Brisbane Cost of Living

[BrianDamage]

Hello all, my first post and glad I found you!
My wife (an Aussie) and I are considering migrating to Brisbane area from Edmonton AB.
The question of cost of living always enters our discussions when it comes to making a decision.
Currently in Edmonton the average 3 bedroom house is around $425K

My average bills ball-parked here are:
Property Tax around $2400.00/yr
Electricity $200/mo
Phone $85/mo (with high speed Internet)
Natural Gas $200-$300/mo
City Utilities $70/mo
Satellite $100/mo
Universal health care $60/mo (for the whole family)
Petrol - around 1.05/liter

How do these costs compare to the Brisbane area?

Any assistance with this would be awesome, thanks!

[comet555]

Hi,

We moved from Fort McMurray to Brisbane last June. I'll try and answer your questions as best as I can.

I'd say on average the housing is more expensive, but there are really too many variables to specify. The houses tend to get more expensive as you move towards the city center or closer to the ocean. Also, being close to a train line could be more valuable than being far from one.

We bought a 4 bed, 2 bath house (with pool) in Capalaba for $460,000. This is south east of Brisbane in the Bayside area. We chose here because we didn't want to be closer to the city, and we couldn't have afforded it anyway. I can tell you from looking though that it is nearly impossible to find a 3-4 bed detached house anywhere around Brisbane, and if you did it would be crappy.

Property tax? I'm not too sure, we paid lots of stamp duty (taxes) upfront when we bought the house. I'm not too sure what there is for yearly property taxes.

Electricy - I'd say on average about $200 a month, could be closer to $300 some months in the summer if we've got the air conditioning on a lot and the pool filter running a good portion of the day.

Phone - usually about $40 a month, but then I spend about $20-30 on phone cards to call Canada (I talk a lot). This is for phone only.

High speed internet - ours is about $100 a month for ADSL 2 with Bigpond.

Natural Gas - there's no heaters here so you won't have any bills for heating, although you might use electricy to heat. Lots of houses have air con/heating units on the wall. We only used little portable heaters for a couple of weeks this winter. It does get really cold in the house tough without heat and little insulation. You will however likely use at least 1 tank of propane/natural gas a month for the BBQ.

City utilities - about $100 a month
Satellite/cable - we have Foxtel premium packages (all channels) for about $100 a month

Health care - public health is essentially free. Private health could be $40-100 a month depending on what kind of cover you want. If you make to much then you'd be taxed if you don't have it. So. we have private health for $120 a month, but that covers hospital and extras package. We use Medibank for ours.

Petrol - about $1.15 to $1.35, usually closer to the middle. It can vary widely from day to day. In one day I've seen it jump 20 cents, so the price fluctuations are huge and they are constantly changing.

Good luck with the move.

[BrianDamage]

Thanks awesome tips! Hugely Appreciated.
I was looking at areas like Alexandra Hills. Is that a pretty good neighbourhood?

Who did you use to ship your stuff comet555?
And if you had the chance, would you make the move again?

[comet555]

Alexandra Hills is literally right next door to me. I would call it a pretty nice neighbourhood, although like every neighbourhood some parts are better than others. I haven't seen any bad parts yet though. Capalaba and Alexandra Hills are cheaper than the surrounding areas to the east because they're not as close to the ocean. But they're not that far. It's only about 15-20 minutes drive to the parks by the ocean, although there are no big white sandy beaches in Brisbane.

We didn't ship anything. When we left Fort McMurray they wanted about $15,000 to ship. I know someone that moved from Hamilton to Adelaide a year or two ago and they were only charged $9500. We still had lots of crap stuff from University so decided to sell most of that crap and store the rest at my inlaws. When we moved over our intention was only to come for about 3 years and return to Canada. We do love it here and I know I could stay forever, but I think we'll still be returning to Canada in another year or two. So yes, I'm so glad we did this even if it is just for a couple of years. I can see me wanting to come back though in the future. We will be getting citizenship before we leave because I want to be able to return in the future.

I had worked out the rough cost of replacing everything here and figured it to be about the same (and I was right). So we didn't want to deal with the hassle and have to wait for our furniture when we arrived.

