Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

Hi

Went to view a house today and the women showing is around from Estate Agents seemed to think that buying a house with numerous cracks in the walls was fine to do.

When I pointed out they looked like subsidance due to the length direction and daylight coming out of them she said "ah but the bits to the side of them are fine"... pointed out they matched the other two large cracks on opposite wall. She still thought it all was character and quaint so gave up.

Shame really as nice land round about.

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

[went to see a house near Noosa though it would be decent as the price tag was large, the vendors knew we were coming so was very disappointed when we walked in the place was filthy I can honestly say the sheets where black on the unmade beds the house stank and what was floating down the toilet is not worth describing, the estate agent pointed out a separate studio attached to the house which was equally as bad with extra ventilation (gaps in the weather board) think this area had been used for massage therapy with a little extra thrown in!!!! When asked for feed back told them i was well offended at being brought to a hovel ! and having a vision to see through the surface was not the the answer, have a feeling if you come from UK the estate agents think you are rolling in money. Think our house need that American house doctor. Good look with house search we ended up building our own as i was adamant i would not pay for someone Else's retirement. willo x

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

We went to look at a house once - it was so bad, there weren't even any walls in the kitchen & half of the rooms & the bathroom was literally falling apart :scared: .

Ohh that's right, silly me, I forgot to mention we bought it :eek: :rolleyes: .

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

Went to see one that was very under-priced for the area/proximity to the beach. Estate Agent said the price was because it needed some work doing on it. Went inside became immediately obvious that the entire house needed gutting - foul '70s decor, horrible musty smell. Went into one of the back bedrooms and their was a stain on the floor that was quite obviously human shit - along with the accompanying smell - wife nearly gagged. Went into the kitchen - bag of rubbish on the inside door handle absolutely crawling with ants. Went into the main bedroom - was going to step out onto the balcony - agent pulled me back and said he didn't know how secure it was. To top it all, the agent then pointed out that the front garden we'd been admiring had been sold off and that a house had planning permission to be built on it just 3 metres!!! from the front door. On the feedback form I suggested the vendor nuked it.

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

:D

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

Bloody hell! Sounds like there's some rotters out there! :eek:

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

We've always bought the daggiest house in the street and done really well out of them. The more people that are put off by bad decor and other people's furniture choices - the more we like it. Got two fantastic bargains that way. Cheap paint jobs and hired furniture don't trick me ;)

As long as the building inspection comes back clean - doesn't matter if the paint colours are from the 70's and the garden's overgrown.

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

Are you sure you weren't looking in New Zealand?

We looked at some right crap in Oz. The agent's testing you out and thinks you're a cashed up Pommy.

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

One house I saw recently link below

http://www.domain.com.au/Public/Prop...did=2005456618

It has been on the market for a good 5 months and as we have our UK property up for sale decided I would have a look around. It looks lovely from the pictures and mentions tastefully decorated. It was filthy the kitchen had some dodgey looking doors, the bedrooms were grubby. Dont even start me on the state of the cabin it was a health hazard.

The agent said he has a few jobs to finish to which I replied its been on the market for 6 months how long do these odd things take. I think when the photos were taken it was sparkling they have just let it go.

I also hate it when they try to talk you into buying it. He advised me to see one property which was a bit to close to the bush which still had scortch marks from new years day. I said its a bit close to the bush, he said it just goes to show how good our fire fighters are, it wont be a problem dont worry. I got really pissed off and said, look mate I know what I want and where I want it and you saying dont worry isn't going to stop me worrying. I know if a house feels right for me so could you stop trying to push me into something I don't want. he shut up at that point. I now make a point of telling pushy agents that if they annoy me and usually they apologise and shut up.

Jo

Jo

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

Ants? Filth? Sheer luxury!

My sideline is buying old run down houses, doing them up and selling on.

The last one I bought was owned by a heroin addict who kept cats, and hadn't cleaned the place in 12 years( cockroach central). 2 minutes after walking in the house I felt itching on my legs, looked down and my legs were black with fleas (it took two weeks before they stopped itching). Time for the flea bombs! Fleas seem to be a regular thing for me in the run down houses I look at. :(

The house before that I had to spend a week just clearing it out before I could start work on it - 12 ute loads of rubbish. Mind you, amongst the rubbish I found a few gems - an old cast iron fireplace which I restored and put in the house, a lovely old sink which I restored as well, and a spare toilet!

