I officially own my home!
It's been a while between posts, but I promise it's for good reason.
In a recent (if a month ago can be considered recent) post I let you all know that I had signed the contract on a new home here in my home town. I was pretty damn excatic about the purchase, and I certainly still am. Since that post we have progressed through settlement and, a couple of weeks ago, I got the keys to the house.
I mentioned the little strategy that I used to secure this house in one of my previous posts. But to summarise, given that it was a very competitive buying environment, I offered the following sweeteners to make my offer as attractive as possible:
- I offered above the asking price;
- I elected to do my building and pest inspections during the cooling off period after signing the contract of sale; and
- I offered a 30 day settlement period, which is much shorter than most people would normally offer.
I've never done building and pest inspections during a cooling off period before. But I was fairly confident that we wouldn't identify anything overly concerning during the inspection.
But no house comes without its problems. So I wasn't surprised when the inspection picked up a few things that needed repair, either urgently or at some time in the near future. And of course, there were some aspects of the house that I was simply unhappy with:
- One corner of the garage is sinking, so the footing needs redoing here;
- the electric gate needed repair
- there is no termite barrier around the property;
- the ceiling fans doubled as the primary lights for the house. These fans/lights look like ugly UFOs dangling from the ceiling. And the light emitted from them was poor. They most certainly needed replacing;
- there were some plumbing issues; and
- parts of the roof structure is in need of non-urgent repair.
To me, none of these items were deal breakers. But I did put together some loose costings so that I could negotiate with the seller for a reduction in the purchase price. Doing this is pretty common when you can demonstrate that things in the house are broken, where they should be provided in good working order. However, unlike my previous house purchases, the seller on this occasion was difficult to deal with. So I was only able to reduce the agreed price by $2500. I estimated this to be enough to cover the cost of the gate repair, which was the most urgent item to address.
So, a couple of weeks ago I was handed the keys to my new home. So it became time to organise repairs, and start with our little improvements in preparation to move in. We started by organising quotes for all the major things. The gate repair, painting, plumbing repairs and so on.
The painting quotes came in a pathetically high prices. So we decided to do this ourselves. So we essentially saved at a minimum $3000 on home improvements. This gave me some money left in the bank for having the lighting improved upon immediately, so I went ahead and had down lights installed along with a couple of decent ceiling fans.
The gate repair also came in at a much lower price than expected. So thankfully, I have some cash left over. Which is handy since along the way I keep finding other things that need fixing. For example, a door has warped so I will need to replace it. And some small bits and pieces in the kitchen need replacing.
So all up, since taking the keys we have:
- fixed the front gate;
- painted the majority of the house;
- installed down lights and new fans throughout the house;
- fixed the plumbing; and
- installed a water filter to treat the always disgusting South Australian water.
Of course, most of this hasn't been cheap, I'd estimate the repairs have cost me somewhere in the order of $4500 so far. But fortunately, during the settlement period I was able to pay down my original loans even further. I did this via some crypto sales after selling off some Hive that I'd been trading for a little while. I'm constantly surprised at what you can earn via these platforms. As a novice in the crypto world it seems very strange that a person can write a few blogs, and with the earnings from those blogs pay off a credit card or buy something that they need.
There's still some work to be done to get the house ready, such as finishing off the painting of the ceiling. But we're almost ready to move in which is very exciting. I can't wait to be back living in a house that I own. It's so much better than renting. I really want to make this place amazing, but I have to keep reminding myself that it will be a rental property one day rather than our permanent home. Either way, I'll be sure to post about future improvements on the home and how this impacts on the actual value of the property.
