Categories: Move to Australia

Tips and tricks for off plan apartments in Victoria

You need a place to stay that is both good looking and useful. It needs to be satisfactory for your lifestyle, and it needs to feel like home. This is the most crucial requirement for just about anyone searching for a house or apartment to live in.

Because of these requirements, buying an off-the-plan apartment in Pakenham or anywhere else is going to be a better choice for you in the long run. A lot of people invest in places that are only a drawing on a blueprint or an advertisement on TV. There is a lot of risk associated with this kind of purchase. What if the finished apartment is nothing like the one that was shown in that ad you saw last week?

People are wary about investing off plan

You could equate the disappointment to the movie version of Eragon compared to the books. There isn’t much you can do by way of checks while choosing an apartment that is still being planned. All you can really do is crunch the numbers and hope against hope that the people building it are going to do it as they had planned and within the set amount of time. However, it could also pay off. When it does, the benefits are HUGE.

There is a lot of stigma associated to getting an apartment that hasn’t been built yet. Property developers are always trying to find ways to help potential customers fight this, so that they will invest in the property. They usually require a future owner to pay something up front to reserve the apartment for themselves. This charge contributes to the building and property development costs on the developer’s end.

Best prices in town

There are benefits to getting in on an off-the-plan apartment early though. One of the most obvious is the price of the apartment. When they are built, the first units usually sell for a discounted rate. This is because the developers need to get some quick sales in order to cover their costs. After their debts have been paid off, the prices are switched up to the normal property prices in that region. Getting in before this happens results in you getting an apartment for a much lower price.

When you buy a property off plan, you basically hold ownership over that apartment for a long time. This means that you won’t have to pay the rent and other costs for a while. During this time, it is possible that the value of the property will rise. For example, if you were to deposit $200,000 in 2011 for the apartment in planning stages, it is possible that you could sell it for $300,000 in 2015, depending on the inflation of property prices in the area.

Do your research!

For this reason, it is important that you do an appraisal of the history of the property prices in the area of development before engaging in a purchase. This should allow you to judge and predict the future fluctuations of the property values. Done right, this can lead to you making quite a tidy profit off your investment. The risk is that there could be an unpredicted drop in the value of property over time. This would lead to a loss on your end, so make sure you do that research right!

You have time

The settlement period when it comes to off-plan apartments means that you have a while to get all your affairs in order. You can either find someone who is willing to be a new tenant or you can move in yourself. Some owners like to occupy the apartment as well. You can use the time you have to earn more money and get your investments in order for the best settlement when the time does come.

Councils love you

The government loves people who buy new apartments and other properties. State councils want to increase their economy through construction of new properties and an inflow of new tenants.

There is a lot more to go through when getting yourself an off plan apartment. Numbers are the key in this case, so make sure you crunch as many as you can, as well as you can. Do your research before diving into the deep end!

Australian Times

For, by and about Aussies in the UK.