If you follow me on Twitter at all (I feel like I seem to start every entry with that line nowadays), you’ll know that Michael and I are looking at buying a house in the not-too-distant future.
We have looked at quite a few, and two of them have stood out for us. The first is a 1930s house with three large bedrooms, a built-on kitchen and bathroom, and a reasonably large backyard. It is on the market for $210,000.
The second is a property that was a house, again built in the 30s, converted to a dentist’s surgery. The house is completely empty, has a reception area and a waiting room (which would be the living room), and has potential to have three bedrooms (two of them previously being the rooms in which dental surgeries were carried out). It needs a bathroom and a kitchen put in (which, to have a functional kitchen and bathroom, would realistically take no more than a week), BUT it’s on the market for $190,000.
After weighing up the pros and cons of each, and talking to our bank, we put an offer on the second one. Our reasons were, that it would be less money spent on the actual property, leaving us with money to play with to put the kitchen and bathroom in. Additionally, it’s about 5 minutes walk to Mike’s work (along with shops), and probably less than 10 minutes to mine. The first house would have been 15 or so minutes to my work.
So, we are just going to get a builder (my uncle) in to have a look at it, to ensure it’s structurally sound and that kind of thing, then we’ll sign our contract and forward it to the owner who’ll then tell us if our offer is high enough or not. We’ve deliberately started low ($155,000) so that we have room to negotiate. Thankfully, when I said the offer to the Agent, he didn’t flinch, so it’s obviously about what he thinks it’s worth (!).
I’ll keep you updated on the progress of the process of us buying our house – it may fall through at this point, who knows – but it’s a learning experience for both of us.
