StraighttothePoint

Just be careful because there are several streets in the area that back onto, or are near, BBR that are full of state housing. This is the area where you will could see 4 x 2 houses on the REIWA website, with biggish blocks, that sell for around the 485k to 500k mark. Certainly very good if you want to get into the cheaper area of the old suburb and renovate but risky if you choose the wrong street and then want to try and recoup your capital and investment costs. Upgraded / semi upgraded 4 x 2 houses, on decent sized blocks, away from that area are selling from about $525 upwards without a pool. One opposite me, no pool and needing upgraded just sold for $590k. Old Joondalup suburb is all about the location within it so do as much research as you can would be my best advice. I have lived here for over 10 years now so PM if you have any questions.

Yep that is what we are going to do. I think a lot of folk will suss that is a sound tactic so we may even use Port Beach car park and walk from there as it could be busy, busy. Our usual walk is Cotty train station, over the hill, along the beach to Port, then to the bridge opposite the old hotel (the Swan) and a bus into Freo, lunch and a train back to Cotty. For many coming from the north perhaps best bet is train and just a short walk over the hill to the beach at Cotty? It is not going to that hot on Saturday so should be easy enough. Come on the dolphins.....

The landlord may have had the line disconnected? Have you asked that? If Telstra are saying though that they cannot see an active line on their system then they will need to test that and stick something into the board at the exchange, possibly at the property and even possibly at both ends if there is a snag or two, then Telstra guy after checking will go into his magic laptop and create a job to either re-activate the line, confirm that a Telstra line is not "presented' at the property, fix a fault (faulty wire in the socket for example) or resolve anything else. To be honest it is the same as what BT would do if they could not see an active line. As I say a phone point does not equal fully working line.

Sounds about right to me from what we have done before here. If you think you are bad we faced the same problem but were running a business!! Imagine that, think we had three days without a connected line in our new office. We got round it by using mobiles and the purchase of a USB stick thingy for Internet connection and used Skype for some of our calls via a laptop. Also just because you saw a phone point it may not mean that Telstra have one of their live lines connected to the building or indeed a line to it from the local exchange. The phone socket could be just a show pony.

Emiartes for me as well. Never a probelm with them. Always book the two hour stop in Dubai to get back as fast as possible. More expensive but hey ho less time wandering around aimlessly in Dubai airport itching to get back. Also if you are going economy then book online at their site so you control the booking not a travel agent. Then you hop onto their site and you can book a seat near the back of the plane if you like and if you are lucky have at least one empty seat beside you. Reckon I get that one out of every two flights in either direction. Also book any meal other than a standard one and you get served first, so you are therefore finished first, and then can wander round freely while everyone else is trapped in their seats with all the trays!! And lastly you check in online and then when you rock up to the airport to check in you miss all the big lines of waiting passengers who are there. All in all worth any extra cost. Just let me know your dates so I am not on the same flight otherwise you may be in the empty seat I was expecting

Joondalup, the old suburb, and the city itself, is ideally situated and has virtually everything on its doorstep except the catchment area does not have a state run high school. However if I was coming from England now, had a young family and / or was on a budget I would head further north.

Is it a private school? My son was at one and we got these all the time, then they wanted us to buy chairs in the school hall and put our names on them, then it was do you want to contribute to a fund for new gym equipment and on and on. Ignored the lot of them and only paid the fees on the basis that the fees were high enough and we had no spare cash at the time. Never knew what they were but always assumed they were for things that the school wanted but could not get public funding or other sources of funding or support for. Nobody came near us ever for non payment in 6 six years, I am still alive and no magic spells placed on me or my family If it is a state school then could be a similar reason as to why they ask - government cutbacks. Sure somebody will come on and confirm.

