Tamara and Caleb have both headed down to Adelaide for their 12 days away while I move into and renovate the new house.
It sure is strange living on our old house now knowing that Tamara and Caleb will never live their again and in a few months time it will probably be knocked over by a bulldozer. We had put a lot of plans and work into that old place even though we only lived in it for two and a half years. It’s a bit sad to see us go, but it is going to work out to be a lot better we think.
Last week we bought back our deck from the developers that purchased out old house and land. If you read one of my previous posts, Overcapitalization vs. Life Style, we paid about $20,000 to get the deck put onto our house a year and a half ago. Well, we just bought it back for $1000! Pretty crazy eh?
We have not yet been quoted on the removal and then re-installation costs by our builder, but it should come in at a lot less than the original $20,000.
We are having to be quite careful we go about renovating our house. You quite often hear about this issue when you look at spending any substantial amount of money on a house, so I wanted to put down some of what I think about it here.
For us it’s a bit of a balance between overcapitalising and life style. On our first house we spent about $20,000 on a deck that a few people, including my dad, told us was over capitalising. I think that if we lived anywhere else other than in the tropics they would have been right. Here in Townsville though the deck takes on the roll of a second living area and a true extention of our house, which is why we want to add one to the new house as soon as we can. For us this is a big life style issue
If we were purchasing this house with the plan to be out of it within only a couple of years then our plans would be significantly different that what we actually have. Our primary focus would be on getting the most financial return, or Return of Investment (ROI) for our money, rather than what we are going for, which is the best life style that we can have within our limited budget.
The article linked to below gives a bit of insight into what they think offers good return for investment with houses.
Although I have not yet been able to talk Tamara into writing on this site she has written an article on our Reef to Outback staff page. She’s got a few pictures on there (which makes me feel slack about not putting enough on here) and has also written a bit about the move will mean to us and all that will be involved with it.
Link: Tamara’s Article: “Our Abode“
Tamara is a much better writer than I am so I hope that you enjoy her article. While you are there maybe you could drop her a message through the “Contact Me” page to encourage her to add to this site…