Property – Mummy To Twins Plus One

I love property.

I enjoy looking at the real estate magazines, online listings, television shows on renovations and buying property.

It is an obsession actually, and one that I think I annoy my family with daily.

You never know, learning all about property might come in handy when I get mega rich and have a huge property portfolio.

Looking for a new home is a lot of work. Using the Inspection Manager App will help you have everything in one place, and easy to share.

Looking for property

If you are currently on the hunt for a house or an apartment, it is hard to keep track of all the places you have seen. They tend to blur into the others and you lose track of the ones that you preferred.

The best things to do when you are on the search for your dream house or possible addition to your property portfolio are the following:

Take photos.
Make notes on what was good and bad.
Create reports of the houses/apartments that you have seen.

Is this your next dream house or an addition to the property portfolio?

Making time to analyse and know what properties will work for you is crucial to getting the best possible place for you and your family.

When searching for the next house for the family, some things to look at are:

How the house will grow with the family. Will the number of rooms be adequate for now and later?
If the answer to the question above is “Yes, the house is fine,” then that is great. However, if the answer is a maybe or no, estimate if the house needs renovation or dramatic improvement.
If the house needs major renovations, you need to consider the answers to these questions: Will this house still be in budget if I have it renovated? If renovations are to be done, what would the new value of the house be? Considering the area, growth and improvement, is this a good purchase?
Make sure that if you are planning to have more children that you think of more bedrooms for future kids.
If you are wanting an office or workspace, this needs to be factored into the decision as well.
Visit the area multiple times and make sure you do it on different times of day and days of the week. Sometimes, places are nice and quiet on weekdays but are noisy at night and on weekends.
If you are having a tree change or sea change, make sure that you become familiar with the new area and don’t purchase in a place that is not what you thought it was.
Being close to highways and noisy streets is always something to think about. If you are happy with the quiet in the house and it does not bother you, that is fine. However, this might be a deal-breaker for some and documenting that the house is in close proximity to roads and so on might be helpful when making a decision.

Inspection Manager is an app that helps real estate professionals and average home buyers.

What can you do with Inspection Manager?

Create reports easily and sync to your other devices.
Take notes while at the house or apartment and import photos so that you can save them for the future.
No need to have a notepad, camera or other items. All you need is your device with the Inspection Manager app and it will compile everything for you–photos, notes and more.
You can even dictate comments straight to the app and the words will be written for you. How easy is that?

If you are like hubby and I, we saw what felt like hundreds of houses before we purchased our dream home.

The Inspection Manager app would have come in handy when I was house hunting.

Many times I looked at a few places on my own and the app would have made summarising what was good and bad about each place easy.

When I was looking at the house we are currently living in, there were no smartphones or iPads (Gosh this makes me sound old).

I was making lists with a pen and paper and taking photos with the digital camera.

Having the Inspection Manager app would have meant I could give a breakdown of each property to hubby, and he could see each listing with photos and notes. It would be like he was there as well, although not really.

It is the next best thing to keep tabs on the houses you have seen and dismiss the ones that are not right for you.

See how easy it is to create reports for multiple locations

If you are a property manager, this app will make your life so much easier. Do the reports as soon as you get back to the office and in record time.

This app is not just for the real estate professionals. You can also keep tabs on your own property portfolio or the houses that you are looking at for your dream home.

An example of what you can do with the Inspection Manager App. Make notes and keep a log of items at each property.

Set up an account with Inspection Manager

Before you download the app to try it (You can test it out for 30 days to see how you like it!), you need to register with Inspection Manager and get your login details.

To do this, it asks you a few things like company name, contact details, company logo, staff details if you have them, and payment details for after the 30-day trial period.

The Inspection Manager app is available to download at the App Store for iOS devices and Google Play for Android devices. (IM PLUS BETA Unreleased – this is the new version of the app.)

I hope this app will serve as a tool to help you find your next house or, if you are a real estate professional, a way to make your job easier.

This post was in collaboration with Inspection Manager.

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Thanks so much Joe Hockey for letting us know how to buy a house or to upgrade to a bigger one. The answer is a better paying job. It is that simple. Are you excited? I know many of you feel a weight has lifted with now knowing how to break into the Sydney property market or just the property market at all regardless of where you are based in Australia.

If only getting a higher paying or better job was that easy. It is not like these roles are falling from trees where I am. What about you?

Some people might not be able to get a higher paying job due to skills. Some are still studying to transition to a better role. Some are already earning a lot of money and are struggling to make ends meet with a mortgage, expenses and if they have kids this can add to the expense.

New house. Hopefully it is not too expensive to buy!

Maybe one person is at home taking care of a child or they have to pay for child care. Whatever the situation there is a cost to both decisions. Loss in wages while being a home carer to your child or high childcare fees to allow you to work.

You could be in a regional area where higher paying jobs are few or hardly available. Travelling to the city to commute for a job might take more than a day in travel and not be convenient for you due to other commitments, kids, family and study. Telecommuting is not offered so often and therefore skilled workers lose out on high paying jobs due to employers not being flexible on working remotely.

This is not the first stupid thing that Joe Hockey has said. Last year he announced that “poor people don’t drive cars“. Wow, what a thing to say. Now he wants everyone to go out and get a higher paying job to allow them to afford a house. Hockey has no idea how the average person lives and these comments show that he clearly has no idea!

Wages have not doubled or come close, although houses in Sydney have doubled in cost and for most they are unaffordable.

In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, “Joe Hockey doesn’t grasp simple economics”, Robyn Lewis said:

“How silly to go for a job such as teaching or nursing. All you school-leavers take note of Joe Hockey’s advice – go for a good-paying job. It’s no use being altruistic; it doesn’t pay. We don’t need caring people here.”

If everyone had high paying jobs there would be no one to work on other jobs that don’t pay a lot of money. For example if all the nurses, teachers and the like decided to work in higher paying positions how would schools and hospitals function? They would not.

Building your new house or the second one. Hopefully it will not break the bank.

Or maybe our thinking here is flawed. We should just pay everyone more money! Thats it! Increase everyone’s salary across the board and then all is good.

Once your salary has been increased then you can buy the Sydney house and all is good in the world. Right? You can all thank Joe Hockey if this happens. Maybe we need to have a vote in parliament to make this actually happen. I would vote for it, would you?

I must admit that hubby and I were lucky when we purchased our house. However we did not buy in the city due to the costs then. Now they are just extreme to shocking! We purchased our house in the Blue Mountains in 2002. We sacrificed a cheaper cost of house for travel into the city for work. On a train it takes 2 hours to just get to central and that is only one way. So over 4 hours of travel and very early mornings (I had to get up at 5am to be at work for 8.30-9.00am) was what I did, and hubby still does. We were happy to do this to get started on the property ladder.

We have some equity in our house and plan to eventually build a bigger house for our family. However we don’t want to spend a fortune on the house and due to this we are limited on what we can do. The new house will have to be done in stages although I hate that idea as I would like it all done at one time.

For us we sacrificed living away from the city to get our chance to own our own home. I know this is not for everyone but it helped us. However Joe Hockey would be in for a rude shock, there are many people here that are not rich and drive cars. Being in the Blue Mountains having your own transport is essential.

Here is a list of how you can get into your first home sooner. It is not a serious list it is a funny look at ways according to Joe Hockey we can all be in our North Shore mansion.

Are you saving to get your first house or apartment? Or are you upgrading for family reasons? Are you finding it difficult to get what you due to cost?