Luckily my wife is a small eater so taking her somewhere as special as that would be a waste Sounds interesting though, must have a look online at the menu. We did go out for a treat recently for our birthdays, it was ok but the menu was limited to chicken or beef and one veggie option. Mind you Macca's has always been limited in its offerrings, probably to keep their overheads down and profit levels high:wink:

Fellow Scot here who also lives in Joondalup so.... Take as much advice from the SECC show and from a few chats to some different registered agents. You can apply yourselves but that involves time which may be more a priority to you than paying fees for a service in relation to getting the visa organised by someone else on your behalf. Muck like anything really when services are available for hire. We did our own ones, and there are many on here who have as well, so it can be done. Sure as a police officer your husband will be familar with paperwork Joondalup hospital is very good as are the majority over here so you should not have to worry about that side of things in terms of your current situation or future job opportunities. For visas look here and go through the wizard for your options, list them and check when you go to SECC if you like. http://www.immi.gov.au/Pages/Welcome.aspx Also if you send me a Private message with an e-mail address I will send you an excel budget sheet that will help with calculating all costs in relation to the move also a list of must read websites. Good luck

Both suburbs have a high number of British residents, schools get pluses, both are near the main infrastructure / all the things you will need, both 10 minutes to the beach, Carramar cheaper than Woodvale probably due to location and block size. If you are to work in the city, and can afford it, then Woodvale would be my choice due to the shorter commute. Really down to what you want from a suburb and your budget I guess.

Is the issue, and actually again linked to the OP's question, that Gen Y / The Baby Boomers or whatever they are called, 9you and me probably Ports), have seen the massive property gains over several periods of time and therefore everyone coming along at the back of us think it will be the same for them? Like you my time is for playing, doing stuff I like and a bit of work here and there. Everything else just seems too hard to consider:wink: Aussie style though is investment properties and good luck to them and those that follow that route. For UK folk coming here I honestly believe the trick is to box clever, think outside the square, do not put all your eggs in one basket and keep the debt down, down as Status Quo would say!!

I would at this point rent here. Get a job, use the salary to pay the rent and invest the 120k. I would gamble 30k on premium bonds in the UK and invest $70k now in Oz as a safety net. If it goes up a few cents in the future hey ho. You can only get about 0.00001% interest in the Uk at the moment so I would just shift it. But this is only me mind and not financial advice to the masses..... PS Still waiting for the spreadsheet to spit the real answer out....

Yep more employers in Perth are starting to use LinkedIn as a method of searching out new employees. We have been using it for a couple of years now and have got involved with some good quality people in the ICT sector. Agency fees too high, Seek costs still a lot in comparison to the service but LinkedIn very cost effective and economically sound for a range of employers including us as margins get tighter. Set your status to seeking employment.

Who know's but with the expected population increases expected in the Perth area / WA in general then you would expect demand to out weigh supply. However...... Is it a maths question though? Let's say we are couple who are 40'ish. We have been paying our mortage for over 10 years already. If we were to say sell our house in the UK and end up with cash of a hundred thousand pounds that would be roughly $170000 in hand. If we needed to use some of that for start up money over here then it could easily drop to $120,000 in a matter of weeks if not months. House prices here are what they are, no point in thinking high or low, and so if we now want to buy in a reasonable suburb within reasonable travel time to the city then we may need to pay say $550,000 for a house. We are on one salary over in Perth a good one. Keep with me everyone... Ok so now what do I do. We think we can go for it and buy a house for around the $550,000 mark and stick down $100,000 leaving a mortgage of $450,000 but we cannot get the loan because we do not earn enough. Ok plan B we move much further out of the city and get a new house in the burbs that we can get for say $400,000 land and house and built to our specification or a smaller, second hand one even further out for $375,000. We now have a much further commute than we wanted and a $300,000 mortgage. But we need to take that out over 25 years to afford it. Do we take interest only and hope the house prices risea lot or do we take a repayment one to try and get the debt down asap? Ok just one of a thousand examples and the different senarios are endless with this but the question is are you going to be better off financially coming here? We can all argue till the cows come home that the move is a better lifestyle one but put that to one side. Are people, in general, making a good financial move? If the house prices keep going up and up then possibly it should come good for many but even then not all. Perhaps the secret is, I always keep saying, not to over extend yourself and create too much debt too soon. The more debt the higher the risk in the UK where we have seen how that can pan out. Keep the debt high on arrival here in a new country where people appear to leak cash then, to me anyway, that is a risk too far because I would want to enjoy my life here not have to come here and just worry about money all the time. Mind you I have always been a chicken

Google Child Care Joondalup and loads of information comes up including on the left hand page a map of those located in Joondalup suburb.