Forum Replies Created
I disagree with Steve on the whole “cladding” issue. Cladding is the term given to the exterior skin of the home not just a specific aluminium product. One form of cladding is brick veneer!
There are very big rewards in “recladding” a fibro home – not just for resale but for renting as well. People get the spooks about fibro, eventhough if it is kept sealed (painting is fine) and not mucked around with (creating any dust is bad if it is asbestos sheeting). If you reclad a house like this (found in many Brissy seaside suburbs) chances are you will get $30K+++ back. A lot of these homes are being very trendily (not sure if this is a real word?) revamped with colourbond “cladding” This is a great “no upkeep” solution for renters and buyers alike!I’ve read quite a number of responses from you two – yes you know who you are! Is there no end to this “mine’s bigger and better”….. The argumentative nature of your responses is quite annoying to those of us who just want good info.
Damo,
You sound like a kindred spirit!
We have built up considerable equity (>1.5M) by doing just what you are doing, and we’ve found in blue ribbon suburbs is easier (no glass ceiling for the finished product and more likely to be an emotional O/O buying) True, we did the first two around our jobs initially, and probably not best time leverage, but we kept doing it just because that’s what we love doing and who we are.
We are also 35, with two kids and about to take the “full-time” investing plunge. We fully expect that the time leveraging will need to improve on the development projects, but will continue to reno whatever we are living in…just can’t help ourselves. This will slow down the turnover of PPOR anyway and this gives us exactly the CGT advantages you were mentioning.
We don’t enjoy our PAYG jobs, so the thought of slogging it out for any longer is not palatable to us, and both currently cut back to p/t, but scary as all get out to finally make the break!
Without income, it seems we are forced into low doc, 65%LVR lends but the interest rate is not too bad (about 7.5%) and it gets us going with what we love doing and are good at.
We wish you all the best and will watch your posts with great interest.
Success comes from CANs not CAN’Ts! Tell yourself you CAN and you WILL!
We too, took a perfectly good house that we already owned (it was straddling two blocks we wanted to build on), cut it in half and moved it to another block in the next suburb.
The land bought especially for the purpose settled in 4/02 and we have just rented the house out last month 3/05!
The house was put on the block in the wrong orientation and once both halves were there, there wasn’t enough room to turn them. (the guy didn’t bother checking the plan and too much time had elapsed from when we signed the contract to when he actually did the job he had forgotten our instructions)
The house remover/stumper must have thought it was all too hard because it took legal action to get him to finish the job (we turned the house 90deg in the process and added a gable and decks right along the front – all to avoid a big tree on the front of the block which the council said was protected, then subsequently turned out to be full of borers and cost us another $800 to remove! on top of the additional cost of decks and gable to accommodate the requirements)
To cut a long, long story short, the house cost us the same as building very high quality replicas and took more than three times as long and a huge number of headaches/grey hairs we didn’t need.
Would we do it again? We are already talking about our next one, but with the experience of hindsight we don’t intend to make the same mistakes twice!
Our experience: Double your estimates of cost, and triple your time estimates to come up with a realistic figure.
Good luck!Wayne,
After watching this all unfold – I’d say the seller wants to sell! So much for the “wont budge from $185k” line the agent was touting. This seller has been sitting on these blocks for over a month, has not sold either and along comes this person who keeps increasing their offer by the minute! (I don’t mean to sound harsh, but just step back and see how quickly you are costing yourself money!)I’d put your offer for $178.5 in writing, fax it thru and just wait until after Easter. The real money is made in buying well, not selling. The way building costs are escalating, that extra 1.5K may well be needed later in the job.
Just my thoughts – always easier for someone not involved to comment.
I am looking at becoming a full-time positive cashflow property investor. Before I give up my part-time income, is there a mortgage broker out there who can advise re servicibility? I want to chip in 20% purchase price and purchase costs for each IP from funds to hand from sale of another property. If I can find the deals returning 10%yield, and thereby covering the property’s expenses, is income from external sources necessary to obtain borrowed funds? Interested in hearing from others who have done this!
