Working on house during settlement period

[imonmyway]

whats peoples thoughts on working on a house during settlement period are there any risks involved with this.

We have an offer in for a place and they want to shorten the settlement period from 90 to 60 days we need the place for about a week to paint and clean it up so we can lease it. I was thinking we could agree to a shorter settlement but only if we can fix the place up and only from the time we have a tennant signed up for the place

 

[wylie]

We did this a couple of years ago for the first time, and only because settlement was the day before we were flying out on an overseas holiday. Rather than have it sit empty for several weeks, we wanted to get a headstart.

Solicitor suggested arranging it with the real estate agent, as she said that in her experience, asking the vendor's solicitor to liaise with the vendor to allow early entry generally ended with a firm "no".

We did as she suggested, got a letter from the vendor allowing us to pull up carpets and paint. We invited the vendor in to see how we were going. On that visit, she verbally allowed us to continue on and do more work (we had witnesses, but nothing further in writing, so it was a bit of a risk, but we took her at her word.)

To be honest, as the reno costs mounted, but we still had not settled, I did start to worry about the "what if it doesn't settle" scenario. Contract was cash unconditional, but until it settles, it is still a risk.

Our initial renovations were actually "adding value" but once she gave us the go ahead, we ripped out the bathroom and removed a wall and shifted a doorway, so for a while it was in a worse condition than ever and it would have been hard to say "but we have improved the house for you".

If you only need a week to paint, I would not take the risk. In our case it was a lot longer than a week, and we were fast approaching Christmas..... not the best time to rent a house (although we ended up renting it from a phone call on Christmas day, and signing them up on Boxing Day ).

 

[Mooze]

We were going to do this with our most recent purchase, however having my appendix out two days before we were due to start put a stop to that. We were installing a new kitchen and landscaping gardens.

Again ask through your RE rather than via the solicitors, vendor was happy enough with us reno'ing in that period as he'd already moved to QLD from ACT.

We did have a minor scare with settlement though - he hadn't paid land tax on the property for 18months, however was an easy fix with solicitors undertaking.

 

[The Y-man]

We allowed early access to purchasers one a propoerty we sold.

The purchaser puts a caveat on the property (so you can't can the sale and "take" their reno), and the seller charges "rent". The seller will probably ask for rent the same as a compatible property. Try to talk them down on the basis of the fact you are not living there, and the place needs a fix up (hence your request for early access).

Cheers,

The Y-man

 

[imonmyway]

Looks like the sale has fallen through they agreed verbally to a price but when it came to signing the paperwork they suddenly decided to pull the house off the market, kind of annoying.

A shame really i knew that with about 10k spent I would have got about 70k increased value even in the current market. Maybe they worked this out too, oh well back to trolling the realestate pages.

Thanks for your advice everyone