We just brought a 3br, 2bath fully renovated in Watsonia. We sold our other one first though (still in Watsonia). Was a horrible experince the whole thing. Geared up for auction day on our old house and not one single bid, got passed in and not one person hung around to negotiate.
Luckily three weeks later we had an offer, not what we wanted but we took it, was only $20K under what we wanted. The thing about our old house was it was a sub diveded house but had its own street frontage. It also backed onto a Secondary College (High School). I reckon this is what was stopping ppl from bidding on Auction Day. It really wasnt a problem for us because we are not home during school hours and outside of school hours it means you only have neighbours on one side so no noise restrictions etc. We ended up getting a 120day settlement so we could find a new place.
I dont know what was worse selling or buying. 120day settlement on our old house and $sub $650K to spend you think it would be easy, the FUN part of our lives etc. Was complete oppisite. Getting mucked around by RE agents, lost out on two houses (1 auction, 1 private sale). We still had not found a house with 40 days left on our settlement!!!!
Then BANG, 35days out, put an offer in on a place and it was ours. Dream home to, really close to shops/train, fully renovated, pool, spa, backyard shed etc. They took a 30day settlement to so now they BOTH settle on the same day.
Wont be doing that again for another 30years tho, was almost as horrible as watching the EFC car crash this year.
We just brought a 3br, 2bath fully renovated in Watsonia. We sold our other one first though (still in Watsonia). Was a horrible experince the whole thing. Geared up for auction day on our old house and not one single bid, got passed in and not one person hung around to negotiate.
I've auctioned two houses (16 years apart). Zero bids, zero hangers-around. Second one had people hanging around over the next 8 weeks, including one who was just trying it on, but I ended up dropping the price 15%. Admittedly it was the early months of the GFC.
Bought my place at auction last November. Maybe 5-8 people at the auction, I was the only bidder. Agent tried to tell me there was a super-secret bidder who didn't want to come to the auction etc etc, but it was bullshit of course.
Probably could have got it for less if I pushed harder - the vendor had to sell, young widow who couldn't take care of the big block and who was moving in with thr new hubby-to-be, but I was just so damn stressed and jittery I simple wanted to get it over with.
Bought a place off the widow of the guy who built it - he was a builder, did the job himself (pretty good, with a few bits of wonky joinery inside)
But he was obviously an AV nut. They had a pretty comprehensive setup when i inspected the place, TVs, a dedicated media centre PC, etc etc. There's wires EVERYWHERE, the whole place is wired both with ethernet data cable and with two separate sets of speaker cabling. There's holes drilled in the floorboards with speaker cabling for the surround sound from the home theatre. There's three sets of antenna cable, two of which don't connect to anything, every room has phone/data and two TV ports (many of which are not connected to anything), under the floor is a ratsnest of coax, there's wiring for (I think) child monitors in each of the secondary bedrooms, and a feed for CCTV and gate control from the front gate. I found a bolted-on panel in the pantry when I was trying to get TV reception, opened it, and a torrent of wiring of a dozen different flavours vomited out like it was shot from a cannon. Reminded me a little of that horrible old story of the zookeeper who was suffocated when she succeeded too well in manually assisting a constipated elephant...
There's nothing resembling a wiring diagram, and the vendor knows nothing about it. The guy who set it up is dead. I've probably got the most completely wired house for three suburbs in either direction, and I can't even get proper TV reception yet!
You didn't buy a brothel did you? I've got a mate who's a sparky and when he was an apprentice he worked on a job where he had to set up CCTV cameras and intercoms/alarms in each room, and didn't think twice until a few years later he went past and realised it was a brothel...
Soulnet, isn't every real estate agent a sellers agent? We probably could have done with a buyers agent when we negotiated the purchase but its too late now. We bought in Cheltenham (non-beach-side of the highway), ill PM you the details...
Nup. We had someone who went to about 12 different real estate agents like Ray white etc... They negotiated the fees with the real estate agent, the type of advertising required and also the type of sale was best (i.e. auction, silent auction etc...). There is no cost to you as they split the fee with who they end up going with. In addition because they work for you if there is a low bid or BS from the company then you don't need to deal with it. We were never contacted by the real estate agent until it came to contracts.
Oh I should point out we got about 80k above and beyond what the agent said was exceptional... We were lucky and got 3 bidders (not an auction though).
Is it possible to take out a loan for a deposit loan on a home?
You need to be able to demonstrate genuine savings pal.
Well that's hardly fair
I thought you were a good saver?
Personally I think its a good filtering process, and good for both parties.
This is based on the assumption that if you can't save a deposit, you probably can't stick to paying off a mortgage... Basically if you can save a deposit first on top of paying rent, then once you have a deposit you buy some place and afford to pay it off since you now not only have your savings but also the money you were spending on rent.
