THE RENOVATION ‘BIG 4’ QUESTIONS!

THE RENOVATION ‘BIG 4’ QUESTIONS!

1)     Are you and Your Partner in Agreement?

There are many decisions to be made and questions to be asked when contemplating a home renovation but before we go down that track at all, the most important question is if you are in a relationship, are you both aligned with what you want to achieve with your renovation.

While renovating is an incredibly rewarding experience, it is also a time of change and adjustment, and realistically any time like this can cause some level of stress. And, it is at these times when you need to be more aligned than ever with what you are trying to achieve. You must be transparent with each other with your needs and wants around the changes you want to see in your home, and what you want to spend on achieving that.

Why not take the time to create an ‘I like, You like’ renovation creation pin-board, possibly on Pinterest or another social media platform where you can select a selection of images so you can clearly see what each other likes, and also a list each of what you expect to achieve from the renovation, and then see how well those align.

It is natural for one partner to want the practical, functional elements to work at a budget price, then the other partner to want all the dazzling mod cons with somewhat of disregard for budget. If this is you, don’t panic! We’ve seen it before, and this is really where a good builder can help in creating a happy medium where the practicality and function are taken care of while still creating spaces for those wanting a bit of the wow factor. It can be done, sometimes it just takes another party to help both parties meet in the middle.

2)     Why are you renovating?

One of the very first things you need to establish is the reason, or your ‘why’, for wanting to (or needing to!) renovate your home.

What this will allow you to do is help effectively ‘reverse engineer ‘ your home renovation, that is, clearly visualise the end goal you want to achieve which will ensure every decision you make is pointing in that direction.

Some of the common reasons for a home renovation are:

1) Needing more room due to changes in family situations: maybe there is a new child on the way, the teenagers are getting restless and need more room, or you have older family moving back in that need their own space.

2) The flow and functionality of your home are not right: different people require different needs from houses, and if you buy a new property (or even your current property) sometimes the ‘flow’ of the home is not right. That’s when it is hard to ‘move’ people around the home, walls and doors in the wrong places, and how the house is laid out just makes things difficult.

3)Your home needs major maintenance. While it is very easy to think a home will take care of itself, that is not so! Houses need constant maintenance and if that has been neglected for several years, some a home renovation is needed to bring the home back into good, safe, working order.

4) Your house is simply looking tired and needs an update. This is one of the biggest reasons people renovate, their home is just in drastic need of a style update! A nicer bathroom, a more functional kitchen, bringing the outdoors in by adding a deck and much more are ways to bring the life back into your home.

5) You are looking to sell and profit from property. As with everything that is for sale, the better it looks the better price you can usually command. So, often renovations that we see on properties for sale are minimal cost but maximum exposure elements like paint, carpet, windows or other highly visible parts of the home.

So, as you can see there is a myriad of reasons for you to commit to a home renovation and the reason why you are renovating will dictate how that renovation is rolled out, and have a major impact on many decisions. For example, you may choose a different level of inclusions if you are doing up a home to sell rather than keep. Or, if you choose just to update the house a little and budget for that, but then decide halfway through to start moving walls, the costs can rise significantly.

It is far better to establish exactly why are renovation and stick to that as much as is practicable to keep timing and costs under control.

3)     How Much Can I Afford to Spend?

There is no doubt that as soon as someone thinks about renovating, they start to think ‘how much is this going to cost?’, and this, of course, is totally natural. As with any purchase you make, you are trading your hard-earned money for the value you see in good or services and a home renovation is no different, you want to get the best value home renovation for the best possible price.

Notice that we said value, not cost, because again with any purchase you make, if you look only at the price-tag, and not the quality of the good or services, you can quickly run into serious trouble. Again, this law is universal, you get what you pay for.

Usually, your available budget will be funds you have saved, or, what you can loan from the bank or other lender. However, just because you have ‘x’ amount of dollars available, that does not mean the number is slapped on the table for renovations, but carefully considered around:

1) the current value of your home,

2) what can be done to your home at what cost,

3) what constitutes the greatest value in regards to home renovations,

4) what the value of your home will be after the renovation.

What we are talking about is making sure you are not over-capitalising on your property – and making sure the renovations you do add the best value to your home – but more on that later.

One point we want to make here – the closer you can get to an exact price for your renovation the better. ‘Ballpark’ figures or ‘roundabout’ figures are just that, and if you depend on those figures to work out your budget you can run into trouble.

The biggest question many ask is how to get a price for their home renovation? This is a big issue as people want to hear that they can get the home of their dreams for a minimal cost and this automatically pre-programs their brain to talk to as many people as possible until they hear what they want, and then believe that this will be the price for their renovation when often that is not the case.

People will often talk to friends, family, neighbours, real estate agents, or watch renovation TV shows, or of course the internet to get information which is natural, but what happens is they forget the nature of renovations which is ‘every renovation is different’:

* different house,

* different block,

* different construction materials,

* different home condition,

* different needs,

* different inclusions,

* different timeframes, the list goes on.

What does this mean – it means yes - you can always do some initial research but it is simply so hard to compare apples for apples that what someone else paid for home renovation that you think is similar to yours could be way off the mark.

The best way to get an accurate price for any home renovation project is to get a builder involved. Builders understand what can be done, and how much it can be done for, it’s that simple. As we have discussed, there is just such a huge variation in the factors that make up a home renovation that unless you know what can be done, you can never truly know the cost.

