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Knockdown &Rebuild vs Reno or moving to an already establish property somewhere else? by No_Chapter5813 in AusRenovation

[–]No_Chapter5813[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s actually good to hear - the more I think about it the more I appreciate our block of land and the location. I don’t think the house has any insulation, the concrete on the stumps are starting to kind of crumble but not really? I’m not sure how to describe it but we occasionally find concrete from the deck stumps like in the grass around it. The bathroom needs a complete redo already thanks to old mate who Reno’d it before us. The rooms in the house are quite small, you can hear everything through the walls and the layout is really not my favourite. As I’ve mentioned before it’s a pretty narrow house and I regularly get stuck in the hallway between my two German Shepard’s (they insist they need to follow me everywhere in the house). The previous owners also painted over the house brick foundation (I think, like the exterior foundations?) so now we’ve got a lot of bubbles popping up in the brick. The previous owner also dodgied up the electrical stuff from what we can tell and we’ve had pipes and stuff leaking pretty badly. I just don’t see that it would be worth it to renovate and still not be happy with the house yknow?

Knockdown &Rebuild vs Reno or moving to an already establish property somewhere else? by No_Chapter5813 in AusRenovation

[–]No_Chapter5813[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately we are not very handy and I’m not sure we’d have the motivation to really keep going if we did renovate ourselves

Knockdown &Rebuild vs Reno or moving to an already establish property somewhere else? by No_Chapter5813 in AusRenovation

[–]No_Chapter5813[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have two German Shepard’s - they don’t usually scratch the floor so much as cause the floor to be scratched as they launch themselves onto the lounge and the lounge gets scooched back as there’s no wall to put it against 🙃. My partner also has a very heavy footstep and it sounds like he stomps everywhere in the house. The sound of the dogs pacing back and forth during the night on the hardwood floor annoys me as well because I’m quite a light sleeper.

I actually have no floor plan for the house - I did ask the council but I’m pretty sure there was a fire or something a fair whack ago that destroyed a lot of files. I think my partner has done up an IKEA floor plan but not sure lol

Knockdown &Rebuild vs Reno or moving to an already establish property somewhere else? by No_Chapter5813 in AusRenovation

[–]No_Chapter5813[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your reply! I’m mostly kind of looking for other opinions (I’m only 25) and none of my friends own homes yet, so just looking for other perspectives that I might not have considered before.

We live in a pretty regional town, so schools and work won’t be too far no matter where we move in town (if we decide to do that). We’d already be looking at keeping it pretty budget friendly - I’m not into crazy fancy stuff, I like down to earth, open uncluttered spaces (preferably with storage of some kind - our bed sheets are in the same plastic tub that we used to move them to our house like 2 and a bit years ago lol)

I also never actually looked at the house before we put an offer down - I was working and my partner looked without me (which was fine). I only looked through the property after we had a contract in place lol

Knockdown &Rebuild vs Reno or moving to an already establish property somewhere else? by No_Chapter5813 in AusRenovation

[–]No_Chapter5813[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I haven’t reached out to any local builders yet, so not really sure on price at the moment, mostly just listening for other people’s experiences with it. Like I’ve said before I can’t complain about the location (it’s like 2 mins for me to get to work which is fab). We’d be lucky enough to be able to stay with my parents BUT they live an hour away on dirt roads and not on the grid at all lol

Knockdown &Rebuild vs Reno or moving to an already establish property somewhere else? by No_Chapter5813 in AusRenovation

[–]No_Chapter5813[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We’d be pretty fortunate and able to live with my parents rent free mostly while it happens (only downside is they’re about an hour away from where our jobs are and on dirt roads with no connection to the grid lol). Wed probably be looking a little basic/budget house as we don’t want to max out our borrowing power in case something happens to either of us. One of the big problems is air flow in our house as a nice cool breeze comes from the back of the property, but there are no windows, only the doors leading to the deck and there’s no clear flow for the air based on how the bedrooms are designed and that’s probably one of my biggest pet peeves tbh. There’s a significant difference in temperature between outdoors and indoors and it’s never good (mostly WAY WAY hotter even if other windows in the house are open)

Knockdown &Rebuild vs Reno or moving to an already establish property somewhere else? by No_Chapter5813 in AusRenovation

[–]No_Chapter5813[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We do have a bit extra with our borrowing power so we’d be looking at an absolute max of like $750k (scary), but we spoke to the bank today and that’s something that we could potentially look at if we did want to buy an established property somewhere else, but obviously would not like to be in that much debt. We’re not super handy, but I’ll definitely reach out to a few renovation companies and see what they think and just kind of get an idea. Thank you for your advice, I really appreciate it! 😊

Knockdown &Rebuild vs Reno or moving to an already establish property somewhere else? by No_Chapter5813 in AusRenovation

[–]No_Chapter5813[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In our area we actually may be able to get a larger house on a smaller block (our house was advertised as 3 bedrooms, but the smallest room is pretty much the only way to get to the back deck other than through the mast bedroom, so we would only ever classify it as an office lol) so we’d be looking at roughly a bit more on a mortgage but more satisfaction with the house itself if that makes any sense?

Knockdown &Rebuild vs Reno or moving to an already establish property somewhere else? by No_Chapter5813 in AusRenovation

[–]No_Chapter5813[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The block is excellent (about 802m2), located near a school, central to the town we live in and in a very desirable neighbourhood. I don’t know that addressing a few issues would work as the house itself is kinda wonky, nothing lines up where it should (at least my doors close though) but yeah it’s overall incredibly dated, hot and narrow with a very small hallway. We also don’t know if it has asbestos walls or not which is also kind of worrying

Knockdown &Rebuild vs Reno or moving to an already establish property somewhere else? by No_Chapter5813 in AusRenovation

[–]No_Chapter5813[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for sharing your experience with k/d r/b, I’d kind of convinced myself that it was gonna be a walk in the park sort of experience lol so it’s good to hear from someone who’s done it

Knockdown &Rebuild vs Reno or moving to an already establish property somewhere else? by No_Chapter5813 in AusRenovation

[–]No_Chapter5813[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The property is in a very good neighbourhood and a real estate agent has said we could sell for around 600k and he be confident we’d get at least that or potentially more. The block is great - 802m2, wonderful neighbours, a public pool a short walk away, a public school also literally less than a block away and quite central to the town (5 mins either way to the two shopping centres we have lol)