Browse Forums Renovation + Home Improvement 1 Feb 17, 2012 10:53 pm Hi guys and girls, I've been house hunting for a while with my partner and it's been quite frustrating as our budget does not allow us to get the home we want. So I was thinking of getting a relatively decent priced home which isn't too old and perhaps renovate it to meet my budget! My budget for a house is approximately $500k, I've been looking at houses at the $350-$400 mark for an older 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house. If I were to use the remainder of the money to renovate the house just say for example I have $100k left, do you think I'll be able to do it? Thanks guys!!! Re: Thought of buying a house and renovate it for use. 2Feb 18, 2012 5:34 am Jeffreyli7 do you think I'll be able to do it? Anyone responding to your question without knowing the extent of the reno would be simply guessing Arfur Re: Thought of buying a house and renovate it for use. 3Feb 18, 2012 8:04 am Yes of course it "is" possible. But as mentioned it varies for areas. It simply does not make sense though to buy a house at $400K and spend $100K renovating to have a house worth $500K. All your hard work has been for nothing. Now if you could get one for $350K and do a $50K reno and it was worth $500K in the end you've done well. Also you can't just borrow $500K and use the left over to renovate. The bank will lend you on the value of the house when you buy it. You will then need to borrow more for the renovation. Your basic idea though has merit. It will allow you to get into an area that may be too expensive for you. Just revise your figures and ensure your borrowing power. Re: Thought of buying a house and renovate it for use. 4Feb 18, 2012 9:02 am Its very vague..... Uncle is right. Also without knowing the extent of renovations being done and how much you would be doing versus sub-contracting out it is hard to tell. My brother renovated a 100 year old two bed apartment for me about 5 years back and it cost 85K then and he knew what he was doing...... I think you need to work backwards from the starting point of what the house is worth and how much you can borrow. Banks do not really care how talented you are rather they look for a strong first way out of the mortgage, i.e. value of the collateral and the ability to service the debt. arrange finances and build 10-15% contingency into any reno budget as money goes fast..... Ciao Mark Re: Thought of buying a house and renovate it for use. 5Feb 18, 2012 12:43 pm Hey guys, Thanks for the feedback. We do have some spare cash which we could use to renovate the house and I know that the homeloan is only allowed to pay for the house. With the $500k budget figure we will not be borrowing all that from the bank. In regards to what am I going to do with the house, we have absolutely no idea yet, as we are still trying to find a house that suit our needs in terms of size and also the set up of the house. I just wanted a rough idea of how much say for example, renovating the kitchen and toilets would cost us. I understand it is hard for anyone to give me an idea if I didn't even know what kind of house I'll be renovating but I just want some sort of idea how much is "reasonable" to renovate a kitchen from a 10 year old house to a modern kitchen. Re: Thought of buying a house and renovate it for use. 6Feb 18, 2012 2:45 pm IF you are buying a 10 year old home, I would be making-do with what you have for the short term and work on reducing your mortgage because the way things are going overseas and with huge job losses here (and I wont get into politics) I can see very tough times ahead, when we will all need to consolidate Arfur Re: Thought of buying a house and renovate it for use. 7Feb 20, 2012 1:49 pm I cannot fathom why you would want to "renovate" a 10 year old house There shouldn't be anything that need renovating. Perhaps some maintenance but If I looked at a 10 year old property and thought to my self "that needs to go and so does that" I'd walk straight out. As rough ranges for things A new Oven, Cooktop, dishwasher and range hood will set you back $6-7k for entry level mid range appliances without trying (Bosch entry level 600mm Oven(Elec), 900mm cooktop in Gas, 2nd or 3rd level dishwasher that has time delay and other nice features, and a matching range hood) You could spend $20k if you want as well. Stone benches I think start at around $400per metre for 600mm depth Bathroom depends on what you want/need to do. Re: Thought of buying a house and renovate it for use. 8Feb 20, 2012 2:57 pm a rip out and redo bathroom could easily get to 30k if you let it. But could be done as cheap as 10k. But i agree with chrisandkate - why do it for a 10yr old house. If it was a 30 year old house