Buying my first IP in Brisbane

I've been lurking and reading these forums for a while and I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to buy something in Brisbane.

I build a house 8 years ago and I owe about $430k with a bank valuation of $650k. My income allows me to borrow between $500k - $550k but I'd prefer to buy something cheaper than that and have plenty of room for mistakes.

I've been looking in Slacks Creek, Woodridge, Tingalpa & also considering Kippa-Ring / Deception Bay. The north and south properties are around $300k and need work and Tingalpa is around low $400s.

I thought I had a good idea but after seeing how many experienced people are on here looking in Brisbane, I see every property that's not sold as being a potential bad deal... I mean, if you savvy investors haven't snapped it up, what's wrong with it?

I am curious as to how people go about determining a good deal? I would love to have someone that knows their stuff and isn't in the market right now to point out a few things...

 

Jay - this is a very good point, and sadly in this market is true.

You need to go to as many open houses as you can, and their associated auctions if applicable.

When you come across a good deal, make an offer on the day. If you start ridiculously (and comfortably) low, you will sweat on it, and in the meantime do DD like you've never done before. Once you've done that half a dozen times you should have a grasp of an accurate current market value and you can confidently increase your offers. (You might have seen in the other thread, I started trying to buy in an area 6 weeks ago, and with multiple offers, no success. I've just increased my original offer on the very first house from $520k to 600k, and am confident that this is a fair price, slightly favouring me).

Look for contract crashed places too - these won't appear top of the real-estate news feed. There are enough finance crashes at the moment to allow some good deals as the vendors get impatient and/or desperate.

 

No, not always, sometimes people leave things for unknown reasons, some things are not marketed properly, some people are panicked by flood maps, some may be hard to look at as tenants may be making it hard.

It is not *easy* though, you have to really look at everything and make your own mind up.

 

Agree with @Bran and he's given you some great advice. Know the value well in the areas your looking at, then pounce fast when you see opportunity. There may be other experienced investors who want to buy the deals as they show up, but everyone has a limit as to what they can purchase/focus on at any one time. Good luck mate.

 

Speed kills.
Agree with what @Bran has said above