When we arrived here it was the four of us (2 adults, 2 kids) and we had about 4 suitcases with us. That's it. We also made a quick trip back to Canada for a wedding and we picked up our hockey and golf equipment and some toys for the kids, we brought all that back as free luggage on the plane. There are two skating rinks in Brisbane so if you play ice hockey you could continue it here. It's about a 30 minute drive from here to both rinks, it would be about the same from Alexandra Hills.

I hope that helps. Any more questions just ask.

Haley

[BrianDamage]

Thanks again for the prompt reply!
How old were your kids, and how are the schools in the area?
If you work in the CBD, how long is the morning commute?

Sorry for all the questions, but you are an awesome source

[comet555]

I don't really have school aged kids yet so can't say too much about the schools. My daughter just turned 4 over Christmas so she's in prep-prep right now (like preschool). Next year she will start Prep (like Kindergarten). If you want more info on these grades let me know. My son is only 18 months old so he's still pretty far from school at this point.

I've heard the schools in the area are pretty good, although some are better than others. Luckily you can choose the school you want and it shouldn't be a problem, although you have to transport your kids to and from school. My daughter is in preschol in Cleveland, which is about 15-20 minute drive, so not too far away.

There are also private schools here. Ormiston is considered the best in the area although very expensive. So unless you've got lots of money to spend I wouldn't bother looking. They also have really long waiting lists too.

My husband does work in the CBD. He takes the bus from a block or two from our house and he gets to work in about 35 minutes. But he's got a 5-10 minute walk to get to the bus stop and the same to get to work on the other end. So it probably takes him closer to an hour door to door. When we first arrived in Wellington Point he used to take the train. It was about 45 minutes to get to the CBD. The train stops in Birkdale, Ormiston and Cleveland (end of the line). From Cleveland it's probably closer to an hour trip.

If you're thinking of Alexandra Hills you wouldn't really be on by a train line. The closest would probably be Birkdale which would be about a 10-15 minutes Drive, or possibly Wellington Point or Ormistion would work depending on where in Alexandra Hills you were. For us the Birkdale station is the closest though and it takes me 12 minutes to get there.

You can look at maps at:
www.whereis.com.au
I think you can see the train line on there, it should look like a think black line with little black rectangles for stations.

Here's a link with a map of the train lines:
http://www.translink.com.au/qt/translin ... ex/tr_main

For the map, click on "Network Map" Look for the Cleveland line that runs from the centre out to the east.

You can also look up the timetables for the different lines to see when the stops are. Alternatively you can punch in some addresses on the right and it will calculate your journey for you.

As far as driving to the CBD I would expect about 45 minutes if you weren't driving at the peak, and about an hour for peak driving. Parking is very expensive so most people don't drive in but use the bus or train instead.

[ntaylor5123]

Obviously by looking at my flag I am not from Canada but it was a quick search and I found this site.So I guess what my question is (even though it appears you have answered it earlier) what is the cost of living? I guess what I am getting at is what is the cost in comparison to the United States with the exchange rate. My wife and I are looking to move within the next few years and we would like to know what to expect. Basically, how much should we save just for starters. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks.


Nick

[comet555]

Sorry, I can't help you out with exchange rates with the US.

The most useful thing you can do though is figure out how much money you will be bringing with you, and how much you think you will get when you exchange it. You can figure out a rough exchange rate with this link:
http://www.xe.com/ucc/
You won't quite get that rate when you exchange, you'll lose a little on commisions and exchange rate that banks and currency converters use.

We used this company, and you can find historical data on exchange rates there to see what the fluctuations are like:
http://www.ozforex.com.au/

Once you know all that, then you'll need to get a rough idea of what salary you will make here in Australian dollars. Then come up with a rough budget, that's the part that takes some research. You can do a bit of comparisions between countries, but I don't find that too useful. The important thing is just to work out everything in Australian the way it would be if you were here. Then you'll know if you'll be comfortable with that. I'm sure you know all this but I think sometimes people lose the big picture and try to compare too much between the two.

I would check out this forum for more information on all things Australia, immigration help included. It's the best site I've found, and I researched for about a year before our move.
http://britishexpats.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=54

More specifically here's a list of topics on that forum that deals with budgets. Hope it helps.
http://britishexpats.com/forum/search.p ... hid=442753