The house before that (which was on the UK) had a live wire coming out in the bathroom a few feet over the bath. And the family living there before I bought it had 3 young children - very scary stuff!

One rule I have though - if any termites are found in the house, walk away.

You do get immune to the filth after a while - which is a good thing! The one thing that amazes me though is how people can live like that for year after year - makes me shudder.

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You sound like our rental agent, after we got the call that our rental house was trashed, she waded through knee high rubbish, 400 bottles, used condoms :scared: blocked toilet, rotted carpet, maggot ridden food, and vomit, she calmly stood there in 32 degree humidity ( I'll never forget the smell!) and said oh dont worry we see much worse than this. :eek:

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

I quite agree about the filth and wall paper/colours as I can see past that if the house is sound and anyway every Aus house you look at seems to have had the worst possible pictures of it taken with the laundry all over etc. or nothing cleaned up. It was amazing what you could put in the washer, tumble dryer and dishwasher in a hurry when we were selling.

I want a house with few trees around but is solid enough that it will stand a gust of wind or two. Quite agree with the nuke comment as well as we did look at one house on reasonable plot and all 3 of us even the eleven yr old came away saying would pull the house down first.

I'll even pass on the pool for the right house and build that later. One house we viewed had rat traps/poison all over outside if that's enough to put you off straight away... :scared: .

Ant's i've got them now just get the talc out, redbacks they are in the ceiling and the patio chairs so kill them on sight... snakes we haven't had yet but hubby will be leaving when they come in ...LOL.

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

I'm afraid that what is described abve is applicable to a HUGE percentage of houses here. And not just the cheapos either - we saw houses in the $2m - $4m bracket which needed the health and safety people out!

After 6 monthswe decided that the standards around Sydney were uniformly low and decamped to where we are now, which is a bit more civilised. However, none of the places we looked at over the last 12 months were that appealing so we are building - that will be another saga no doubt........

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

We think the same as you. Worst house in the best street is the one to buy. Crap decor & dirt are easily sorted out. It's the way to successful property development.;)

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Just have to find the crap house that's really good and i'm laughing. Oh! and convince the hubby to buy it... :D .

We looked at one that was a very good house and would have bought but just couldn't figure out how to get the kid to school which is a big nightmare if you both work. Stupid women just said you drop off and pick up... ddddeeeeerrrrrrrrr if you are at work you can't do that.

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Agree totally - I dont really care what it looks like inside (or outside) as long as it's structurally sound & suits what we need, Im happy to renovate & change things that I dont like. And you can usually pick them up alot cheaper than comparable properties that have been spruced for market. Definitely worst house/best street is the way to go as Amazulu mentioned.

Never could work out the obsession people from the UK have with not being able to see past other people's decors :eek: :confused: .

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

There are some fruitloops like that around here. Current trendy thing is, when you sell is to get a 'stylist' in who paints the whole place beige, hires in the cool, new furniture (doesn't matter if it's not comfortable - you won't be sitting on it) and replaces all your stuff with 'tasteful' designer crap.

What I can't understand is why are people tricked by all this nonsense. I know it's all about 'ambience', buyers 'imagining' themselves living there and buying the 'lifestyle' etc but really - if they're as easily fooled as that, well, they deserve to pay over the odds!

I guess the more fools like that - the more bargains for us ;)

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

The house we've bought is quite tatty & run down but it is liveable. We got it for about $100k less than comparable houses in our street. I reckon it needs $50k spending on it to bring it up another $100k. So hopefully it's a good investment.

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Well tonights house wasn't a wreck but family split 2 to 1, hubby loved it and the grounds and son and I not so sure. Will keep it in mind if we don't find anything better.

Not sure why as wasn't terrible but just didn't do it for me. Possibly as it is one of those long Aus bungalows just long and straight. Did have nice pool and little pool house come Granny flat... shame I haven't got a granny with me to put in it... ;) .

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

Sounds like a lot of houses would benefit from Kim and Aggie from the TV programme "How Clean is your House?"

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

Sounds like my sort of bargain ;) .

All our houses have been like that. I always seem to want to live somewhere I can't really afford. But I figure that it only takes a couple of years of clearing/painting/fixing stuff as and when you can afford it - then you end up with a place (to YOUR specifications) that's worth far more than the equivalent house (that needed no work) that you could have bought with the same amount of cash.

