Real Estate

 Key event: This year's Country Week Expo will be held at Rosehill Racecourse Sydney from 11-13 August. Country Week, a high intensity promotion showcasing opportunities across regional NSW, provides an opportunity at one time and in one place to investigate possibilities in a range of areas in regional NSW  - see www.countryweek.com.au

This section of our regional living site focuses on real estate for life style, normal living or investment purposes.

Australia's large size and varied climate makes for great variety in opportunity. Our aim is to give you a taste of some of those opportunities together with access to information resources that will help you do your own research.

Good research is both fun and critical to success. Fun in that it opens up possibilities and allows you to dream. Critical in that it helps you avoid basic mistakes that can turn your dream into a nightmare.

A number of years ago one of the Ndarala team was asked to help an overseas investor review a major Australian investment. The land in question had cost many millions and was intended to provide the base for a canal style development in a major holiday area.

The investor was shown glossy material together with the usual mass of spreadsheets. He flew into one of Australia's capital cities and was taken by plane over the site with its virgin bush and sparkling waters. Contracts were then signed.

Several years later the team member was asked to review the site when the development company that had sold the land and which was to manage the development collapsed without action. One day's desk research showed that the land in question could not be developed as a canal site because the offshore water was simply too shallow leading to major environmental problems.

So good research is critical. But you can also have a lot of fun in doing it. Quite simply, it gives you an opportunity and excuse to explore all sorts of interesting areas across regional Australia. How to get started?

If you already have an idea as to localities that you are interested in, simply do a web search on the area followed by real estate. This will generate web details for a range of local real estate agents.

If you want to browse opportunities across a range of of areas, then you have a number of options. These include:

• General national portals such as realestate.com.au or domain.While these are national portals, they do allow you to search on regional areas. 
• Your Guide, the Rural Press portal, provides access to more than 100 centres across Australia. It includes job and property search facilities across Rural Press publications.
• Major Australian real estate chains such as L J Hooker, Century 21 and Raine & Horne also maintain web sites with central search facilities that allow you to look at properties across Australia in the areas covered by their agencies.

Another site that we like is yourseachange.This does not carry the range of possibilities offered by some of the other sites, but is still fun.