investing and you have no track record to go by? In this case I would suggest you first look at your parents’ track record in investing. The chances are you are somehow similar to your parents (even when you don’t like to admit it ). If you think your parents never invested in anything successfully, then look at whether they have done well with their family home. Alternatively you will need to do your own testing to find out what works for you.Obviously there will be exceptions to this rule. Ultimately your results will be the only judge for what investment works for you.Example 2: Picking the bottom of the market to invest.When the news in any market is not positive, many investors automatically go into a “waiting mode”. What are they waiting for? The market to bottom out! This is because they believe investing is about buying low and selling high – pretty simple right? But why do most people fail to do even that?Here are a few reasons:When investors have the money to invest safely in a market, that market may not be at its bottom yet, so they choose to wait. By the time the market hits the bottom; their money has already been taken up by other things, as money rarely sits still. If it is not going to some sort of investment, it will tend to go to expenses or other silly things such as get-rich-quick scheme, repairs and other “life dramas”.
Investors who are used to waiting for when the market is not very positive before they act are usually driven either by a fear of losing money or the greed of gaining more. Let’s look at the impact of each of them:
If their behaviour was due to the fear of losing money, they are less likely to get into the market when it hits rock bottom as you can imagine how bad the news would be then. If they couldn’t act when the news was less negative, how do you expect them to have the courage to act when it is really negative? So usually they miss out on the bottom anyway.
If their behaviour was driven by the greed of hoping to make more money on the way up when it reaches the bottom, they are more likely to find other “get-rich-quick schemes” to put their money in before the market hits the bottom, by the time the market hits the bottom, their money won’t be around to invest. Hence you would notice that the get-rich-quick schemes are usually heavily promoted during a time of negative market sentiment as they can easily capture money from this type of investor.
Very often, something negative begets something else negative. People who are fearful to get into the market when their capacity allows them to do so, will spend most of their time looking at all the bad news to confirm their decision. Not only they will miss the bottom, but they are likely to also miss the opportunities on the way up as well, because they see any market upward movement as a preparation for a further and bigger dive the next day.Hence it is my observation that most people who are too fearful or too greedy to get into the market during a slow market have rarely been able to benefit financially from waiting. They usually end up getting into the market after it has had its bull run for far too long when there is very little negative news left. But that is actually often the time when things are over-valued, so they get into the market then, and get slaughtered on the way down.So my advice to our clients is to first start from your internal factors, check your own track records and financial viability to invest. Decide whether you are in a position to invest safely, regardless of the external factors (i.e. the market):If the answer is yes, then go to the market and find the best value you can find at that time;
If the answer is no, then wait.Unfortunately, most investors do it the other way around. They tend to let the market (an external factor) decide what they should do, regardless of their own situation, and they end up wasting time and resources within their capacity.I hope, from the above 2 examples, that you can see that investing is not necessarily about picking the right investment and the right market timing, but it is more about picking the investment that works for you and sticking to your own investment timetable, within your own capacity.A new way to invest in propertiesDuring a consultation last month with a client who has been with us for 6 years, I suddenly realised they didn’t know anything about our Property Advisory Service which has been around since April 2010. I thought I’d better fix this oversight and explain what it is and why it is unique and unprecedented in Australia.But before I do, I would like to give you some data you simply don’t get from investment books and seminars, so you can see where I am coming from.Over the last 10 years of running a mortgage business for property investors:We have executed more than 7,000 individual investment mortgages with around 60 different lenders;
Myself and our mortgage team have reviewed the financial positions of approximately 6,000 individual property investors and developers;
