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My father just had to do this for a friend in a similar situation. He arranged a clearing sale (although it was a town property) with a local agent and then whatever was left, he took in a couple of trailer loads to the dump (which has a dump shop, so anything still useful won't become landfill).
I was searching for similar recommendations, found this thread, and based on the advice we used Apex for an inspection last week. Although we didn't really have a clue what to expect, being complete novices, we were very happy with the service, advice and time offered by Richard Reeves. He was able to do what seemed to be quite a thorough inspection within 2 days, and his report, photos and follow-up phone discussions and availability were excellent and very affordable. We would use him again.
I can help answer your question! I think the timber has a lot to do with it. I've been a tenant in two properties with floorboards in recent years.
1. Spent 3.5 years in a house with pine floorboards that were discovered in a reno prior us moving in. The biggest danger to floorboards is moving furniture (in, out, while washing floors etc) and these did not seem to have enough lacquer on them, perhaps just one coat, and developed scratches easily (especially if your removalists just shove stuff off the sacktruck, and when moving in or bringing in new furniture, nothing has a felt protector on the bottom). Also fatal to pine floorboards is wheeled computer chairs (need a mat or they roll tracks into the soft pine, and pick up dirt that rolls the sheen out of the lacquer). So after 3 years despite our best efforts as good tenants who put stick-on felt protectors on the bottom of every piece of furniture, I'd say the floors needed to be – and were – redone after we left.
2. Spent 2 years in a house with some jarrah, some pine, also discovered and polished back in a reno prior us moving in. After 2 years the jarrah looked like the day we moved in, although we were careful to use a carpet square under the computer chairs. The pine, again despite best efforts with felt protectors, was showing marks. Particularly it bore the imprint of heavier furniture eg dents from the legs of the TV unit with a very heavy plasma on it, and the rollers from the bed ensemble, despite being in those little metal protectors with felt bases, had rolled little crater dents into the floor under each roller over time. The worst of these had started to splinter the surface lacquer. Also had some very hot summers and cold winters and the pine started to curve up on the long sides of the planks and splinter, drawing blood from bare feet from time to time.
I'd suggest a lot of tenants may not be as diligent about the felt protectors on the bases of furniture. (Quite a time consuming job to stick on every leg on a dining setting!) so depending on the timber in it, maybe be prepared to redo the floor every few years as needed!
Thanks for the responses guys, interesting stuff. I had not even considered Coober Pedy but it sounds like a great start to your investing.
We actually took a run up to Whyalla on the weekend to visit friends, and had a look at Port Augusta on the way through. We lived in Whyalla about 7 years ago when you could buy a trust house for 20K (we lived in one as trust tenants while studying at the uni there). Now they start at 100K. We were interested to see what had happened in the meantime as our friends had told us the place had had a little boom, but then values dropped a little and stalled following the GFC. As we drove around town, our friends pointed out all the places that had been for sale for months, or even years, with vendors holding out unsuccessfully for pre-GFC prices. So not a very lively market just at present. However, for a town three hours south of Roxby you can still pick up some very good value sea views. The council has done some good upgrade work down on the foreshore, which has long been an under utilised asset of the town and the foreshore and beach is a great area for families. There are still dolphins hanging out with the fishing boats and yachts in the little marina there, and a new netted off swimming area in the corner of it too.
And the big news – Whyalla appears to finally have its first proper (non shopping centre) cafe! And it had people in it! At long last people there have the spare dollars or desire to sit in an aspiring-trendy cafe and order friands with their lattes… knew it had to happen one day, and with all the regional development, disposable incomes can only rise. Fast food has always been popular and there's now a Maccas as well as the old Hungry Jacks which are all grouped together with KFC (relocated away from the highway that passes through town to the precinct of the Westlands Shopping Centre).
