Gordon
Moral dilemmas help us to identify our values.
However, don't make the mistake of assuming everyone else's values are the same as yours.
That includes aesthetic values.
In every area, there will be an expectation regarding age grouping of properties and rental costs.
Country regions often have fairly high proportions of old dwellings. The gold rush, the wheat / sheep belt, the rail lines, all took populations into areas at different times in our history.
In the 1950s, many Housing Commission houses were built not just around Melbourne and Geelong, but also in the regionals.
Itinerant farm workers need houses to live in, as do school teachers, bank managers, and lots of people who follow the work throughout the year.
Houses may be old and shabby. This does not, of itself, make them 'dumps'.
One thing I have noticed in regional Victoria, but also in Ringwood, is that internal lining boards were frequently of narrow sheets, requiring joining strapping. If this is in a house including the ceiling plaster, it can certainly make a house look old, cheap, and very dated.
But this does not mean the house is unsound, or would be hard to rent. Many people have lived in houses such as these all their lives and simply don't notice the cement sheet construction, the lavatory off the back porch, and the concrete laundry troughs.
It is important not to be a property snob, but to see the true value of various styles of property.
For example, have you ever been in an unrenovated terrace house in, say, Carlton or Brunswick? Some of these would make your toes curl! Many still have the WC adjoining the back fence, with not even electric light installed in the loo. (Believe me, I worked in Victoria Street and the trip to the loo, when raining, was a daily adventure)
Gordon, if you buy a house 'typical' of an area and of an era, then give it a good wash inside and out including the curtains, carpets and light shades, you will be presenting a house 'one up' on the surrounding rental stock.
Be realistic. Only Jakk is a Slum Lord!
Go forward!
Kristine
And just for the record - yes, I would work / live in any of my investment properties, and have done so. But equally I would be happy living in a tent (well, maybe) and some of the places I have lived in when renting left a lot to be desired. In Cootamundra, for example, when Mike was working on the Young to Wagga Wagga gas pipeline, the steel framed brick units on the Road to Gundagai produced so much static electricty that the radio fiercely crackled and so did I whenever I touched anything (including Mike). However, people had lived in these units for years at a stretch and seemed no madder than the rest of the population, so perhaps electricity, like just about anything else, will affect different people in different ways.
