I work within the Justice system - I'd often heard that Prisoners/Offenders released from gaol are housed in hotels/motels etc. i had a recent conversation with a Prisoner returning to gaol following a breach of their release conditions.

This Individual told me that a partner of the Department of Corrections could not provide a community house, the Individual was housed in an Air BNB, yes that's correct an Air BNB paid for by the tax payer.

Tax payer issue isn't really my point (Governments waste so much money) what concerns me is that the owners of the Air BNB did not know that the property was being used for this purpose. The Prisoner told me they had no respect for the property and said they dread to think how much the damage done would cost to fix.

I do not have an AirBNB and not aware of any contract obligations, if you do these read the small print.

Good luck to you all that rent a property in any capacity.

Interesting report on ABC that WA has changed some of the rent rules. Now you can only increase the rent once a year, but with virtually nothing available all I can see is landlords going for gold with a mega annual increase so as to not miss out. Can't see this helping at all.

I was talking at work with some colleagues a couple of weeks ago and as can Imagine property came up as a discussion point.

I randomly suggested that it would be great if you held on to your first purchase forever (Stick with me). Not having thought this through I suggested that the first house we buy is normally a Unit or starter home etc, this purchase is often done on your own or with a mate or a partner. I then suggested that you find a partner or start a family, one child maybe two and so on, then the discussion comes "we need more room". The house possibly has equity, so we do what we normally do and borrow against it and get a bigger house and obviously a bigger loan.

Kids grow and become teenagers, need more space again, rumpus room, extra bathroom, parking spaces, kids partners staying over, kids at home longer etc. So repeat the cycle Increased equity, bigger house, bigger loan, we all know the drill.

Now we have the perfect house or home 4 or 5 bedrooms, double garages, couple of sitting rooms, games room 3 bathrooms etc.

Then the kids go to University, fall in love, move out etc.

The house now becomes big, empty and EXPENSIVE to run, so you think about downsizing....

Wait a minute..... I have an Investment property, remember a Unit or Starter home from my single days, Owes me nothing and in a nice area because that's where I purchased when i was young.

Sell the big house, No CGT because its your home and live your best life....

Alternately move in the kids, leave every light, run the air-con 24 hours a day consume all their food, never clean up, dump washing everywhere, etc then live your best life.

I understand from a lot of previous posts we have property Investors within the community.

I know a lot need to go right for it to happen, and i know its somewhat controversial but just a thought.

It's far from perfect - but if it really is the circle of life then so be it.

I moved to Australia about 15 years ago and starting renting 2.5 years after that.

I was in a share house with 5 other people and the owner was great. LJ Hooker not so much. They wanted to charge us $150 at the end of our lease to have one person taken off and another put on. I had a number of emails back and forth with the manager, refusing to pay and there wasn't much they could do. I didn't think putting a name and DOB in their system was worth $150. I don't think renters fight for their rights often enough.

The next place the agent was better, the owner a bit odd. He'd come around the property to "mow" even though my partner did this regularly. Mowing more involved looking in the windows and checking up on everything - not a big deal really. They tried to increase our rent once. I looked up the rules and saw that if your current rent is in line or above the median for your area (same number of bedrooms) they can't do this. We told them we weren't agreeable and there wasn't much they could do. Another thing to keep in mind, if your owner wants to increase rent from $450 to $460 per week and you refuse and they end your lease, it will take them 45 weeks at the higher rent to recoup the difference. Not to mention agents generally charge a weeks rent just to list it and the owner is playing roulette as to whether their new tenants will be good.

We were there 2.5 years and decided to buy. We bought a place and notified the agent we would be breaking our lease (there was another 4 months left) but that our housemate wanted to take over the loan. I read the QLD tenancy act (I can't remember if this is the correct name for it) and read through RTA material. The RTA was a bit useless as they'd give you a different answer depending who you'd talk to. I found out that if a current tenant, whom was already approved by the owners, was living there and wanted to take over the lease this was allowed. The owners refused stating "we'd like to start anew with fresh tenants". They then proceeded to ask if our housemate would be applying for the property when it went up for inspection *facepalm.

The owner was seeking over a grand of our bond for breaking the lease early. We went to tribunal and sat in a room with two gentleman, one quite old the other young who acted as "judges" and pretty much argued my case for me. We won, I did a few fist pumps in the air in my head and was glad I fought for my rights as a tenant. I think the problem is many renters don't know their rights or stand up for themselves.

My ex ex partner and I (since split) bought very affordable in a great area about 30kms from Brisbane. It cost $370,000 for a 4 bedroom 2 bath, double lock up garage and is now worth $660,000 7 years later. I don't say this to brag but instead to give perspective - that's nearly $300k on a $74,000 (plus fees) investment over 7 years. And this is for a bottom 10% property ie it was one of the poorer quality houses in the area. I've since worked to clean it up but it's still far from the best house on the street.

My ex wife and I bought an investment property 2 years ago, similar distance from Brisbane CBD for $400,000 - 4 beds, 1 bath, double garage. We used the equity in my current house and almost no cash and set up the loans so that the investment property loan was for 100% of the price. This allowed us to negatively gear and meant we were putting in around $250 a month ontop of the rent we were receiving to cover the mortgage. We bought well, brick and tile, so there was minimal additional costs. Unlike my current place, I spent a LOT of time learning about realestate investing. Michael Yardney's stuff is great and I've carried over a few of his rules and lessons to investing in the stock market. After looking at 100's of properties online and 30-40 in person, we bought a top 5% property in the suburb. It's now valued at $600-650,000. Again, not to brag but to put it into perspective, that's $200,000 - 250,000 in 2 years on almost no cash, instead using the equity in my current property.

We got lucky, buying the investment at the bottom of the market and now prices are/were at the peak but what this has taught me is even an idiot can make money in realestate, so why rent? There are some caveats, buy land, buy well, don't over leverage yourself. Even if I preferred to invest in the stock market (I wasn't doing this at the time) I could have pulled the equity out of the house to put to use.

Along the way I aggressively paid down my owner occupier loan, anywhere from an extra $50 month to double. I have a 2 and a half year old daughter and by paying down my loan quicker I am in the very fortunate position to be able to work 4 days a week and spend all of Friday with her; something I'm very grateful for and wouldn't be possible, among other reasons, if I was renting.