Finally a new tenant has been found for our investment property - the rent was lowered back to the previous rate ($400 per week), so this means that we haven't raised the rent for a couple of years now. It's more important to have a tenant than hold out for an extra $10 a week. The new tenants have only signed a 6 month lease, but will stay on thereafter on an ongoing basis (4 weeks notice is required to terminate after the lease period ends). I'm hopeful that they may stay for several years as they have no kids (yet) and seem happy enough with the property and location.
My wife seems to have lost a bit of interest in being a "landlord" now that the property market has been stagnant for a couple of years, and because having no tenants for over three months was stretching our finances a bit. She was also a bit shocked by the costs of plumbing repairs and getting the place recarpeted and new kitchen lino last year (even though I meet all the "miscellaneous" costs of this investment - we just split the loan repayments 50:50).
The "experts" in the local papers are predicting rents will increase 5%-10% in Sydney over the next 12 months due to more people renting due to high property prices and a drop off in the construction of new housing due to the lack of capital gains in the past couple of years. We only just took out a 5 year fixed rate loan for the investment property last year (the variable rate is already higher than the fixed rate we got, so this will probably work out well for this 5 year term), so we won't be looking to sell the property for at least 4 years. Hopefully by then rents will have picked up and interest rates dropped a bit which should rekindle interest in property investment and trigger some price appreciation. The long term rate of price appreciation in Sydney is around 6% pa, so hopefully after two years of flat or decreasing prices, we may see a gain of 20%-30% from present levels by the time we want to sell the property in '11 or thereabouts.
If we do sell the investment property I'll be happy to invest in property via listed property trusts in future.
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