the question of home

I am going to document the process of aquiring a home for my family. This may not be interesting to many people, but it will help me keep track of this process and generally get things out of my head. I say my head because it is primarily my actions that are driving our home buying, I have the advantage of shift work and am able to make calls and chase information during business hours. Tim listens to my ideas, comes to look at houses and contributes when I have moments of insanity, like the other day when he said "Trine, we are not going to live on Springvale Road".




Eight weeks ago we received notice of a rent increase, the second in the last year. Fed up with the house we're currently living in, what with it's concrete lions out the front, revolting carpet and curtains and perhaps the most irritating feature for me - the lack of air-conditioning or adequate insulation. It is a stinker in the summer months. The latest rent hike spurred me into action. I organised a visit from a mortgage broker that day, and we are waiting on pre-approval for purchase now.





Following the happy news that we can most likely borrow what we need to buy a house I started looking. The internet is an amazing tool and I have spent many hours scouring the pages of properties coming onto the market since then. We have been in probably thirty houses since then. We have been looking around the Mitcham, Ringwood area but think now we can't afford to buy in Mitcham - houses prices are definitely on the rise, at least in the lower end of the market. It's very difficult not to get attached to particular houses, they come to represent home in a very short space of time. We put in an offer on this house a few weeks ago - I really did love it.
I had even planned where I would place my outdoor spa - I was there. We offered $378k, it sold for $408k. There were 5 written offers after one OFI. That was quite a shock to us - initially we thought the buyers had gone overboard with what they paid, but as time goes on I'm beginning to think that wasn't such a bad buy at $408k. What a roller coaster.



I had continued to look for houses, expanding the radius of searching to include Ringwood East and Heathmont. Most of the properties we looked at were renovated (at least partially) and on subdivided blocks. It occurred to me that it might be worthwhile looking at what it would take to complete a DIY subdivision, to build equity in our own home. I called a good friend of ours who works in property development and he gave me lots of excellent information about the process, what to look for in properties, what research I could do to see if it is feasible and offered to help us with the whole thing if we decided to go that way. Broadly, we have these options with regard to potential subdivision:

• Buy land with existing house which sits at the front of the block (fit unit on back), at the rear of the block (fit unit on front) or in the case of a very large block, the existing house may sit in the middle of the block. That way one might be able to place a unit at the front and rear of the existing house.




• The block would need to be at least 700sqm. Needs room for driveway or have existing driveway down one side. The flatter the land the better - less cost for excavation.




• We could buy a large block, say more than 900sqm, apply for permits for 3 units, bulldoze or sell existing house for relocation. This option seems to be the riskiest to me, as we would be paying rent somewhere else while paying mortgage while bulldozing house and selling land - and we would have borrowed the extra $20k for the subdivision costs.

So I started looking for the type of property that might fit the bill - and discovered these properties are pretty unusual and seem to sell even faster than the ones we'd been looking at before. A terrific place was listed last weekend in Croydon (further out than we'd planned but not far from East Ringwood). By Monday it was sold, within our price range. Not aesthetically what I would choose but great block on a corner and scope for improvement of the existing house. Same story for this one, sold in one day, with one party going through it and putting in an offer. Then there's this type of property, suitable for the more cashed up property development folk. It has tenants in it paying low rent for the next 10 months. So that one is a no-goer.

On Friday we went to to see this place, it seemed promising. It is an old original house, but good bones and plenty of room for improvement. The land is definitely big enough to subdivide but when I looked at the driveway leading to the back of the block it seemed a little narrow. On rudimentary measure it was about 2.5metres wide from the side of the house to the fence. On return home I called the council. I have had a few conversations with the people in planning in the last few weeks and have learned some very useful information. This phone call illuminated the fact that the minimum width for a driveway is 3 metres. So short of buying extra land from the next door neighbor (or bulldozing/relocating the existing house) this was not the house for subdivision.

Today I got thinking about whether that house on Warrandyte Rd might be ok to buy without subdividing. The big downfall is that it is at the front of the block on a busy road. Then I got thinking about how much it would be worth to sell for relocation, thereby funding the period between removing it and selling the land. My basic internet research on this topic seems to indicate there is very little money in selling a home to house relocators. Then I got thinking about whether it would be feasible for us to buy a smaller block of land, say 500-600 sqm and buying a house that is up for relocation. A lovely period home or something with character that we could put our own stamp on. From preliminary investigations it seems it is a much less expensive option than building, and I love the idea of preventing a house from being demolished. The trick is finding the land. Tomorrow's project.