A word of caution – one of the biggest mistakes we see people make is going to a designer or architect BEFORE they talk to a builder and understand what they can actually afford. Architects and designers are creative people and when given license to design a renovation can often create plans that are way out of your budget, which you only find out once you talk to a builder. Many times the plans run into thousands of dollars which are now rendered useless as they are simply unaffordable.

The closer you can get to an exact price for your renovation the better. ‘Ballpark’ figures or ‘roundabout’ figures are just that, and if you depend literally on those figures to work out your budget you can run into trouble. A ballpark figure can definitely give you an idea if you can afford the renovation in the first place, but then you need to get very specific to create a realistic cost.

Once you have determined your budget after talking to your builder and are happy with it, don’t be tempted along the way to stretch that budget too far. Yes they may be small items that you may include or small changes, but be aware that once you start the project, changes will cost more moneywise and also time – you will lose time when you make changes.

A final thought on budgets - this is probably the part where surprisingly most people get it wrong. Instead of having a mindset of being upfront about their budget and what they are prepared to spend with the professional they are engaging with, they take a “design and see” path. This is both costly and usually vastly outside their realistic budget and is therefore not advisable. The obvious fear people have is that if they are open and upfront about their budget that they will get overcharged. Again, find a reputable and experienced company, do some background on them and talk about your budget with them.

4)     Builder or DIY?

With the increase in popularity of renovation tv shows comes the rise of the belief that home renovations can be easily and quickly completed by your average punter, which could not be further from the truth. Unfortunately, they have also given rise to the age of the home renovator who believes the can tackle the hardest of jobs by watching a view YouTube videos and a few mates.

While it is true that some simple jobs round that home can be completed by someone who knows what they are doing at home, it is essential that when taking on a more complicated job than painting, minor repair or cosmetics that you get a builder involved.

Here are a few reasons that we recommend a builder over trying to do more complex jobs as DIY…

1) What is your time worth?

Many people decide that rather than pay someone else to do the work, they will simply do it instead. This just not just apply to manual labour, but also applies to project management in the way of hiring and managing trades themselves (which can often be way more time and stress intensive than manual labour!)

Unfortunately, what these people have not done is calculated what their time is worth on an hourly or weekly basis by doing some quick calculations based on their wage or salary. Often, if you work out what you are worth, you come out behind because what you are worth by hour is more than the builder is charging so you are essentially going backwards, and doing all the work! Do your sums in this regard before thinking DIY.

2) Do you REALLY Know What You are Doing?

So many people simply look at the nails going into the timber, the frames standing, the roof going on etc as the whole process of renovating when this could not be further from the truth. The construction phase is just the culmination of hours of preparation, and that preparation is NOT just around how to put everything together!

The legislation is very strict around construction and for good reason. The laws pertaining to building are critical to ensure that people can live in sound, safe homes that will last years into the future. The only way to do this is strict procedures and processes, followed by stringent inspections and testing. The most complicated thing here is that construction protocol and laws are governed at national, state and local levels, making a very real maze when going through the planning and approval phases.

Once you get to site, yes you may employ trades, but how can you be sure they know what they are doing if YOU don’t know what you are doing? How will you know if their work is not up to scratch? After the house is complete is a very bad time to find this out. Is it really the best and safest option for you and your family if you are just ‘giving it a go?’

2) Doing things Twice Costs Time… and Money…

As we have mentioned above, when we look at the planning phase, if you really don’t know how to navigate this maze and you are wanting to get your job completed on time, missing one piece of paper can cause delays that affect the whole construction schedule. Or, if a critical document is missed and you end up being un-insured and something goes wrong, this can cause major issues.

On-site, re-works cost time AND money. If you are not completely sure what you are doing and have to do things twice, or worse get someone out to fix something you have done wrong, you are literally burning money. Things look very easy on TV or on YouTube usually because the person doing them is a professional or has a professional-looking over their shoulder. When it’s up to you to get the job done on time because the next trade is coming and you are just not sure is not an enviable position to be in – especially if that trade turns up and has to come back and charges for travel time.

This is the major thing people don’t take into consideration when they choose DIY, and where it can go horribly wrong financially.

3) On-Going Value and Saleability of Your Home

Across all states of Australia, all work over a certain value is to be registered with local councils. This means any work you do should be on official records and can be tracked and traced by potential buyers when they look into the conveyancing. Using a builder, any modifications to your home should be approved and given the all-clear.

Doing it yourself however using an owner builders license means that the home does not have a structural warranty which can scare of potential buyers because as you can understand, they cannot vouch if the work was done properly. And, again if major structural work was done, this is an understandable concern.

Or, if you try and slip under the radar and not declare works, this can become very risky with some councils demanding you take work down. And, some works could make your house un-insurable because licensed trade should have been employed to do the task. If something drastic happens to your home such as fire or other major damage and you have attempted repairs or an un-licensed trade has done work, you may find your self with a damaged or destroyed home with no insurance.

Again, we are not saying that some smaller jobs around the home can’t be tackled on the weekend (or over a few weekends!) and these can bring about a great sense of pride and enjoyment. And more often than not give your home a bit of a facelift and add to street appeal.

We just ask you give very serious consideration to how adept you are to tackle a full-on renovation where money and time are limited, where it could have a critical impact on the value of your home, and you and your families safety, now and in the future, are at stake.