word of advice, if you're buying a property last two Saturday's of the year always best to go to an auction, less competitive bidding, plus if you're looking for best capital growth, get properties near university campuses and typical 'student suburbs'. most of the inner west comes to mind. places like petersham, lewisham, newtown, stanmore, redfern would do great.
i'm not buying a new house to leave home. it's just my mother and I and we're living in a 12 bedroom house which is too big for us so we're leasing it off to local businesses on a minimum 3 year contract, and just going to use that to rent a 3 bedroom Vicky terrace. no point buying and getting a mortgage, don't think we could handle it in the long run.
It's funny though because i've been doing all the work, meetings with the banks, estate agents, going to auctions, doing my own research for quotes because some of these agents are useless. Makes me wonder why i didn't do business studies or economics for hsc, probably would've gotten a better ATAR.