I'm pretty conservative (fiscally) and made sure we could go a couple of years pretending we were paying off a mortgage before we took one on. Basically if you miss a savings "payment" it's a fail and you can thank your lucky stars you don't have a real mortgage.
It's a good way to figure out if your other half has the discipline it takes to stick it out too.
"Rich Dad, Poor Dad" was a great book to read I thought to get me thinking on the path of wealth creation. Probably a bit dated now but the principles remain true.
Yeah. I am not sure whether you are trolling or not Mootsy. Good advice from Wannabe. Financial intelligence is not something that you learn at school..... It may sound a bit wanky but you can get a bit out of self-help books.
I bought a 4 br house in inner-north about 18 months ago. I was the only bidder and got passed in. However I had a family friend (who was a real estate agent) do the bid and as it got passed in, he was negotiating with the Agents. So it was agent vs agent, my guy obviously knew the tricks, they didn't know he was a real estate agent.
The look on their face when I walked in...priceless. Their reserve was outside the range (that really pisses me off), I got the house within the quoted range.
So we want to renovate the kitchen when we move into our new place, but seriously, how the fark do we do that?
What kind of tradies do I need to call? IKEA sells DIY kitchens but that's no good to us, I haven't got a clue what to do.
I need someone to measure it up, show us our options, give us a quote, order the stuff, gut our current kitchen and then install a new one.
Anyone got any recommendations on who to call? How long does it take?
Same thing goes for our ensuite & bathroom, except not only to we want new tiles/vanity/basin/shower recess, we need to knock out a section of wall, make a doorway, insert another wall and then add a toilet.
Do I call a plumber and then he'll get in the other trades to do their bits? Or a builder who knows a plumber.. a carpenter?
So we want to renovate the kitchen when we move into our new place, but seriously, how the fark do we do that?
What kind of tradies do I need to call? IKEA sells DIY kitchens but that's no good to us, I haven't got a clue what to do.
I need someone to measure it up, show us our options, give us a quote, order the stuff, gut our current kitchen and then install a new one.
Anyone got any recommendations on who to call? How long does it take?
Same thing goes for our ensuite & bathroom, except not only to we want new tiles/vanity/basin/shower recess, we need to knock out a section of wall, make a doorway, insert another wall and then add a toilet.
Do I call a plumber and then he'll get in the other trades to do their bits? Or a builder who knows a plumber.. a carpenter?
Seriously Ive got NFI.
Go to a couple of showrooms, bring some photos/plans of your current kitchen just to show them what sort of space they've got to work with, and have an idea of what your budget limit is. They'll know what sort of questions to ask, have a better idea of the options etc. It also depends on how willing/able you are to accept major renovations like removing walls, replacing floor coverings etc. Just use their design expertise. It'll help you get a better idea of what you want, then you can either go with their installers/providers or just run off with the plans they give you and recruit all the tradies and select/buy all the tiles, stoves, cupboards etc yourself.
Direct Kitchens are pretty good apparently (disclaimer, my mum works for them!). I'm sure there are others.
I have just bought a house for 267K, and looking at renting it out for 6-12 months after the sale as I wish to sell my house in this time (I still have a couple of things to do) and the vendors havent found anywhere yet so they are potential tennants (of new house) for 6 months if they get their unit which they are looking at moving into which is tennanted.
The property market in tassie is a bit weak at the moment, but with the change in federal govt, and potentially local govt soon it should keep moving along. My current house is in a good suburb but one of the worst in the street I have done a bit of fixing up with it, includng a full new bathroom by professionals and new floor coverings in 1/2 of rooms, plus removed wall paper and painted rooms of the house. I paid 190k in 08/09 when prices were high i guess. I would be happy to get 220K for it now but would probably settle for 200+. It is nervous though getting a big loan for 2 houses and realise the interest factor in selling my house ASAP, I guess I am sort of lucky as I have almost paid off my first house.
So we want to renovate the kitchen when we move into our new place, but seriously, how the fark do we do that?
What kind of tradies do I need to call? IKEA sells DIY kitchens but that's no good to us, I haven't got a clue what to do.
I need someone to measure it up, show us our options, give us a quote, order the stuff, gut our current kitchen and then install a new one.
Anyone got any recommendations on who to call? How long does it take?
Same thing goes for our ensuite & bathroom, except not only to we want new tiles/vanity/basin/shower recess, we need to knock out a section of wall, make a doorway, insert another wall and then add a toilet.
Do I call a plumber and then he'll get in the other trades to do their bits? Or a builder who knows a plumber.. a carpenter?
Seriously Ive got NFI.
There's a few mobs who do kitchens via different places (Freedom and Good Guys are two of them). I believe it's best to steer well clear. High-level pressure tactics.
Have a squiz at the Whirlpool Forums (nothing to do with the whitegoods people). I've read most of my stuff there, although they can be prone to trolling by some of the suppliers....e.g. Freedom slagging off Direct, etc.