Forum Replies Created
Well done! That was good that he was there for that. Good luck.
kjs
Family, that is worse! Well you have tried the agent, and I am guessing you would really like to hit the seller on the weekend face to face now? You can push him for what his lowest would be. I reckon a few comments like “family, you won’t see rent from that” and “I hope you are able to evict family when a sale is about to settle?” or “you don’t need the money from the sale then, you own the place outright so rising interest rates will not hurt you?”
Any sane person would not be contemplating renting to family, or anyone. Like you say, near new and going overseas. Yuk! The good thing from this is that you now have some more info on the seller’s situation. Even if you now have to come up you haven’t lost anything.
Well, you know your highest figure, and you have the bank situation sorted, and the agent may not have pushed the finance available side of your offer, so good luck [biggrin]
kjs
Yes, that face to face is tough. He may need to think about it for a bit too, or he may just snap you up straight away, hard to tell.
The thing that worries me a little is that the agent doesn’t sound like much chop. He may help or hinder the process. Maybe if you do face to face he will see you are serious? Has there been many others at the open houses? You may need to wait unitl after the open house time and talk turkey to the owner then.
Best of luck! This is all a learning experience. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to up the offer though. If he baulks at the first offer, you need to be cool! Easier to say than do [biggrin]
kjs
The owner may not be there on the weekend? How about give the agent the written offer asap, and go to the open house as well? They may accept the offer and cancel the open house? If the owner is not there on the weekend, then the agent may spend all day running around open houses and may not work too hard to get your offer to the owner on the weekend, but may wait till Monday? get the offer to him earlier I think.
Good luck!
kjs
Hi, I am not in Melbourne, but I have heard of people going to the auctions. Not sure what name. You might find some of the smaller hardware places locally may be better priced on some items? I will have to watch my DVD again, but I thought Dean said Bunnings as he didn’t have time to run around town to different places? We have found the Mitre 10 store to be cheaper on somethings, but like Dean, sometimes we need to save time and get all the stuff together and get on with it. You need to work out what you are worth an hour? If you spend 2 days + petrol running around, and save $5, you need to add it all up depending on your circumstances. We went to the local timber place, and the plaster place, and besides getting crap service, Bunnings was actually quite a bit cheaper, and they will cut lengths of timber. The timber place wanted $10 on top of being a heap dearer to cut some arcitrave. We needed it cut to fit in the car. As it is your first, the time spent shopping around may be a good investment for the future for you. Hopefully someone else will come in and give you a tip on good Melbourne shopping.
kjs
Good points above. Could I just suggest that family and money are very touchy, and if you push too hard you may damage your important relationship. They feel secure in their paid off house, and if they are scared, then they may be very angry if you don’t drop the subject. they have everything to lose, and at this stage you have had a good education and will have good earning power.
I agree that without an income just now, you may find the bank will say no anyhow. How about asking the bank, and then if the answer is no, you will not have to push your parents?
I know you are keen and want to get rocking, but if you do wait until you are earning, and save a deposit then you will show that you are prepared to do the hard bit too.
I don’t want to be rude, but your statement of “since its been paid off does that mean there isnt any equity available?” shows that you really have not done a lot of study, and I would suggest books as said above. Before you commit to a property it would be really good to have learnt a lot. Not every property makes money. The impression given can be that to buy anything will make you heaps. This is just not true and there are a lot of costs on buying, and even more in having a place sold from under you. Have you been looking for a positive cashflow property? Very hard to get at the current market as plenty of other topics on this forum will get into. Extra hard if you have no deposit, and by borrowing on you parents house, you have not got a deposit that does not need to be paid interest on.
Please don’t be disheartened, your heart is in the right place, but you need to do the sums, and you may even have more sense of satisfaction if you do it by yourself.
Best wishes for your future, and hoping you get a great job soon.
kjs
Hi Jenny, I have no real idea, so this is just my dealing with council. Sorry if this offends anyone, but…
If you ask council, their eyes gleam and they say fill in this little application and we can charge you now, and then when we can inspect, and then if we see something…. Sorry, I am a cynical person. I believe if they can’t see into your house then they can’t see your work, and will the new buyer even know you have done it?
A tradesman may fill you in with the real legalities, and I am probably leading you astray! Also someone here will probably have the real info, and if in doubt you can always go to the council and they may even surprise me by not moneygrabbing.
I have heard that if you change drains, or if the value of work is over a certain dollar figure, then you need a permit.
I am having issues on something else with council at the moment, so please excuse me [oneeyed]
kjs
Wow duckster, thanks for the short version, that was heavy!
kjs
Yeah, they are a bad look those strips and will really be obvious. Good luck, and although you will be cursing doing it, or paying for it, that first impression is a deal maker or breaker. Good luck with the tree roots. It may just be movement in the ground.
kjs
Getting back to egos, never be worried, this is a business deal, and these people are not your friends.
I had a hairdressers years ago, and they were looking at a divorce property for sale for $135,000 (I said years ago!). Her husband offered $100,000, then $101,000, $102,000 and was accepted at $103,000. I could not believe it. Sometimes people are just emotionally or financially ready to sell, so offer lower if you feel like it. I thought I would be embarrased to offer that low, but now I would always give it a try.
Why does the agent want verbal, that sounds weird to me? Good agent not turning up to the open house. His brother was sick??? He would have to have been dying for a seller to put up with that. No support from other staff in the agency? You will know not to sell through them!
