If you're new here, you may be interested to know that you can receive all of our latest articles directly to your inbox. Click Here for more info. We promise to keep your email safe and will use it for only this purpose

Well, we had the chap from the Halifax estate agency around yesterday. Not the most talkative bloke but he gave us the news we wanted to hear.

Basically, in the 9 years that we’ve lived here, our house as doubled in price. Assuming we get a buyer to pay this price, we’ll be able to pay off the mortgage and the odd Visa balance whilst still taking enough money with us to Australia to live off (if need be) whilst we get settled and start looking for jobs.

Worse case is we can drop the price sufficiently to make the house a ’steal’ whilst still taking a few bob out to Oz.

We’re being realistic that it may be a while before we can get a buyer, however it feels good to know the kind of money we may be looking for. Spring is in the air, the gardens and the house has never looked better and we’re feeling pretty optimistic about the whole thing.

We have a second valuation next week (which we hope will confirm a similar price), once we’ve had that, the house will go on the market with an asking price of the average of the two.

Things actually seem to be happening now which is perhaps as well as our target move to Aus date of September 2006 is looming!

Article Popularity: 2%

A while back I made a post about uk censorship gone bad. Its all to do with the scantily clad female pictured to the left (Laura Bingle). Nothing to do with how she looks (which kinda goes without saying ) but how the ad ends.

“We’ve saved you a spot on the beach – so where the bloody hell are you?”

Just browsing the web and I’ve just found out that the decision has been over turned (I wonder why I kept on seeing the full uncensored ad on tv).

The original decision not to show the ad resulted in a hurried flight to London by federal Tourism Minister Fran Bailey and the delightful Laura Bingle , who, amid a blaze of priceless publicity, complained the English had lost their sense of humour.

I’m glad we’ve seen sense and everyone in the world can get on with their daily lives.

By the way, clicking on the pic opens a larger image if you want to admire the colour of the sky…cough..

Article Popularity: 4%

Top tip posted by Clippies on our forums which I think is worthy of a spot within our main pages:

Hello, just thought I’d post this as I’ve just been and had my copied documents certified. It was super easy, I phoned the local Magistrates Court in Sutton and they booked me an appointment with the Justice of the Peace at 9.30am today – I arrived on the dot, handed over my documents and they returned them to me all certified in less than half an hour.

And how much did it cost? £8!!! Yes that’s it £8, for all 60 copies certified!

I had phoned a solicitor and they quoted me £200 so I’m really pleased I didn’t go that route – so a huge thank you to whoever it was on here that suggested the Magistrates Court

Anyone else looking to do this go to this website and look up your local Magistrates, then ring them and ask for an appointment with the Justice of the Peace.

http://www.hmcourts-service.gov.uk/

It costs £8 as an administration fee, JP are not allowed to charge for their time

Personally, I wish I knew this before we got our docs certified but thankfully we didn’t have that many to send over. if you do then Clippies tip may be a top one.

Way to go Clippies – Click here for the original thread on our forums.

Article Popularity: 7%

Just an update for the FAQ

An agent is very useful if you have the money (costs are usually in the thousands of A$) but not the time, or if you have an unusual case (unclear work experience, bad criminal or visa history, medical problems etc).

If you are willing to do some research, for example on our forums and your case is pretty straightforward, it is very well manageable without an agent.

However, it might be a good idea to have an agent go through your skills assessment application and/or your visa application just before you send them off, just to check that you haven’t forgotten something or did something stupid. Many agents are willing to do this for only a few hundred dollars.
Continue Reading

Article Popularity: 6%

Well, we have made contact with a couple of estate agent and have arranged to have the house valued this weekend. We have no idea how much the house is worth but the outcome is going to be really important.

Ultimately and ‘worst case’ scenario; any equity we can get out of our house will be the cash that we live off whilst getting new job/s sorted out in Australia.

We’ve been in the same house for the last 9 years. It’s a decent sized, three bedroomed detached house with a garage on a quiet cul-de-sac and would make a pretty sound buy for anyone.

The house itself (for the first time in a long time) is looking in tiptop shape. Most of the house has been redecorated (keeping all the walls a very funky magnolia colour ) and the Missus has done a sterling job de-clutering everything and sticking stuff in boxes which are now starting to form a pretty big pile in the garage.

The garden has been tidied up and everything is now good to go.

We hope to make at least 50% on the original purchase price (which in 9 years should be pretty doable), this will give us a window of approx 12 months to rent something half decent and keep is in food and all other important stuff for the first 12 months in Aus if were not able to find work in this time.

Anything bigger then the 50% will extend this window. Ultimately, the best-case scenario would be to make the 50% profit on the sale of the house, move out to Australia, spend up to a month finding somewhere to rent whilst finding our feet! Get a job and use the collateral from the house as a down payment for a new house or land in or around Perth.

That’s the best-case scenario, so fingers crossed for this outcome.

The sale of the house also brings with it our first sad farewell. We’ve had a couple of Chinchillas for about 10 years now and originating from the cold mountainous regions in the Andes means that their lifestyle isn’t particularly conducive for the Hot Australia weather. To be honest, I don’t actually think we’d be able to take these critters to Australia if we wanted to so, a new home has had to be found.

Thankfully, one of the (top!) blokes at work also keeps Chinchillas and he’s agreed to take these guys on board. I hope to do the handover in the next couple of weeks. The ‘chinny cage’ takes up quite a bit of space in our dining room so it’ll be good to get sorted before we start showing people around.

Anyway, lets see what news the valuers bring

Article Popularity: 2%

Hi Guys

Today we are pleased to announce the launch of our Australian immigration advice forums.

I have had quite a few enquiries from folks using our contact form with questions relating to their move down under.

I’ve answered these questions as best as I can but thought it would be useful to have a forum so that everyone can see the responses given.

In addition to this, a number of our new forums act as gateways to the Usenet communities. You can therefore use these forums to access the Australia and New Zealand immigration news groups from anywhere in the world without having to worry about installing some fandangled newsreader software on your PC. Continue Reading

Article Popularity: 6%

Quick update…..

DIY frenzy is now pretty much completed. The garden was finished this bank holiday weekend. The en-suite redecoration is complete and the missus is still doing an absolutely fab job packing all our worldly possessions into large cardboard boxes.

We hope to get an estate agent around in the next couple of weeks to see what kind of valuation we’ll be looking at for the house.

Shared the news with work (gave 6 months notice of my intention to give notice). Quite a safe decision (I hope) to share the news at this time as they are recruiting for folks to join the team doing similar roles to myself and they have struggled for the last 6 months to find suitable candidates to fill them. Continue Reading

Article Popularity: 2%