Relocating a Queenslander / Colonial house

I've searched the forum but am either not looking well enough or there is no thread.

We're moving to Buderim, Sunshine Coast at the end of this year. We will be living with a friend for as long as required until we decide on what we want to live in / on.

At this stage, we'd love to buy at least an acre and put an old Queenslander on it to renovate.

We've spoken to the Buderim Shire, some of the supplier / movers of such houses and a very helpful broker who apparently specialises in this type of thing. There's nothing like hands on experience so I have a few queries :

  • Has anyone within the forum done this before?
  • Apart from the necessary licenses for moving the house and reconnecting services for water, power, etc, what are the other costs associated (apart from renos)?
  • Do we need a broker specialising in this type of finance?
  • Is it a good idea to buy the house with cash, finance the block, renovate, refinance and pull the cash back out?
  • Is there anything unexpected that came up for you that we should be aware of?
  • Is this as easy as I think it is?
Cheers
 
I've searched the forum but am either not looking well enough or there is no thread.

We're moving to Buderim, Sunshine Coast at the end of this year. We will be living with a friend for as long as required until we decide on what we want to live in / on.

At this stage, we'd love to buy at least an acre and put an old Queenslander on it to renovate.

We've spoken to the Buderim Shire, some of the supplier / movers of such houses and a very helpful broker who apparently specialises in this type of thing. There's nothing like hands on experience so I have a few queries :

  • Has anyone within the forum done this before?
  • Apart from the necessary licenses for moving the house and reconnecting services for water, power, etc, what are the other costs associated (apart from renos)?
  • Do we need a broker specialising in this type of finance?
  • Is it a good idea to buy the house with cash, finance the block, renovate, refinance and pull the cash back out?
  • Is there anything unexpected that came up for you that we should be aware of?
  • Is this as easy as I think it is?
Cheers
Maybe ask what bond is required till you complete the house from the local Council that may be up too or above 50k,depending on the roof that may have to replaced,new hws-stove- i have not done a removal in 8 years,but from experience once you do all the costs,they always blow out by 20%,imho..willair..
 
Kath some time back and l am talking a couple of years there was a feature article in the API on a woman who had made a tidy fortune by buying blocks of land and relocating Queenslanders onto the block then doing a full reno. She did a great job of them , usually picked the houses up quite cheap, it was the rest of the job that cost the$$$
 
If possible have council inspect the dwelling before purchase to advise of what requirements will be required to bring it up to council requirements. Keep in mind that it will need to conform to council current requirements before they will sign off on the dwelling for a Certificate of Occupancy (e.g. Insullation, tanks) some shire may reject it for various reasons (e.g. abestos for one).

Apart from new roof sheeting most old qlders will not pass current building codes with battens spans and most likely will need to be upgraded. See if the removalist can install the insullation and do the roof upgrade as part of the cost of moving the house, they may have to take a portion of the roof off for the move and may not be that much extra to do the work while they are in the process.

You may be able to get half of your bond back at point of house being stumped and tie downs complete.

Depth of the stumps will be determined by the engineer and will be based on a soil sample, the removalist price may only cover 3 to 4 feet down and if on black soil you may have to go twice that depth which can add up to a fair bit extra on the costs when you are working on 40 - 50 stumps.

You may want to do an owners builders course if you are going to do the bulk of the renovations yourself without the permit I think you are only allowed to do up to the value of $ 10 k worth of repairs (last time I checked it was around 10 k) this will be excluded for owner builders.

You will have trouble getting finance for the house (most banks will not look at the house until it is fixed to the land first) and you will need a lot of cash to fund the purchase and the council deposit.

Hope this helps.

Fourex.
 
removal homes and finance ....................

blech ..................

If you have decent equity so u can buy the block with an 80 % lend and do the rest with cash, that would be good . OR

You find a removals co that will do the job to completion with not much deposit or progress payment is another option.

ta
rolf
 
Thanks for your replies. All good points and al very helpful. Have just read similar information since my first post.

Have any of you lived in a QLDer? I read an article that states "no acoustic privacy, the outside world is ever present, hot in summer, hard to heat in winter". The same article commented on an elderly lady having lived in a few of them stating "they were just more interesting & alive". We like that. We're coming from deathly hot wet seasons & windy 30 degree dry seasons. We've lived in a 'tree house' similar to a QLDer, raised off the ground & built out underneath with extra bedroom, bathroom etc, and had insulated roof & walls.

OR You find a removals co that will do the job to completion with not much deposit or progress payment is another option.
Good idea. I'll ask.
 
Have any of you lived in a QLDer? I read an article that states "no acoustic privacy, the outside world is ever present, hot in summer, hard to heat in winter". The same article commented on an elderly lady having lived in a few of them stating "they were just more interesting & alive". We like that. We're coming from deathly hot wet seasons & windy 30 degree dry seasons. We've lived in a 'tree house' similar to a QLDer, raised off the ground & built out underneath with extra bedroom, bathroom etc, and had insulated roof & walls.

LOL!! Just a few thousand of us up here in Queensland have lived in a Queenslander :D.

I have lived in a few, and loved them. Some will have a single skin VJ wall with external bracing which would be colder than a double brick set up, but we have such mild winters here that they are more built for our hot weather, in my opinion.

Two houses I have lived in (one a Queenslander and the other a Californian bungalow) both had these single skin walls on part of the houses which had been open porches/verandahs but both areas had been closed in long ago to give extra living room. In winter in the queenslander, the original verandah floorboards had gaps (to let the rain run through before it was enclosed) and in winter we closed the french doors to that area at night because the cold air seeped up, but during the day in winter, it was fine.

PS. Most of the time, winter in Brisbane means you pop on a sweatshirt over summer gear during the day.

I have never lived in anything other than a timber home, so I cannot compare living in timber (post-war, queenslander and bungalow) with living in a double brick place.
 
Ha! Yeh, yeh, lined myself up for that one for sure Wylie. :D

Found some Blogs to share aswell with some entertaining banter & good points to consider :

Every Brisso knows that cringe worthy experience of overhearing things in a Queenslander that were never meant to be overheard. Or being overheard by someone they didn’t realise was home.

happy memories of ripping down an internal wall or two. And the joy of seeing those bi-fold doors open up onto the deck, cancels out the pain of paying for them.

knows what it’s like to be woken through the night by the racket of possums in the ceiling, hissing and cackling like devils being exorcized

Renovation of the Queenslander, an important cultural and symbolic activity

http://lizfrombris.wordpress.com/2008/10/13/living-in-a-traditional-queenslander-house/

http://funandvjs.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html

Another reason we're going for this option is we haven't had neighbours for about 15 years, have either lived remotely or on acreage and have 2 feral princesses who have volume control issues.
 
My mortgage broker told me about one of his clients who has spent the past 10 years of so doing just this. He'd buy a "lifestyle block", put a removal house on it and spend a year or two renovating it and then have the next one lined up for when he was ready to sell. Generated some nice tax-free income as the houses were always PPOR.

He's now wanting to go in with his son in doing it more seriously, but has run into finance problems because he's had no "taxable" income for the last 10 years.
 
Relocating houses

Hi Kath,

One thing you find with lending institutions they will finance the land, but not the house unless you have equity in another property. Hence if you need money to move the house, stumping, wiring, plumbing etc, lend as much as possible against the land value. Once the house is fixed to the property then you can lend against the house.
Another thing to consider is if you plan on owner building or if a registered builder will be doing the work.
If owner building this can become difficult for financing depending on LVR's as the banks see these types of constructions as higher risk.

Hope this helps. Have a great day.

Suzy Butterworth
Best Fit Finance
 
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