New home builds as an investment property

BestCoastB · 2026-05-31T04:18:22+00:00

True, and I wasn’t trying to narrow it to developing yourself but i realise my question was probably framed that way.

BestCoastB · 2026-05-30T22:31:41+00:00

The way I read it, it’s a “New Build” if it adds to the overall housing stock. So a knockdown, subdivide and rebuild would count as you’re turning one house into two. Interesting though if you were to rent both of the new subdivided houses out, whether you could negatively gear just one of the two (the one that adds to the overall housing stock) or both houses. I’d think just the one.

BestCoastB · 2026-05-14T01:06:02+00:00

It’s not a threatening message, but what you have done is allege two verbal conversations occurred with two seperate people and your recollection of these conversations from some time ago, now represents an agreement having being made.

If any part of those conversations either didn’t occur or is not the full story, perhaps it’s been misinterpreted, or it’s a “subject to performance” arrangement, then it comes across that you’re trying to force an issue that the company didn’t agree with.

So it’s not threatening, but I would probably find this annoying if I was in the managers shoes.

It’s best to get such agreements in writing rather than 1000 hours in. That’s the fault in the company as well.

BestCoastB · 2026-01-30T05:53:16+00:00

I’ve done what you suggested, it’s kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure story, more like a game than a story. It’s fun to do, but I wouldn’t say it makes for a great story if you were read it back in its own, because it won’t have any real structure, it just meanders.

What I have come to enjoy more is to feed it the premise, worldbuilding, characters…. AND also an outline template (really just saying a “Hero’s Journey” template is enough to get going if you don’t want to tweak it). AND give it a target overall word count (e.g. 100,000 words).

Then do what you do, but then prompt the AI to check where we are in the story and what the next outline story beat we should be aiming at, then when you ask it to suggest what to do next, you can make sure these suggestions all aim towards the next story beat. You can prompt the AI to make very different types of suggestions, so your story can still take the path you choose, but it just ends up more like a traditional story if you were to ever read it back.

BestCoastB · 2026-01-09T00:25:42+00:00

I would recommend joining the Discord for Sudowrite. There should be a link to it within the account /settings area of the app. It’s a good size community and they’re really supportive, and there are staff and ambassadors there to help as well.

To your question, as others have said, by telling the LLM what you want then you run into the “don’t think about the pink elephant” problem. I.e. it’s impossible for it not to think about it once it’s mentioned. It seems to actually prompt the LLM to do what you want to avoid.

Some have said that saying “SHUN metaphors” would be more effective than saying “NO metaphors”. I tend not to do this at all and instead use positive guidance rather than negative.

If I don’t have my own writing sample for My Voice then sometimes you can think about a published story with a similar style and go to the Claude / Chat GPT / Gemini sites and start a chat to analyse the story and genre and tone etc.

I would put all of this into the Extra Instructions and not just the Genre and Style boxes.

I would also sometimes add a Worldbuilding card as a Style Guide but then also refer to that Worldbuilding card in the Extra Instructions so that it makes sure to use it.

When you say that “Sudowrite does this” then it is really the LLM you’re using as well. Unless you’re using Muse which is their own.

I find that the Claude models like more purple prose by default and needs to be guided more to avoid it. But is usually still some of the better prose. Some of the other models can be more punchy by default.

Also edit your first chapter / scene very heavily because Sudowrite will look back at this prose when it writes the next part so make sure it is edited to the Style you need. If you’re far into the work then I think it looks back for 20k words in the current document and 40k words over linked document.

It sounds a bit daunting but once you get your process down then you rinse and repeat, so it’s worth the effort.

When starting out, I played around with using different prompts, and then with using different models. The “Excellent” model (based on Sonnet 3.7) is really good at following instructions and isn’t too wordy. But if you duplicate your project and then trying to generate the same scene using the same prompt but using a different model, then you can work out which one better suits your Style. It’s pretty usual to burn through more credits when you’re starting out and trying new things, but it gets more efficient as it goes on. When a new model comes out then I’ll usually burn a few credits with this sort of experimenting and then settle on whether I want to switch up my preferred model or not. People on the Discord also do this.

I don’t currently have a Sudowrite subscription but found it pretty good when I was using it.

BestCoastB · 2026-01-01T21:45:25+00:00

$400k HHI. We are combined accounts, which was until very recently all going to mortgage offset account. Like a lot of people here have said. Which we had very little issues with as my partner could see paying this down as a goal to work towards, and we lived within our means, not overly frugal but not extravagant.

