Country SA property

[RumpledElf]

Ours goes on the market this week.

3br 1900's stone cottage on about 610sqm.

Totally gutted and redone so would probably have good depreciation potential. Complete new wiring from the meter box back, new plumbing from the water meter back too. New septic tank on STEDS. New roof (Nov 30th 2010 - VERY new ), near-new kitchen, paint, curtains, light fittings and floor coverings in neutral colours, updated bathroom and laundry, so mixing modern stuff with blue floral 80s tiles in the bathroom, most fetching. Offstreet parking, fully landscaped low maintainence cottage garden full of daisies and roses prominently featuring an outdoor dunny (and yes, there's an indoor one too).

HIA order applies - still needs a few items removed (we need to fit flyscreens and find our plumbing CoCs) but by the time this sells it will read "walls cracking, walls not reasonably free of damp" and that's about it, but this is completely normal for a 110yo stone cottage and you'd be hard pressed to find a similar age and construction house without those. The HIA order will limit the rent that can be charged.

For sale for $175k, still waiting the rental amount but I'd expect it to be at least $200pw. Rates ~$900pa, water ~$40pq plus usage.

The potential return makes it a good investment as the rental market here is pretty tight and employment here is good. Also good for an OO looking to escape the rat race. It is an extremely pretty little house on a lovely quiet street close to everything, completely cliched cute cozy country cottage minus the picket fence (its got one of those old chain mesh fences). And there's ADSL2 and a positive rainbow of digital TV channels here

When this is under contract with the agent I'll put her number here too.

 

[Television]

If only this was up for sale in 5 years... Sounds like a dream property for me but definitely not feasible at the moment

 

[RumpledElf]

Sucks when you can't do what you want, eh? This would be a brilliant investment for us to keep for several years but sadly, need to sell to build.

I'll post photos later, still doing a bit of finishing-off painting. Window frames mostly. #$%^ing gloss white paint coming out of my ears now lol

I can see why builders charge extra for gloss white paint ...

 

[toony]

What does HIA mean?

 

[RumpledElf]

Its a South Australian thing - Housing Improvement Order for substandard housing. Tenants tend to go after one if they don't like their landlord.

When we bought the house (for next to nothing) the previous owner was a drug addict and his tenants were serial house-trashers, leaving a trail of HIA orders behind them. It had a 4 page list of items that needed fixing, from exposed wiring, bad roof, crappy plumbing, no cold water supply, holes in the floor, no kitchen, right through to no latch on the bathroom door. Basically the worst kind of building inspection report, all done through the Government. You can still rent out a HIA house even in the worst possible condition but the Government sets the rent.

We've fixed all the issues to date except the damp in the walls (which the inspector thinks is so high it was coming from the leaky roof - note roof replaced in November and we had the HIA guy out in December so no time for anything to dry out) and the flyscreens. There's still plumbing issues on the order as I need to supply CoCs, but the work is done. I need to get the inspector back for a final onceover, he's letting us finish completely before he goes and recalculates the rent.

The 'bones' of the house were good when we got it at least. What floors there were were level, good subfloor structure (except the kitchen - we fixed that), all walls vertical, all rooms square (my last house failed on these counts lol), ceilings all good and straight. So we bought it despite the exposed wires flapping around all over the place, no water and no kitchen

Various people who saw the house before we moved in have come in and their jaws have dropped and they have oooohed and aaaaahed and before we had the roof done you wouldn't believe the number of people who told us bedroom 3 had a leak because the previous owner used to get high and jump up and down on the roof

A guy from down the street helpfully removed the syringes from the yard while the bank was cleaning it up after they repossessed it, in case a family bought it. The HIA guy said the previous owner was pleading not to have an order put on the house, he said he'd lose the house. He did. Inspector was not surprised at this fact ...