I noticed realestate.com.au has changed its search format. Now it has grouped townhouses in with houses. This irked me cos I’m not interested in townhouses and there are a hellova lot in the area I’m looking at. I contacted the website and enquired on this change.
They emailed back saying that “townhouses are more like houses than units or flats”. They said that townhouses dont usually have body corporate fees.
Now every single townhouse I have seen has body corporate fees (which is why i’m not usually interested in them as an investment). Admittedly I only know the brisbane area.
Do you say a townhouse is more like a house than a unit? I know they usually have their own title but then so do units.
And while talking about definitions…what the hell is a villa? I thought it was a French farmhouse. Is it just a name agents use to make townhouses sound more exotic and interesting? Or is there a difference.
flats, units, duplex, semi’s, townhouses, villas houses…. [wacko]
hoping for some clarification,
MillyIn England town houses were what the rich had in “town” so they could spend thime in the suburbs when not on their country estates.
In the 60’s there were
1. <b>houses</b>,
2. <b>flats </b>-dwellings in multi storey buildings usually rental rather that own your own and that’s where the poorer people lived
and
3. <b>villa units</b> – small usually single storey dwellings in groups on a large block of land often with owner occupiersOver time in Melbourne (at least) villa units got bigger and agents called them “town houses” because this sounds grander. Most but not all are not attached to adjoining dwellings
The nature of the titles has also changed, from company share to stratum to strata to plans of subdivision. Most town houses <b>do </b>share common land and have a body corporate, but because of their larger land component, they tend to behave like houses with regards to capital growth.
<b><font color=”navy”>Don’t dismiss them – they make great investments.</font></b>
Michael Yardney
METROPOLE PROPERTIES
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FREE subscription http://www.metropole.com.auThanks for the feedback. I’m thinking definitions have change over the years and they differ depending on location.
I guess I was mainly thinking of those townhouse estates where there is a pool tennis court manager etc. The BC always seems so exhorbitant. And I have never personally liked them with the big security gate out the front making me feel i was in a guilded cage. But some people love them perhaps I give them another look. With this aging population and the fact that there is a growing number of single occupancy make them worth considering for longterm.
thanks for the input
They have also removed the option to sort by, price, suburb, recentlty listed etc. I find this very annoying
I have a townhouse in Highgate Hill in Brisbane that is not part of an estate. They are like houses with only a courtyard each, 2 stories, but share common walls. There are quite high body corp fees, however, despite there not being very much, or exciting, common ground. There are no pools, security gates, etc.
Make sure you get an accurate view of body corp fees, as soon after buying mine, there was call for extra fees for a once-off painting of the exterior. They wanted $4000 within two weeks for each residence. Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t afford that, but we are still paying off this large new expense, and there are parts of the property that I was led to believe was covered by body corp but the body corp told me that these areas are my responsibility (although I can’t change anything without their permission, of course).
Anyway, it is tricky to find this info out, as the body corp wouldn’t let me see this info prior to purchase, so it wasn’t until after that I realised how much I was up for.
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