Cosmetic Renovations

You might have noticed that I don’t write about my properties everyday. That is because it’s a part time vocation. True, I think about it every day, do a little managing everyday, but the hands-on is fairly limited. I have heard of people renovating a whole house completely in 3 weeks. Cosmetic renovation that is.

Cosmetic renovation is not a word for doing a touch-up job on a rotting medium. The cosmetic renovation I do is about giving a place a new look, painting all walls and ceilings. Renewing all floors and fixtures. Updating bathrooms and kitchens and laundries. Landscaping and cleaning. An attention to detail job outside and in, including and especially the main features of a house. The raw material has to be carefully selected for hidden costs and structural faults.

If a house needs major work that costs thousands, it will not be considered for renovation  unless it’s on a very valuable piece of land. In general I would not spend more than about 5 – 10% of the purchase price on a renovation. And if I did, it would mean that with all the work I put in, the profit would definitely be 10% or more of the purchase price.

Even though I’m still working with our handy men on days they are here, I ‘m aiming to not do so much physically myself in the next project. I enjoy some of it, for example painting (but not too much), wood work, tiling and just holding things up for the tradesmen, fetching tools and equipment etc. At this stage, I still enjoy being involved. So I’ll keep doing that. One day though, I will have a team of people going in for a few weeks and then it’s done.

And by the way, renovation without sub- dividing is almost a useless venture. Subdivision is where the money is, and renovation just adds a bit more. The good thing about renovating is that most people could imagine doing it, whereas sub division is a little daunting at first. A good way to start.

More on sub division next time.

Hail and Sunshine

The news today : My favourite handyman  Doug didn’t get the job he applied for !!! So that means, he’ll be here instead, working with me to transform this tired old house into a pretty one. I said to him that he doesn’t really need to apply for a job because he already has one ! By the time we have finished renovations here, we will be building. Then we will have bought another place to renovate. There could be years of work here! I also told him that he should tell me what jobs he doesn’t want to do- I will get someone else to do them. I think that made him happy !!!

It’s very important to keep your tradies happy ! (I should try that sometime with my family)

Today, Doug and I finished the insulation in the roof. We needed one more bag of insulation wool to complete the job- and guess who dropped in? Maureen, my good friend who has everything imaginable in her storage sheds. So I got a bag of her for $30 and laid it out in the ceiling.

We also tried to solve the problem of the leaking roof. But to no avail. Every time a rain shower, or hail, or driving rain hit the valley in the old roof, it leaked into the hallway again. There’s a big bucket under the area now. As you can see below, the roof is probably the very worst thing about this house. Very rusty. But I think it’s actually sexy. Don’t you?

Tomorrow, we will perform surgery on the steps out the back door- very steep and with a narrow step platform. The plan is to extend the platform.

We will also make the railings prettier and safer. Sanding and painting later in the season, when it’s not so wet.

This is me signing off now…. bye. Feel free to comment !

Motivation

I thought I might mention that magical word.

It’s a great motivator when you think that in 2.5 years you could be, like me, living of investing in property full time ! And it’s not even a full time job, if you don’t want it to be- so you’re not replacing one slavery ( the slavery of working for the MAN) with another (the enslaving of oneself by oneself).

Yes, I am proud to say that I could afford to drop my other business as soon as our next property settlement happens (only weeks away)!!!!! It’s a wonderful feeling and I got to tell someone in the supermarket today that I’m about to be FREE.

Not that I don’t love my other job, I just don’t like the business… I’ll explain in a later post.

To think that I can choose when to work and how long for and that the only deadlines I have are the ones I set myself is just heavenly.

Not only that, I’m actually on the brink of making some serious money ! Or if I want to, I can just potter and do one per year or so, and laugh all the way home. There’s always about $50 000 to make on a property, and I can easily live on that. And give heaps to charity. And have holidays.

I like to think that abundance happens, and like everything, we have to let it. I have worked very hard trying to change my “poverty consciousness”, which was , as I see it now, just a reaction to my parents. I felt as a child that money and social standing (in the village life) was more important to my parents than people.  Don’t get me wrong, I think they did the best they could and felt that providing us kids with more material security than necessary was the right thing to do. So I took a long time to understand that money wasn’t the evil, heartless thing some people make it out to be- when they have experienced people close to them being too focused on financing life rather than living it- but that money is just a means and we can choose to use it to do good things or not so good things.
And also don’t get me wrong- I’m not blaming my parents for not having time for me or always trying to buy me clothes when I wanted some love- that is in the past and I have only myself to blame for not learning the lessons faster here: Whatever you focus on is what happens. And bringing up children in extreme poverty but with lots of love is still not a balanced way of living. And a butterfly is not a recovering caterpillar.

So my motivation has changed and grown over the years. I started off just wanting to change the fact that I could never afford anything and therefore kept myself from dreaming or thinking BIG (as if I was not worth anything). Then I wanted to create wealth to move it from the first world to the third (feeling guilty for having a better life than many). After that I lost hope for a while, because by then, I had done a lot of financial education in the property section, but could not get started on my dreams( for many reasons).

Now, I feel that I must look after myself first and create myself a home that I haven’t had for almost forever. (I must have moved house 20+ times in the last 20 years). Because I’m worth it and because I’m not going to get ‘drunk’ on having too much money and wasting it. In the meantime, I’m already giving to charity, and when I have given myself enough back for all the hard work, I will do even more charity. One of my huge motivators is to provide energy efficient, cheap to run homes with beautiful edible gardens all around for people to rent and enjoy. Because I’ve never had that good fortune myself, I want to give that to others.

I’m almost there 🙂

Who Am I?

Hello,

I am a 40 something, female  Property Investor, wanting to share some stories and lessons learned the easy and the hard way.