Well, it's always worked for us so far..

Good luck!

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

We too bought a house which needed lots of work. One of the bedrooms had green curtains and the walls were painted green. :eek: Lots of wall tiles were missing in the shower of the ensuite as the owners were originally planning on doing up the place to sell. The kitchen was barely useable. I'm glad the house wasn't done up or we would've had to pay much more for it than we did!

The cost of renovating the house to the way we liked was similar to the difference in prices between our house and neighbouring houses. Not much saving but everything was done to our taste and will last for many years to come. :)

Mrs JTL

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

Actually - I'd say the worst houses I've seen were actually brand new show homes. We went to one of these big show home parks where all the different builders put up a home or two and you get to do whole streets at a time. I can honestly say that I haven't laughed so hard since I saw Billy Connoly in concert. Many of them seemed to have this obsession with faux french style furniture and furnishings - all these utterly grim light green and cream stripes. And what, in the name of all that's holy, are you supposed to do with all those 'lounge' areas - you walk in, there's one by the door, you go past the two main bedrooms, there's another one, you go into the kitchen area there's another - all these 'dead' spaces with settees in 'em. Our four year old Josh was obviously of the same opinion as us because he took himself off in one of the houses and christened the bog! :)

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Noticed lots of show homes have far more settees than you would ever use and tables. Because they are bigger than any family would ever need.

I said similar to hubby about if we buy cheaper house at least we can rip kitchen and bathroom out and put in what we want.

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Those show-home streets are surreal. It's quite strange watching normal-looking people oohing and aahing at all the tacky decor. I guess it's an improvement on what they've got at home. I probably sound snobbish but everything is so FAKE in these places - you might think you're in a Federation masterpiece, Tuscan villa or whatever - but it's just tricked-up brick veneer underneath.

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

Reminds me of when we were looking round rental properties. We looked at one in Croydon and it appeared to have last been modernised in the 50's. When we asked the agent if there was any heating in the rooms, we were told that it doesn't get cold in Melbourne (yeah, right). He then pointed to a ceiling fan and said that we could switch that on for heating. Never have understood how that would work, but whatever. Needless to say we didn't rent it.

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:scared: You can always tell a rental house, whole thing is magnolia including the carpets and the screens..........aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh magnolia nightmare.... :scared:

So who dared to buy at auction or did you all just by or estate agent?

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

Any body have any luck using a buyers agent?

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

We sold our last house at auction, but bought the current one prior to it's auction date. We've also bought an investment property at an auction.

Selling via auction was a piece of cake and a completely different experience to buying. Buying is seriously nerve-wracking. We didn't do it out of choice - when 95% of properties are sold via auction (which they were around here at that time) you have to join in if you want to get into the market. Avoid if at all possible - it caused loads of sleepless nights.

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That's silly, ceiling fans just redirect the warm air do the ground, they aren't a form of heating. If you just had the fan it would be barely noticable but you can use it with another form of heating. Some agents will say anything won't they!

The worse houses we saw were in Waneroo, a slightly older area of Perth. Often they were just very dark and dingy, just cosmetic stuff really. We've got a bit of a reno house as it is, but sometimes you have to weigh up the amount of work with how much time you have on your hands. Hubby works longer hours here in the UK so he's got less time to muck about with the house.
One house really stank of dog or something, bad odours are what puts me off the most. I'm always dubious of musty smells which could be damp etc. One agent warned us of a house (during a house open) which had pipe problems, damp from the bathroom going through to another wall. Perhaps there is hope out there with estate agents.

You need to watch out as inspections here are so much less detailed than you'd get in the UK and don't necessarily cover termites (you must check for this). Even with our termite inspection we were told that they couldn't investigate as much as we'd hoped due to the owner having stuff causing obstructions, plus they wouldn't move the insulation material in the loft. In comparison our UK inspection report was much more detailed; our Aussie one failed to spot roof holes (where the pointing had gone) and we need to get up there and fix them before winter. Building standards here tend to be slacker, we've had two burst pipe joints since September - given this is a 20 year old house that isn't good - our 90 year old UK house never had these problems. The plumber each call out was nearly $200. If you're handy with basic repair jobs you will probably be alright with most house maintenance.

One of my bug bears is exposed brick... can't bear the stuff and have just painted over mine... ahhh, much better. It's amazing what a bit of paint can do.