I have enjoyed privileged access to vital data including the original purchase price, value of property improvements and the current valuation of close to 30,000 individual investment properties all around Australia from our considerable client base.When you have such a large sample size to do your research on and make observations, you are bound to discover something unknown to most people.I have discovered many things that may surprise you as much as they surprised me, some of which are against conventional wisdom:Paying more tax can be financially good for you.This one took me years to swallow, but I can’t deny the facts. The clients who have managed to get into a positive cashflow position have paid a lot of tax and will continue to pay a lot of tax, whether it is capital gains, income tax or stamp duty. They don’t have an issue with the tax man making some money as long as they continue to make more themselves! They regularly cash in the profits from their properties and reduce their debt, but always continue to invest and park their money where the return is best. In fact, I can almost say that the only people who enjoy positive cashflow from their investment properties are the people who have little concern about paying taxes as they treat them as the cost of doing business.Just about every property strategy works. It just depends on who does it, how it is done, when it is done and where it is done.When I first started investing, I went and read many property investment books and attended many investment educational seminars. Just about every one of them was convincing and this confused the hell out of me. Just when I was about to form an opinion against a particular property strategy, someone would show up in one of my client consultations and prove that it worked for them!After testing many of these strategies myself, I came to realise that it is not about the strategy,(which is only a tool) but rather it is about whether the person is using the tool appropriately at the right time, in the right place and in the right way.There is no such thing as the best suburb to invest in, forever.If you randomly pick a particular property in what you think is the best suburb over a 30 year window, you will find that there are periods during which this property will outperform the market average, and there are periods when this property will underperform the market average.Many property investors find themselves jumping into historically high growth suburbs at the end of the period when it is outperforming the average, and then stay there for 5-7 years during the underperforming period. (Naturally this can taint their view of property investing as a whole!)There is no such thing as the worst suburb to invest in, forever.If you pick a property in the worst suburb you can think of from 40 years ago, and pitch that against the best suburb you can think of over the same period of time, you will find they both grew at about 7-9% a year on average over the long-term.Hence in the 1960s, a median house in Melbourne and Sydney was valued at $10k. The worst property around that time may have been 30% of the median price for then, which was say about $3k. Today, the median house price in these cities is about $600k. The worst suburb you can find is still around 30% of that price which is say $200k a house. If you believe a bad suburb will never grow, then show me where you can find a house today in these cities, that is still worth around $3k.Median Price growth is very misleading.Many beginner property investors look at median price growth as the guidance for suburb selection. A few points worth mentioning on median price are:We understand the way median price is calculated as the middle price point based on the number of sales during a period. We can talk about the median price for a particular suburb on a particular day, week, month, year, or even longer. So an influx of new stocks or low sales volume can severely distort the median price.In an older suburb, median price growth tends to be higher than it really is. This is because it does not reflect the large sum of money people put into renovating their properties nor does it reflect the subdivision of large blocks of land into multiple dwellings which can be a substantial percentage of the entire suburb.In a newer suburb, median price growth tend to be lower than it really is. This is because it does not reflect the fact that the land and buildings are both getting smaller. For example, you could buy a block of land of 650 square metres for $120k in 2006 in a newer suburb of Melbourne, but 5 years later, half the size block (i.e.325 square metres) will cost you $260k. That’s a whopping 34% annual growth rate per year for 5 years, but median price growth will never reflect that, as median prices today are calculated on much smaller properties.Median price growth takes away people’s focus from looking at the cost of carrying the property. When you have a net 2-3% rental yield against interest rates of 7-8%, you are out-of-pocket by 5% a year. This is not including the money you have to put in to fix and maintain your property from time to time.Buying and holding the same property forever doesn’t give you the best returns on your money.The longer you hold a property, the more likely you will achieve an average growth of 7-9%. But you will be bound to hit periods where your property outperforms the 7-9% growth and periods where it under performs the 7-9% growth.The longer you hold a property, if its growth is at or above average, the lower its rental yields will become.The longer you hold a property, the higher the capital gains tax you will need to pay when you sell, and the less likely you will be able to sell it.The longer you hold a property, the more likely there will be a need for an expensive upgrade of the property.The longer you hold a property, the more likely you will forget which part of the equity actually belongs to the tax man, AND the more likely you will be to try to leverage the equity that doesn’t belong to you. This can get you into a negative equity position with a negative cashflow forever, unless you have proper financial guidance.