There are many dangers in purchasing second houses like plumbing problems as Steve McKnigh says so how have you been caught out or what are you afraid of??
resiwealth
We love old properties because that is what is in the inner Brisbane suburbs we like to invest in. I would also love NOT to have to gap and paint VJ walls but unfortunately that comes with the territory.
Personally, we don’t mind if we have to replumb and rewire because it means everything is new and won’t require maintenance for many years. Usually the plumbing can be easily replaced, whereas in a brick lowset place, it could be very tricky (I think). We can also claim the expenses one way or another.
I wouldn’t touch a knock down house, though, unless I wanted to knock it down. But good, straight, original houses are gems.
On another tack, with the drought in south east Queensland, I’m glad we have queenslanders on stumps because the shrinking of the ground doesn’t seem to cause the same amount of cracking and problems as in slab and brick houses.
We wouldn’t say “never” to a newer house, but we feel very comfortable with tin & timber, albeit the maintenance cost is probably higher.
My thoughts, Wylie.
Hi Resi,
That is what a building inspection is for.
For the sake of a couple of hundred dollars you can’t go wrong.Don’t mind old properties also as you can usually add value anyway although you miss out on depreciation not buying new.
I have seen a lot of problems from new homes also
just within a few years of purchase.I reckon second hand houses covers everything from a couple of months old that people are flogging off from a new build all the way through to structures that are many centuries old…especially if you are talking about something in say Europe. It pretty much covers almost all buildings, so the standard inspections would apply I’d imagine.
I prefer buying second hand, because I don’t have the patience to haggle and argue with builders, especially as my subject matter knowledge is nowhere near as good as theirs. I mainly concentrate on the dirt – where it is, how big is it, is it flat, access, contamination etc.
Buying second hand allows you time to study the finished product warts and all. It’s been exposed to some or all of the weather elements and hence you can assess how it performs. You can walk through it, listen, observe, feel and get a feel for the structure. You can crawl under, over or through it and have a real good squizz….none of which you can do with yet to be built structures. These walk through 3D computer images are a joke – I laugh and walk away when sales reps try and pull that…must be a successful ploy as they all do it nowadays.
I also like older buildings with say limestone footings from the 40’s era, something that most builders won’t entertain nowadays for a reasonable price. I also like big eaves and verandahs, something tested over time in the harsh Ozzy weather conditions. Whoever invented and sold this concept of these new buildings having no eaves whatsoever needs shooting. How the public fell for that folly and the subsequent A/C capex and much higher opex cost is beyond me. Looks dreadful too.
Everything now for new buildings seems to be really big houses squeezed onto tiny bits of dirt, centred around some TV or cinema room where the occupants sit and stare at passive entertainment, all on skinny little blocks that developers quaintly term “cottage blocks”, that are usually 250sqm in size with frontages as low as 8 or 9m in width, enough for a double garage and a door…that’s it !!! People wonder why everyone is getting so fat and we have so many petty neighbour disputes nowadays. I think if you graphed the average bodily girth vs average width of a housing block, it’d be almost indirectly proportional to a tee. Hey Foundation…do you have that stat up your sleeve ??
Lets stop living in each others pockets, reject the developers notion of “let’s squeeze as many handkerchief blocks out of this development as possible” and get back to living on proper 1/4 acre blocks where a normal family can live without treading on their neighbours toes.
Looking at the trendy trends of single people living alone in apartments US style, I think I am in the minority with my views, which is just how I like it.
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