re.com at the moment has lots of housing blocks in new developments at Whyalla for sale, and we were amazed to see the number of houses in these new developments. When we lived there, you'd be hard pressed to find a house less than thirty or forty years old. Now the 'courtyard homes' craze has taken off in the new subdivisions. Curiously the larger of these is out the back of what used to be the worst of the trust ghettos. A small development near the foreshore still has vacant blocks – within five minutes walk to the beach, I find it curious people would rather live 10 kms away into the bluebush in the 'Ocean Eyre' development. Although there are some larger 'lifestyle' blocks out the back of that which give people more breathing room from their neighbours. Definitely more new shinier vehicles around too. However a large industrial park development opposite the OneSteel site on the edge of town has sat stagnant since it was put in a couple of years ago, with these major industrial lots with a very wide bitumised road and services, all just sitting there (the road is popular with young locals for drag runs). One of the old derelict pubs has been made over into shiny apartments, and a couple of other daggy old pubs and venues have been reinvented, so there are some good signs, things just seem to be coming along slowly.
Port Augusta has vastly improved its foreshore and waters-edge area and seems to have been effective in discouraging public drinking in these areas. Not sure how the overall antisocial behaviour management is going but the town certainly presents better to the passing tourist, and the Maccas there has even gone 24 hour. Some nice townhouses have been built along the water's edge and again some great views still to be had on the western side of town.
We didn't call into Pt Pirie but apparently Western Plains Resources (that has some development south of Coober Pedy) has just taken a $50m deep water port project to Pirie after getting fed up trying to progress it at Whyalla. Small ore ships used to pull up at the Whyalla port to load ore a few years back. Now with greater volumes leaving from a new magnetite mine south-west of town, they can't get the bigger ships in to the shallower port there, and instead load barges at the town port that are pulled by tug out to a floating loading platform that services larger ships in the deep water, visible a km or two offshore from the town. I guess with the resources industry there are always issues of ownership and access to infrastructure, because I believe One Steel has both the port and rail leaving Whyalla, and I guess didn't want to share, so Pirie's gain on that one at least.
Having just moved away from Kal I would say give it a miss. The market there fell considerably in the last 2 years, particularly the rental returns, and the rental market became rather overcrowded as people who bought to live in high couldn't sell higher and settled for renting when they moved on. Don't forget this place had a nickel crash and Norilsk was just one employer to terminate several hundred jobs, and most of the small nickel operations have not reopened. Gold is still good obviously, and uranium at Yeelirrie, Mulga Rocks etc to come, but that is still a couple of years from being helpful to the town economy.
Why don't you look closer to home? Where are you, at Southern Cross? Surely that place has seen some capital growth with the Koolyanobbing development, and surely also some benefit as a service centre, from the nickel mine down at Forrestania?
If you can afford it, the Pilbara still seems to be the place for the best returns. The LNG developments sit nicely with iron ore to ensure a long term boom, and isolation and native title issues ensure restricted supply and high demand.
Yikes, it seems incompetence is widespread. I just thought it was Kalgoorlie because towns like that always struggle for decent staff in service industries.
I was told that about 70% of residential tenancies were owned by out of town investors, so if it's useful, my two cents about Kalgoorlie PMs…
Avoid First National for residential – never returned calls when I wanted to inspect rentals – I saw properties I was interested in sitting vacant for weeks.
Avoid John Matthew Sons – as a tenant, maintenance averaged 6 to 7 weeks, even on things that should have been considered urgent. The owner was used as an excuse most of the time – may have been true but no idea how much the owner was actually told.
Murphy Boyden is the biggest outfit in town with lots of staff (they absorbed LJ Hooker) but they were very brusque when I enquired about inspecting a rental – the girl at the desk barely looked up and said "it's 2-2.15 next Wednesday" without so much as a courtesy Hello or Can I help you with anything else.
Goldfields Realty were the agents recommended to us when we moved to Kal, and were a pleasure to deal with when we enquired about property – prompt and professional with the best customer service.
The Professionals laughed me off when I enquired about commercial property renting below 50K a year on a 12 month lease – but there is plenty out there, and I ended up with one from First National, who were very friendly but didn't do an ingoing inspection and the lease didn't arrive until months after we'd taken possession – meanwhile there were plenty of maintenance issues to argue over.
