Tag: real estate

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Review

Inspection Manager Helps Manage Property

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 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?
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?
The Inspection Manager App.
The Inspection Manager App.

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.
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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News

Thanks Joe the Answer is Higher Pay!

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!
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.
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?

What are your thoughts of Joe Hockey’s great idea to just get a higher paying job? Do you think it is that easy? I don’t, not really for everyone.

Send in your comments and let us know how you feel.

 

Categories
News

Is Sydney Too Expensive?

Sydney Harbour. Is Sydney getting too expensive to buy your first home? Image courtesy of Oxy Z at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Sydney Harbour. Is Sydney getting too expensive to buy your first home? Image courtesy of Oxy Z at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Will my kids be able to afford a house? Will they be living with us until they are in their 40’s due to how expensive things are getting? Who knows?

Learning that Sydney’s median house price is now, $844,000 it will make buying real estate in another 12
or more years for the girls next to impossible.

The twins of course have a school savings account that they have for school terms, and I add to it when I can.  It worries me that things are so expensive all ready and the kids are only six! What will it be like when they are 18 or older?

On the weekend there were a few articles that said that parents are financing the deposit or helping their children get into the property market. This is great if you can help your kids and of course can afford to do so. However I am not sure that I will be able to.

I would be fearful of putting my house up as an asset for my kids to purchase. If the child in question does not pay up or things go badly I could be in for a lot of money to then bail them out or the bank could want my house as well. At the stage the kids would like to have help to purchase a house, I will be getting ready for retirement or thinking more seriously about it all. I would not want to start again with buying a house. I don’t want to be older and have debt that I didn’t need to have. The older you get it is harder to achieve the investments and things that you have acquired over a life time. ( I would like to help my kids in other ways as I am not flush with cash to just purchase them a house now)

There was even an auction on the Northern Beaches of Sydney where a couple purchased a house for their children. Yes how amazing is that! I wish I had the money, investments to do it all now as a house purchased now with a view or with land will be worth a lot more in the future. I can see potential and places that I would love to own, however money is the lacking element here.

This house was purchased for 1.5 Million Dollars.

Wow, and that is a home for the kids for the future.

I would have no chance at doing this.

One of the reasons this family purchased now for their kids is that they wanted them to be close to the area they grew up in and where family are close. This is great and all well and good. However as the prices are getting expensive people need to weigh up what you can afford. We used to live in the inner city and made the decision to move to the Blue Mountains for affordability and eventually looking at a good investment. We saw that people would be moving further out of the city and therefore prices would go up in the area where we bought. We were right. We have been here for over ten years now and there is more infrastructure, shops and areas are becoming more glam. It is like when Balmain went through the period of becoming more trendy, this is like what is happening here. The more people that move here and inject money into an area, developers and corporates see potential and therefore the place gets jazzed up.

Many of my co-workers and mates have not wanted to make the sacrifice to leave an area they like or that is close to work. People seem to want to spend more money on a house/apartment to have a better or easier lifestyle in regards to socialising and commuting. We were different. Hubby and I weighted up what we could afford, the investment options and how high repayments for a mortgage would affect us. We decided on the better option for us.

We found a nice house that has good bones. It is not in the city but is in a nice area. It was cheap for what it was and does need a bit of work which is fine. We are not a couple that is frightened to have some work done to the place or do it ourselves (one thing that amazes me is that people want to have the house all done up. Yes this is great and I would have loved that too. However this costs so much more. If you buy a house or apartment that is good structurally and in a nice area, you can slowing do it up and put your own stamp on it). One downside is that we are a bit far away from the city, however we can still travel there to go to events, shows and anything we wish. With the roads now we have good travel times and of course depending on what we are doing we can take the train if we wish.

One thing to remember is that it does not matter what you purchase as long as it is a good investment. We were lucky and some of my friends who purchased houses closer to the city for much higher amounts have struggled with repayments or had to rent out the house due to losing a job.

Yipee! You have the keys to your first house. Congrats! Did you get help to make it happen or just saved forever? Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Yipee! You have the keys to your first house. Congrats! Did you get help to make it happen or just saved forever? Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We factored in all sorts of things before we went down the home ownership path.

  • Could we make repayments if interest rates went up to 10% like in the 1980’s or more. Yes we would be okay.
  • Would we be able to pay our mortgage if one of us lost a job or became pregnant and our income halved? Yes we could.
  • We made sure that we could pay our mortgage no matter what. We knew that if we got one and managed to find a house in the price we wished to purchase, we had to keep it to use as an asset to move forward.

We did miss the city and wish we still lived there but if we did we would still be renting and finding it tough. Moving out of the area of choice allowed us to have so much more! Thinking outside of the box is a good idea.

Look at areas that are up and coming and if you cannot afford those, look at the surrounding suburbs to the ones that you are really wanting to be in. These will probably be cheaper and allow you to get your start in the real estate market.

One friend pointed out a good way to help a child when you can’t give them the deposit. When the child is old enough they get a part time job. All money from this part time job gets saved but say $50/week. This $50 is the money the child can spend on whatever they like. The rest that goes into savings for the future. A house mainly but I suppose it depends. Having money in the bank gives you choices and allows you to do more with your life.

My kids have a school banking account as said, and I am hoping that by the time the kids are 18 it has a lot of money or a decent amount that we can roll over to a term deposit for them. If you have not started saving for your child. Start a school banking account. It has no fees and stays this way until the child turns 18. Yes what a great way to get your child to save a nest egg!

Another great tip to help children save for their future is to get relatives to contribute to their school saving account. If say your mum, dad, aunty or other relative would like to contribute to the kids accounts. It does not matter what extra gets added it all helps; an extra $5 or $10 a fortnight or per month will help out a great deal. My mum and step dad add some money to the twins school saving accounts instead of toys for birthdays and a little bit each fortnight. This will be a massive help when they get older.

Are you amazed at how expensive real estate is getting? Have your children found it tough to secure their first home? Have they given up trying to find one in the city or in a popular area and moved further out to allow them to enter the property market? Have you been able to help your kids with financial support no matter how big or small? Let us know what you have done or are doing? Send in your comments.