Renovating and Building Houses for profits.

Property has, for decades, been the primary method for people to support their retirement.

Yes, there are plenty of investment avenues out there, shares and ETFs, venture capitalists, Bonds and trading options, but not many of us are going to get involved in that because it's the sort of investments that you have to have an interest or an education in, to be successful.

The consistent proven method for average Australians and New Zealanders to build a nest egg for retirement is through property and that will continue to be the case until people don't need to live in houses anymore (not in my lifetime, I suspect, but I digress).

I'm on a few investment groups on FB and a few other places and there are a lot of people who want to know the "get rich quick" methods of property investment. Time and again, those people get told conflicting (or wrong) advice by people who appear to have some knowledge, but I suspect have no idea at all. Doing well in property takes time. It's not something you can get short term gains in unless you reinvest and make improvements to lift the value of that property, or buy at an extremely good price.

"Flipping Houses" has become a profession, but to maximise your returns and make it your day-to-day job, you need to put in a huge amount of "sweat investment" into the project and do a lot of the minor work yourself because by the time you pay all the taxes, you won't make any money.

With your principal place of residence (PPoR), if you have lived in that property for some years, a quick renovation can be a good way to refresh the home and maximise your sale price. It can quickly add value by making the home more sellable, or increase the sale price by enhancing the market competition for the property. If you don't invest in the right improvements though, it can be a negative too.

Building houses is a trickier method again to make money. Build times have increased as well as the cost of building products has increased and margins need to be maintained. Builders have had to take on more projects and spread themselves more thinly across projects and, as a result, length of time to build now up to 20-30% longer. Developers have reduced the amount of land developments in the market to maintain Lot prices. It's been tight out there and project home companies are undercutting each other to stay afloat.

So, it may seem a bit gloomy, but actually it's really not. If you engage an experienced practitioner within the sector, there is still a lot of money to be made. As a client, you need to be prepared to listen, and act when the time is right and follow the advice given. These experts have been in the industry for a long time. They've seen the cyclical peaks and troughs of the investment cycles and know when to move, and when to hybernate.

In Victoria specifically, now is the time as the next peak is coming.

Signing off,

Revell.