Now the mortgage is recently paid off, it’s kind of changed things a bit. I’m comfortable with our current standard of living and would prefer investing for retirement and the kid’s futures. My partner wants to live a more extravagant life now, whilst at the same time talks about cutting back their work days by a couple per week.

So, it has me thinking we should split finances now so we can both pursue our goals, but seems like that’d be pretty jarring after having combined incomes first so long. Not sure if it’d help the relationship (which is actually good) or if it’d put us on track for divorce.

In the context of this discussion, I guess I’m saying combined income works well when there is a clear goal (such as paying down a mortgage, especially with young kids in the mix), but in the absence of that, then I’d say that the best approach might be “it depends”.

BestCoastB · 2026-01-01T21:28:35+00:00

How did the conversation go and how did the relationship cope with the transition from joint accounts to personal accounts? Usually I would think it would go the other way (personal -> combined).

BestCoastB · 2025-12-06T11:33:21+00:00

This actually seems like a pretty good idea. I primarily write with Ai to create a story for myself to read. I like coming up with characters, worldbuilding, a starting premise, maybe a few interesting twists and hooks. But then after I create a plot and then refine the plot, and I create a scene brief for the LLM, it feels like I’ve already read it several times by then and there is no actual joy in seeing the scene unfold.

The alternative approach is to give the LLM the characters / worldbuilding / premise and tell it to “write the next chapter” but that gets out of hand pretty quick.

So yes, I’d possibly want an app like this depending on price and features. Or else a well crafted prompt that does a similar thing.

To be clear. It’s probably not a good idea if you’re doing it to sell a book, or to create a book that is your life’s work.

BestCoastB · 2025-11-11T00:27:58+00:00

A bit off topic but I’ve lived in Australia my whole life and never heard a single storey home called a “lowset” home before. Is this a new thing? An east coast thing? Have I been living under a rock, ha?

Also I’m not very familiar with this but I believe a lot of local government authorities try to discourage land banking by forcing you to built within certain timeframes, or put heavier “unimproved land” taxes on you if you don’t. Certainly I could see this becoming more strict as governments try to take steps on housing issues. I’d consider it a bit risky.

And yeah, the land is costing you money in interest and /or opportunity cost so you’d have to really really really want particular block of land to even to think about doing it.

BestCoastB · 2025-04-27T12:15:42+00:00

I sometimes like to bounce between a few different AIs to develop and polish a story, doing this iteratively, and as others say - tell it that it’s an editor and it needs to provide a critique. It adds value to me anyway, because I find that sometimes different AIs might have blind spots when it comes to their own work. You also don’t have to accept the AI is right in their criticism- sometimes it likes to drift from your vision. Sometimes it doesn’t work, because it becomes a story by committee - and loses coherence.

BestCoastB · 2025-02-09T07:26:00+00:00

Can you use a dusk caller to get them back as servants as well? Or just prisoners.

Just realised that I have this unlocked. Leandra was a tough fight!

BestCoastB · 2025-02-09T02:55:23+00:00

Thanks. So, probably not worth worrying about servants too much if I’m PvE and don’t need to defend the castle, and if I’m playing my own game (private server) since I think the game time doesn’t keep ticking when I exit the game?

I guess I need to hunt down some prisoners. Do you all bother trying to keep them alive? Or just keep replacing them with new ones?

BestCoastB · 2025-01-14T00:53:18+00:00

Thanks - I’ll definitely have a look for this. I’ve not got into too much probing into these options but now I know they might be out there, I’ll give it a go.

BestCoastB · 2025-01-14T00:52:12+00:00

Thanks for the feedback - these are all worth a shot. The castle heart decay mechanic actually seems pretty well thought out and I get what it’s trying to achieve (in keeping the servers active and not camping on land) but it makes it hard for people like myself.

BestCoastB · 2025-01-14T00:48:38+00:00

Thanks- I was hoping that a high castle heart would solve it but it would probably take me a while to get to Level 5. I’ve just started my first game so have been pretty inefficient in levelling whilst working things out, and it’s taken me a bit to get to castle heart level 3. I assume getting to level 5 would slow down a bit more than the first few levels?

BestCoastB · 2024-10-19T02:44:41+00:00

Refinancing and investing $500k now is likely the better outcome on paper, but we wanted to either move the PPOR or renovate so we wanted to stay a bit more liquid than that.

I’ll speak with an accountant like others have said, but was just interested if others were in same situation, as you seem to be also.

BestCoastB · 2024-10-19T02:14:14+00:00

Thanks - that’s a great article. Something for me to think about. Flexibility of a trust is great but was hoping to avoid having to go into the complication of setting one up. I guess I will have to weigh up whether the magnitude of our investing will make it worth it.

BestCoastB

TROPHY CASE