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Now I like exposed brick and means you never have to paint or paper again... :) .

House we looked at the other day had those 60's polastirene tiles on the ceiling, could just imagine them dripping on us in a fire.

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This is so true. The legoland that makes up so much of modern Australia leaves me cold. Not only are the suburbs bland but the interiors are like something out of The Stepford Wives. We have such fantastic beaches in Perth & then they go & build sterile, soulless 'developments' like Brighton & Secret Harbour next to them. Bizarre. This country has so much space & potential yet a lot of Australians want to live on top of each other in these places. I really can't work it out.

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And they're STILL building places with gaps under the front and back doors you could drive the car through! Perhaps it's so that you can get in if you forget the key?

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We have just bought land using what might be described as a buyer's agent - we used him to discover who owned the land and he acted as a sort of go-between though not formally as our agent.

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Answer = cheap cheap cheap!

I was told that the design life of many kit homes is 15 years. That's not to say that they fall down after that time, but the developers are well away by then and just about everything needs replacing/rewiring etc.

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Not this little black duck, that's why I would never ever in a million years buy in a new estate. I love the character you get in an older suburb that has grown & developed over time - you get a range of housing from old to new everything in between & no covenants to tell you that each house much be a certain type of house & have certain coloured brick (5 shades lighter or darker allowed), have a certain type & colour of roof & be a certain size etc etc. When you drive down the road & look across a new estate & see nothing but a sea of identical roofs it leave me cold too :eek: . Even in 20 years time, everything will still be the same, just the trees will have grown.

We bought ours for about one third less than other houses in the street were on the market for (& our house is much bigger than most) & we're spending about $200K on it (including the pool & outdoor stuff which makes up a third to half of that budget). Having said that, it was only just habitable, it was over run by pigeons & rats, it needed 3 complete bathrooms from scratch & we've lived with nothing but a sink & a piece of benchtop in the kitchen for over a year now. We're on the last bit of internal renovations now thank god, only the deck & the driveway to be done outside, to be honest I dont really care what it's worth cos I have no intention of selling anytime soon (read, before I die :D ).

It's funny - cos when we go to look at houses (& boy, have we looked at lots!), Dagboy & I usually spend ages working out exactly what we would do & how we would change to it to "imagine ourselves living there" ;) . We will literally spend hours working out how we could renovate to make the best possible house for our family - even if as soon as we walk in the house we know it's not the one we are going to buy. We must be a real estate agents worst nightmare come true :o :p :D .

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I don't think it's a case that most Australians 'want' to live on top of each other, but that they don't have much choice! Most of the new estates are a fair bit cheaper than older housing - the main reason being that they are further out from the centre of the cities. It's the greed of the developers we have to blame for cramming as many houses as possible into the smallest amount of space. It's just a shame that all new housing seems to be of this format - all the more reason to hang on to the older houses!

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I agree with you totally theres new estates just look so boring and they've hacked all the trees down so no nice birds sterile is def the word for it.

First thing we did in our rental was block the 2 inch gap under the garage door where all the large huntsman just walked on in... :scared: .

Not so sure about Aussies not wanting them they seem to gravitate at present towards these estates taking no notice of lots of excellent established houses.

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I found the new burbs here quite a shock when we first came and we've bought in an established burb... the trees here are so calming and restful I still drive around and think "ahhh....". However we could have got another bedroom and pool (possibly) in a newer burb.
Most of our Aussie mates are choosing to move nearer to Perth though, I think the new estates are a Pommie thing here; hubby thinks people are threatened by the wildlife and bush (fires, possible remoteness and perceived starkness?) so it's an instinctual thing to create a semi-sterile environment, where everything is "under control". Personally I think each to his own, if people want smaller blocks that's up to them and perhaps it will preserve more of the natural environment in the long run.
Funny though when we are discussing shite houses, I actually think we looked at nicer houses (on the whole) than we'd have had a chance of getting in the UK.

Re: Buying a house in Aus... whats the worst you've looked at???
 

Think some of the original Queenslanders and some of the decent architect designs are very good but just hate those new boring jobbies. The new estates round here good have been twice as good if they haqd left the trees and encouraged the wildlife but they just seem to go for bulldoze the whole thing flat. Can see why the would move nearer the city for "under control" as the aussises are more uptight than UK about rules and regulations.