What is two years of your time worth?

While I dither what to do with my house (see my dilemma in another thread :) ) I can just wait for everyone around me to spend heaps of money on their properties and bring the value of the street up. Providing I do basic maintenance I can't see how I can possibly lose out in the long run as the increase in value of their properties is going to drag mine up. Effectively I bought a block of land in a good area ( the house was free) and I'm fairly sure that they won't be making any more land locally :D

Definately the key to making money on a renovation ( if that is your intention ) is to buy in the right area and NOT to overcapitalise - back in the UK we watched lots of neighbours buy their council houses and turn them into little palaces. When it came to selling there was a reality check.

1. a percentage of homes in the street were still council houses the possible purchasers were put off by the possibility that they could find themselves living next door to the family from hell ( note I grew up in council housing and I'm NOT saying all council tenants are riff-raff ).

2. the council regulation paint schemes and redecoration schedule meant that the palaces were interleaved with extremely average looking homes - cars up on bricks in the front garden an added bonus.

3. the sellers expected to get their money back for "enhancements" that those not put off by 1 and 2 either didn't want or didn't think were worth what the renovator had spent.

That said there is nothing like seeing the results of your hard work - turning an ugly duckling into a swan. I do think that you've got to be hard headed about the financial aspects though. I've twice had to move for job reasons when I hadn't planned to so before investing in the gold bath taps it might be worth asking "do I really need to spend that much on taps".

If you are a couple renovating I think you have to both be in the same boat rowing in the same direction though. If one of the pair enjoys DIY and the other would rather eat worms than pick up a paint brush you're heading for strife.

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Originally Posted by Grunt

The people in Mick's story would have been better off buying a place in 2002 in Brunswick for around $325,000 and to have sold it this year for $400,000 without doing anything at all.

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Yes, grasshopper.....then they have to buy in the same market. IF going to another bedroom, say $450-480K? Treadmill again.

THe real winners are the investment buyer/sellers, that don't have to sell the roof over their heads. They have made embarrasing amounts of dosh.

Luckily we bought in Tas before the sillyness,a nd the house is worth about $200k more. BUT - we'd be facing the same problem.

BTW - the folks that bought our flash reno on-sold it 12 months later,,,for $127k more. That is more than we made. They mowed the lawn; we half killed ourselves over 3 yrs. I try not to weep about this. Such is life.

Check out our results - was original 1940's stucco, run down:
http://www.open2view.com/Property/40...=226&offset=80

tassiekiwi, very nice job

just console yourself that you wouldn't want to pay the mortgage payments of either your buyers or their buyers.

I can see the sense in renovating the house you live in: sense of achievement, providing a better home for the family, and the possibility of possibly selling at a profit. The people on the TV though had bought the place as an investment, weren't living in it and as far as I could tell had no tenants. To all board members who are live in renovators - I'm glad I get to leave the building site at the end of the day, rather than come home to one! ;)

Mick

Thanks Jackie - we are proud of it, though my wife considers that time as the worst time in her life. Even I was reduced to tears of stress and frustration. You're right about the mortgage too - Ours was $1800/month just for the interest - this was less than the average mortgage in Auckland at the time. We couldn't afford to buy our own house!

Mick - you're right about living in the mess. With the babies, EVERY time you did a job, or usually part of a job, you had to clinically clean up before finishing. Collectively a lot of time.

Well the house next door went for auction today, it fetched 450K which means my estimate of 450 was spot on.

I know the owners wished/wanted 470K, but that was fantasy land.

The owner of the house directly opposite was offered 415K for his house 3 months ago, he wanted 440K and it's a brick veneer, compared to todays sold house, which is a weatherboard.

Buying and selling sure is weird!

Mick.

[QUOTE=journeyman Mick]
After all the money and time they had invested it was envisaged they should get about $50K for their endeavours.
[QUOTE]

Mick,

I saw this weeks follow up story and whilst claiming to have got $50K profit at auction they admitted that after taking into account interest paid over the period and selling costs etc. their profit was reduced to $20K.

