Couple From Australia Looking To Invest In New Zealand Market

[Brent Sunlay]

Hi,

My name is Brent, and my partner Jenni and I are brand new to the Bigger Pockets community, and new to real estate investing in general. We live and work in Melbourne, Australia, and have finally decided that we are ready to take the big leap and begin looking for our first rental property(s) and to start building our property portfolio. We love the BP forums and podcasts so far, and are really looking forward to becoming more involved in the community in the months to come!

We recently attended a 3 day property investment seminar over the weekend, which focused on investing in positively geared properties to gain cashflow. The seminar was great, and we feel like we learned a lot - it really opened our eyes to the many property investment options and strategies out there. We even managed to avoid falling for the sales pitch at the end to sign up for the massively over-priced "Mentorship" program, realising that with a little (or a lot!) of research and some hard work, we could learn how to find our own deals and how to use one of the tried and tested strategies to begin to build a our own portfolio. I have already listened to the Bigger Pockets audiobook titled "The Book On Rental Property Investing", as well as been reading loads of websites and blogs focusing on real estate investing. 

One thing that did stand out to us from the seminar though, was the teachers' advice to buy in the New Zealand market rather than here in Australia. This was because apparently New Zealand has lower taxes for property buyers, and even no Stamp Duty tax at all, not to mention the fact that NZ property prices are lower in general than in Australia. This would all apparently add up to make the cashflow potential much higher in many more deals.

As we are so new to the property investing game and have so much to learn, we are really keen to meet and connect with like minded people and anyone who may be able to give us some tips or advice, especially anyone with any insight into the Australian and New Zealand markets, who may have even invested there themselves.

Please don't hesitate to say hi, and we look forward to chatting to you all soon!