You should have asked the seller when his agreement with the agency runs out. He may have been open to a deal later, and hard for the agent to prove you viewed the house then if he couldn’t be bothered turning up. Sorry if this offends anyone, but an agent that lets the buyer do the open house is opening that door very wide!
kjs
Did they build themselves and use old or second hand fittings? What other cheap alternatives did they use in construction? This sounds like a bit of a funny setup. Either the agent is lazy, forgetful, or the sellers lied? Good pickup on your part, as you would expect a 3yo house to be containing fittings of it’s era.
Has this made the house harder to sell, and is it an opportunity to for you to replace fittings and improve the property value?
Please let us know what you find out.
kjs
A path with tree roots gives such a bad first impression doesn’t it?
I wondered if putting down road base/crushed rock/small pebbles might be an alternative? It depends on the situation, and will the new concrete have old concrete near it and look obviously new?
Will the trees be damaged by mucking around with the roots, and are the roots heading for the house to play with it too? They might be worth removing?
I am interested to see other opinions?
kjs
Hi Sanjiv, thanks for the link, it was very interesting for my area. I live in a small town where I know much of the population, and the figures looked very accurate. I didn’t know so many people owned their place outright though…very interesting. I knew the age breakdown and some other stats were certainly accurate to what I would have thought.
Anyhow, no idea about the discounting thing. Hope someone comes along that does know [confused2]
kjs
Also make sure you get get some sort of access to check references? Don’t just ring the number given on the reference, it may be their friend answering [eh]
kjs
I agree look into the sinking fund, maintenance costs etc. Do you have to resell through the managers? What horrific cost will they charge?
I never like the sound of any property where I can’t appoint my own manager, or selling agent, or tenants, or am locked into putting money into maintenance and sinking funds without having control of those costs. I don’t even like strata units. I have had a strata unit as an PPOR and I couldn’t put up a TV antenna as the old biddies had more voting power. When it was time that they though we should paint the place, I had no say in colour or cost, I just got slugged with a special levy as there was not enough in the sinking fund. I didn’t even think there was a problem with the current paint or its colour, but in a block of 7 units I had the sound of one hand clapping.
Do your research, and find out how long these units have been for sale also. You may have a hard time offloading them too.
kjs
I have a friend that manages about 6 or so of her own properties. She is a person with bad time management, works full time, and has children. I recently spoke to her about one of her properties (she needed a hand printing a letter, her printer is STILL not working – come on a printer costs less than $100) She was writing to the tenants to get them to agree to a new lease and a rent increase. She had not changed the rent since 2003 and that lease ran out in 2004.
So she is already so far behind in rental increases, that if she had given the money to a property manager she would now be ahead after costs, and I hate to imagine the possible state of the property with no inpsections. She just should not be self managing.
So if you can see yourself keeping the paperwork that these guys have suggested, and you are able to commit to keeping track of lease expiries, and can negotiate rental increases, then I don’t see why anyone can’t do it themselves. You just need to decide what sort of personality you are, organised, or bad with your time and paperwork management.
There are some bad stories about Property Managers out there, no doubt about that, so best of luck with your decision.
kjs
I looked into time share type units in Gold coast, and one thing I was warned about was if the managers don’t care for you, or you didn’t suck up to them, then your rental figures could be down compared to others that knew the kind of smooching to do. Also, you can’t take you business elsewhere to manage as stated above. At least if you own the full property you can take the management rights elsewhere.
kjs
I reckon my biggest hindsight mistake was actually buying a house in Wodonga, and owning it from 1989 until 1997. The market did not grow at all in that time. We started at interest rates of 15% and by the first monthly payment they had gone to 17%. If we had rented during that time we would have been better off financially, and the stress would have been a lot less. We looked after our house, but a very similar one around the corner actually sold around the same time (after having been bought around the some time) for about 10 grand less than purchase price. If we had steadily put the difference between rent and loan repayments into stocks we would have been so much better off. Since then that house has more than doubled in price of course.
One good thing we did do is buy a house in Wagga in 2000 when we couldn’t find a place to rent. I was worried that if we didn’t stay for at least about 4 years the costs of buying and selling would really hit us. Anyhow, we renovated it in 2003, and made nice money thanks!
Another big one that went past was Aristocrat shares at less than $1 in about early 2003? They had dropped from about $6, so why would you buy them? Now they are about $16. *sigh*
You can’t do everything, but if you do nothing you get nothing![lmao]
kjs
Thanks Terry. I think they are possibly a bit dear too, as the capital growth, while it has been good around that area in the last 5 years, is only following the city, but not as consistent. I wondered myself about the chance of further capital growth over the next 5 or 10, but I thought the return was not bad, compared to current Sydney & Melbourne returns, where the chances of capital growth are not that good either. The strata idea might be worth looking into. I appreciate your time in replying.[biggrin]
kjs
MBs are expert in their field – maybe, and that field is not financial advice. Some of them are not even expert at being a MB. To be proffessional you get paid, but some get paid even if they know next to nothing.
I have a friend who had done a several monday morning course, and purchased a program from a particular MB company. Then they let her loose on unsuspecting inoccents. Go and distribute leaflets in your suburb was the next part of her training.
Sorry, there may be some very wise MBs, including those here, who I think would know more than the average, but there are a lot of MBs who certainly have no accounting or tax knowledge. My point in case, the lady that asked the first question. Her MB advised a P&I. With what background or knowledge of her situation? Good on her for coming here and asking more questions.
I apologize if I sounded critical, I did not mean to be negative, just that if you trust blindly the advice of a person that has no legal right to give it, then you will end up possibly not getting the best from your finances.
Cheers, and keep the good advice coming!
kjs