However I am sure they failed to take into account the notional income foregone ( which they would have earned if they invested their moneys ) and capital gains tax or income tax.

So profit of $20K less taxes equals the income foregone.

So to answer your question the time they spent on the project, two years worth, was worth nothing. Not such a good use of their time.


Peter.

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Originally Posted by jackiew

I am baffled at some of the new investment properties that are being bought here in Melbourne. You see the selling price. You see the rent that is advertised.

Whichever way you do the sums whether you assume a 100% mortgage or a 20% deposit down or 100% down ... build in a very optimistic capital growth, no vacancies, lowest management fees, super careful tenants who require no maintenance work done.

At the end of 5 years I could not get the returns to be better than they would have got stuffing the money under their mattress. And this assumes that everything goes good. Add in a redundancy ( no income but the outgoings still exist), a couple of months vacancy, careless tenants etc and things look decidedly black. You have to ask yourself why people are buying some of these properties. They can't all be money laundering.

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Real estate is the best investment you could ever make but it takes a lot of thought before you enter the market. I agree with your comments about Melbourne. Sydney is the same. When there are a glut of properties on the market the prices are lower so everyone wants to buy one. Unfortunately, then there is a glut of rental properies and so rents are low and there are a lot of vacancies. You have to buy in an area where that sort of thing doesn't happen.
There's no 'right time' to invest in property because tomorrow is always too late. There's only 'the right place.' If you want to buy a rental property pick a place that has a shortage of rental accommodation. My rental property has had 3 changes of tennants in 5 years and the longest vacancy time was 2 days. That means that there is a queue of people looking for accommodation and you can pick and choose your tennants.
You are right about rental returns being poor though. After depreciation, maintenance and management fees the return is about 2% but anyone who buys a rental property isn't in it for the annual income. It's the capital gain that makes it the best investment.

Mick, ya dug up some LLLllllooooonnnnggg replies with this one. :D

Mate, look at it this way, (devil's advocate coming up here :rolleyes: )

I'm a computer tech, have been for 25 years now.
I'll be F'd if I'll buy an old computer, let alone contemplate doing it up... :eek:
unless someone was paying me about $88 an hour to do so. :cool:

To be fair to your "friends" "acquaintances" that you spoke of that made
about $6k each over a year, they made it from their hobby, not from their main job.

Can you make $6K a year & be happy with your results from your hobby?

I reckon I loose about $6k a year (not counting booze) on my hobby & I'm still happy with it. :D

Cliff,
I didn't watch the whole program, but it was hyping up how it was such a good investment and it was worth all their lost weekends etc as they were going to make some serious money out of it. I would've thought that if you wanted to renovate as a hobby, without any (or much) intention of making money out of it, that you'd work on your residence, at least that way you'd get to enjoy the fruits of your labours. Anyway, if they were happy to do it as a hobby, then great, but somehow I think that htey looked on it mainly as a money maker.

Mick

Some people supplement their income quite well by buying, renovating and then moving on.
I was talking to a young guy a few years ago and he said that he and his family had moved fourteen times, I think it was within Port Macquarie, in his twenty four years. His father would buy a dump, fix it up and then sell and move on to the next project. It sounds like he was a DIY junkie.
I don't think you can do that at the moment because any significant money you spend on a property will overcapitalise it.
Two of my neighbours had their houses on the market after extensive renovations and neither can sell. One of them had his house on the market about two years earlier and couldn't get the price he wanted so he took it off the market, put in a pool, did some major hard landscaping and major renovations on the house and then tried to sell again. Not the brightest lightbulb in the chandelier.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by journeyman Mick

Cliff,
I didn't watch the whole program, but it was hyping up how it was such a good investment and it was worth all their lost weekends etc ..., but somehow I think that htey looked on it mainly as a money maker.

Mick

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I didn't see it at all, I agree that it's not much of a money maker when you
take up the labour content, if that's what they set out to do.

People ask me why I don't do woodturning professionaly.
....I make more money fixing computers.

I'd rather be woodturning...