Investing Interstate: where to start?

Not essential, but for me (and my recommendation for you) an absolute YES.

They will help you with:
Your borrowing potential
Your borrowing strategy
Using the right lenders in the right order e.g. the hardest lenders first
Free residex reports on your potential purchases
Upfront vals on your existing property
Negotiating with banks so you don't have to
Avoiding unnecessary problems that the bank will do automatically e.g. cross-collateralisation.
Minimising your non-deductible debt whilst maximising your deductible debt (with the same LVR)

Potential downsides is picking the wrong one and missing the benefits of the above. The ones on this forum are all far more switched on to property investing than any of the brokers I used before stumbling across this site.

As @Rolf Latham (my broker) said in another thread, you don't know what you don't know.
Make sure you leverage through someone who does so that you get it right when you are starting out.

 

The first thing I do when I buy interstate is read all the threads on that particular area on the forum , somersoft and ( eeek ... ) property investing.

I want to have an idea on what segment I want to buy in , Bottom of the market , middle ground or top end . Do I want to buy something with development potential ( not me ... ) of what ever .

I will go to the investor section of realestate.com.au and look at their yield maps to look for places of interest . I also look at sqm research which has free data at the post code level .

I also get a subscription for price finder though the API magazine . This has suburb level data on longer term growth . ( personally I want places with low recent growth which are about to take off ) .

Based on the above , I'll narrow my area of interest to 2-3 areas . Then I start looking at individual properties on the web to get a feel for the type of properties . Then I will ring up and talk to agents asking about the specific property and the area in general , asking about good / bad areas , what's happening , are things selling quickly , is it getting hotter or cooling down . I try to ask open ended questions , rather than directed / closed questions etc . If you talk to a few agents you will get a consensus view as to what is happening . Unlike some people hre who tend to treat agents as the enemy , for me they're my best ally .

Next step , we go to our area of interest to actually check things out , Driving around the areas to get a feel for them and seeing as many properties as possible .

There are good Buyers agents on the forum , though up to date we've done things on our own thing . Depends on how much time you have . ( In reality I don't have a lot of time so I should use a buyers agent , but I'm a bit of a control freak …ask SWMBO )

Cliff

 

@See Change thanks for the detailed explanation

@Bran thanks