Buy my house or have a loan, whatever!

Tuesday 12th February 2008
Had to get up really early today the Banks Business Loans Specialist came round to Sharon’s at 8.30am to discuss our requirements. We sat down at the table and the first thing she did was pull out some plans for her house and try to sell it to us, only after we had explained to her that we wanted to live somewhere close to work and at the moment we didn’t know where we were going to work did she put the plans away and start discussing our business finance requirements, which were not a lot at the moment as we did not know which business we were going for, and all that we really required was some rough calculations and guidance.
Sharon took the kids to the local park while all this was going on and only came back when it started to get too hot.
We rang the Small Business Development Corporation (SBDC), these are the people who Sponsored us to come over here and part of the deal is that we keep in contact so that they know what we are doing. We rang to let them know that we are in the State and looking for a Business and to double check the criteria stated on our visa. On the visa it states that we must purchase a Café/Coffee Lounge in the Perth Metropolitan area and if you Google Perth Metropolitan Area it comes up with a map covering most of Western Australia so we just wanted some clarification. As luck would have it the nice young lady at SBDC informed us that as long as we remain in Western Australia we can operate any type of Business, anywhere as long as it is Legal under Australian Law and better still if we buy a business outside the Metropolitan area the requirements for our visa are less stringent.
In the afternoon we met up with an accountant that we first met on a Western Australia recruitment drive in London a couple of years ago, we chatted with him for over an hour and a half without charge and he advised us that he felt the asking price for the Carriage was a bit high, but there again I have never met an accountant yet that was willing to put his neck on the line and agree with a realistic valuation. We think we learnt a lot from him and will probably use him if we are still in this area but if we do end up using him it will not be cheap.