then sure, but it would be hard to stop at just bath and kitchen. Re: Thought of buying a house and renovate it for use. 9Mar 16, 2012 1:54 am Dont know if this helps or not. We just totally gutted our house and there was nothing left of the inside. Kitchen was 40K including appliances. We have stone tops, all drawers with lacquered finish. We didnt go high end appliances as i am not a cooker. Just wanted it to look nice. We have an intergrated fridge or as i like to call it the stealth fridge. Glass splash backs. Our bathrooms/laundry all up cost us 55K. But that is three bathrooms, 4 toilets. Includes all the tiling and removal. Baths etc. Shower screens. Stone tops and lacquered doors. Marri solid flooring supplied and laid $160/sqm Blinds roller electric type for whole house 8K Painting the internal of the house $7k Carpets $4.5k but that was only for 3 bedrooms. There was other things we did like replacing all the doors and handles. Put in 2 stacker doors. One of those really nice gas fires. (that got out of control lol). Replaced every light switch and power point with those clipsal switches that have the led lights. Dont get these as they are already sticking and playing up. Then on top we extended two bedrooms. Gutted the back yard and put in an alfresco area, swimming pool and decking. Thank god its done. Its been a long 18 months of tradies and dirt in the house. Good luck. Caz Re: Thought of buying a house and renovate it for use. 10Mar 21, 2012 3:54 pm A couple of years ago, we bought a 14yo townhouse. We repainted throughout, replaced the groundfloor tiles with spotted gum flooring, replaced tiles in downstairs powder room and laundry and adding small basin to powder room, carpeted the stairs and downstairs, replaced the dishwasher with a nice Akso ss one, put in a large split system townhouse and replaced the handles in the kitchen and bathroom which made the cabinets look brand new again. Oh and we also added a mezzanine level to the garage for storage and redid the courtyard to make better use of the space. We spent around $20k for all of this (did most of the work ourselves) and had a nice modern looking home. We sold it within 18mths for $150k more than we bought it for which enabled us to buy a proper house in the are we want to live (which also needs renovated, but it is a stand alone house rather than a townhouse). Re: Thought of buying a house and renovate it for use. 11May 03, 2012 1:45 pm I have just bought a 30 year old 3 bedroom brink house I'm about to renovate. Just got some quotes: Full internal Paint (minus wet rooms) $3300 Kitchen resurface (Kitchen is structurally fine, jsut needs a refresh) $3000 - Cupboards, Benchtops and tiles. Carpet (3 bedrooms, hall, living room) - $3500 Im going to then do most of the rest myself (or at least try). Proably another $8000 - $10000 in bathrooms, lounge room etc. Hope that helps Re: Thought of buying a house and renovate it for use. 12May 03, 2012 2:25 pm Something we noticed when buying our 20 year old house was that the $510k we spent vs $400-$450k that other smaller, less well-appointed homes in the area were selling for bought us far more than $100k of value. We have the biggest and best appointed home on the largest block within several streets of our location. The land area is 10% greater than surrounding sites, and the floor area of our home is 20% larger than surrounding homes with all the niceties like double garage under main roof, bay windows, formal dining, existing patios, etc. There's no way that we could have renovated any of the other homes we looked at in the $400-$450k price bracket to the standard that this house was in at time of purchase, for anything less than the cost difference between the two (plus our labour on top). And even then we still would have had a smaller land area, smaller house and less attractive frontage. I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes slashing the budget in other areas (if possible - holidays, drinks, dining out and the like disappeared for us for a couple of years) can let you stretch a bit further in the initial purchase, and that doing that can end up being a far better move in the long run than investing heavily in renovating an older/smaller/cheaper home. Just my opinion though =) if the original house is in good condition most of what you listed could be added in stages without the need for KDR and costs and disruption of having to live elsewhere… 1 13686 the step up is 30mm and wanting it to be flat . how much does the concrete have to be lowered .we plan on removing bath and lenghten shower and adding seat. the old bath… 0 11837 That sucks! Hope it all works out. Good to move away from steel anyway for all your reasons, but it's also thermally poor. 16 17888 |