Famous 5

I just hope your daughter lives at home when she goes to uni. Unlike the UK, there are no student loans for living costs so it is all down to the bank of Mum & Dad supplemented by part-time work/scholarships. It also seems to be the norm to study dual degree programs that take 5 years or more. Even though we are now only paying school fees for one child, the cost of having two offspring away at uni has had a significant impact on our finances - only another two years before one of them graduates!

I've been amazed at how quickly the loan term reduces and the amount available for redraw builds up. Long may these low interest rates continue!

carolinephillips

DD is going to go to the local uni which she can get to by bus, and is happy to stay at home. If she does do Psych we are looking at 6 years to get her degree and registration. Beats forking out close to $30k on school fees and "extras" each year.

carolinephillips

That's just what we did- house needed some work: kitchen, bathroom and patching/gulley repair to the roof, but had been rewired and was liveable. It is on a 950sqm block with bush views and has been extended over the years. We fixed the roof asap, have done the kitchen after 4 years and some painting. The most expensive bit has been the pool- not being pool owners before we had no idea of all the things that could, and DID go wrong. $20k has gone out on new equipment and fencing/walling, so the bathroom is not being renovated until the bath finally breaks, no matter how tatty and chipped it is. We have a decent ensuite to use.

BadgeIsBack

When we moved in 2004 I recall some houses being priced in a range but latterly for as long as I can remember, it's just a figure.

We paid 330k - the house was on offer for 370k. The asking price reflected the end of the main bubble that Anglo Saxon countries had seen since 2000. Prices started rocketing up in London in 2000 and a similar boom hit our village in 2002. There was then a brief pause - and that's when 330k was accepted. Prices continues to go up and have stabilised but places hang around for longer. It's now worth allegedly 580k but I tell myself it is more like 450k.

We fixed the pergola, an ensuite and painted the deck. We are not renovators - bores me to tears. I don't see why I have to renovate just so that my house looks like a house that everyone else owns.

Zen10

Another symptom of unaffordable housing, I'm afraid. Worse is knowing that your neighbours all paid $150,000 for the house ten years ago that you just paid $500,000 for.

Anyone here know what the deal is with these ranges they put on house prices? I just don't get the logic behind it at all.

KJCherokee

There are only two valid reasons for renovating that I think have any point

1. To improve your quality of life and get your house the way you want it, or
2. To make it easier to sell and improve the selling price.

All our renovations so far have been based around point 1 as we have no intention to sell for the foreseeable future. We have added an 8m x 5m roofed deck at the back, completely redone the kitchen and bathrooms (we couldn't live any longer with a blue bath and toilet!), stripped out the varnished plywood wall panels and the terrible wallpaper, replaced the hopper windows with double hung sashes, etc, etc - all to make the place more comfortable and liveable.

And it looks nothing like any of the other houses in the neighbourhood!

Zen10

An Australian classic. It's really hard to see past this sort of thing when viewing houses, but so important!

bcworld

I think they're intended to mislead more than anything. The quoted range more often than not seems to be in a range that the seller would not be willing to accept. I'm not sure how they get away with it, but in many cases where a property has a range quoted, at auction, with no opening bids there is a vendor bid right at the very top of the range...in other words the lower part of the range was always fictitious.

Clearly, you go to enough auctions, you'll learn that this is the case, but I suppose it's just human nature to think / hope that 'this one' might be different. I suppose the intention then is to bring a bigger crowd to the auction even if half of them can't afford the house. In a non auction scenario it would lead to more hits on realestate.com etc and more brownie points for the agent.

Zen10

This is a really good point. I have noticed that there is an increase in auctions here now. They were never a big thing in Adelaide apparently but I'm seeing increasing numbers of them on realestate.com. I might be doing myself out of a good deal but when it's an auction it's just a big turn off for me. I watched one once and they started at 280k, and no one was interested, so then they went to 290k, and still no interest so they went to 300k. Now, what am I missing with that? Logic tells me if no one is interested at 280k, there is not much point in asking for 300k.

KJCherokee

I agree Zen - when we bought our house in 2004 we knew we couldn't live in it the way it was - we had to strip the wallpaper from the main bedroom before my wife would even consider sleeping in it - but we could see what it could become and knew that with minor initial cosmetic changes (e.g. the wallpaper and a bit of paint) we could comfortably live in it whilst we slowly did the work as funds allowed.

If you're not prepared to do that but want the house you buy to be your dream home from day one you are a) going to spend a huge amount of time looking for your dream home and b) pay top dollar for it. If you can look through the clutter and decorations and see what it can become rather than what it is, and are prepared to work on it to get there, you are much more likely to end up with a home that is just right for you.

Zen10

We renovated our first house -all walls stripped and painted, new kitchen (right down to replastering) new bathroom, full landscaping required. It was really hard work and we said at the time "never again" but I think we could handle it again now.

KJCherokee

The point is that by making a couple of 'vendor bids' the auctioneer is indicating where negotiations can start after the auction - a lot of properties get passed in at auction and then are sold by negotiation a week or so later - often to people who attended the auction but had no intention of bidding because they hadn't finalised their finance or they still needed to sell their current house, or any other reason which prevented them from committing at the auction.

carolinephillips

Precisely why we bought as we did- can't afford the dream home, but this has good bones and is liveable. We have done some painting, had the kitchen replaced after 3.5 years when the cupboards fell to bits and the hob was down to only one working ring, had a window bricked up, some walls and fencing done ( because of new pool regs) and the roof repaired, insulated and two vents put in. Trouble is, it seems to be a never ending job. I'd love to renovate the windows and bathroom- blue is not a nice colour, and although the sanitary ware is white, the bath is cracked, the tiles are blue on the floor and cream, blue and yellow on the walls, the walls are bright blue where they aren't tiled, and the toilet is less than 1m wide and the door hits the knees of anyone taller than 1.7m, or doesn't shut if you are plump without knocking the loo roll holder off the wall. And there is no room for a basin!!

Zen10

The difficulty young people have today is that even the dumps requiring full renovation are unaffordable, if in a really nice area. So even if they have the will and commitment to put in the hours and do the place up, they're still not going to be able to afford it. This is why all the (potentially) nice places were I live are torn down by developers and replaced with Lego brick units.

NickyC

Then the young people should be doing their reno in a not-so-really nice area. And by doing so they will improve the area.

Thirty years ago the inner-western suburbs of Sydney (eg. Newtown, Annandale, Leichhardt) were horrible. Tiny, poky, old houses, run-down streets, no decent shops etc. Then those selfish baby-boomers started buying the cheap houses (because they couldn't afford the nice areas, either), doing them up and now they are extremely desirable suburbs. The cafes, bars and shops followed the people. Same with Paddington in the 1950s.

Gen X, Y and the like need to do the same. They need to find the cheap suburbs to buy and renovate in.

They can't expect to be given it all on a plate..