When it comes to inspecting a property, you're going to want to have a good look at the outside
of the property, what condition it is, what's it made of, et Cetera, so that you can get
a good idea of whether this is a property that you're going to want to invest in.
So to have with me, Ben Everingham from pumped on property and this continues our series
on inspecting a property, so if you haven't checked out the previous ones we did on questions
to ask an agent as well as how to look at the surrounding street and area.
Go to on property.com, forward slash inspect to see all the episodes that we've done there.
But in this one we're going to be looking specifically at the outside of the property
and some of the things that you should look at.
So one of the things that we're saying off camera beforehand is there's a lot of things
here that we're going to touch on and being able to write these down and go through each
of these.
When you're inspecting a lot of properties,
it's very easy to forget which property is which, which one had the good thing, which
I had all of this sort of stuff.
What was the condition of the roof?
You can't remember.
And so having a notepad, a piece of paper or having a checklist like this can really
help with that.
So we'll go through a bunch of things, grabbing notepads and pen and write them down and then
yeah, it's going to allow you to look back and know,
forget 100 percent.
Like the reason these started was because when I used to go to make properties for myself,
I had 10 properties.
Sometimes he'd take properties in a day in an area that I was looking at and by the end
of the day I literally could not remember one property versus another.
And so I built this checklist for myself just so that I could compare apples with apples
really thoroughly when I walked away.
And so that I could actually remember what I was looking at it properly yet.
And so the first thing that we had to look at is how old is the house?
How do you find this out?
That's a tough one.
Um, you can find it out an rp data, but that's a paid source.
It's just sort of like a question to ask the agent really and take that with a grain of
salt as well.
Like they could tell you 30 years old, it could really be 50 or 60 or vice versa.
Yeah.
And everything that we're going to be talking about today as well.
None of these are deal breakers.
It's all just so you understand the property better, you understand its positives as well
as this
negatives.
And as Ben said, you can compare apples to apples.
So the power in doing this is not just doing it for one property, but the power in it is
doing it on multiple properties and then comparing them to each other as well.
Well
as comparing their locations and their price and all of that sort of stuff as well.
When you think about it, like if you have one big day where you inspect 12 properties,
that's cool.
But what if you're in the market for six months before you find what you want and maybe you
find a property that perfectly tco boxes six weeks ago that you lose, now you're looking
to replicate that property.
It's kind of just keeps a living memory or a record of what you're trying to do, what
you like about certain places.
And what are deal breakers for you are not deal breakers.
Okay.
So let's go through this list.
How old is the house?
We talked about that.
What's the shape of the land?
I like to buy rectangles personally with nice big frontage is.
So that's just important for me because I liked it.
Also build Julene Cam or granny flats in my property.
So this is especially going to be important if you are wanting to do the two properties
to financial freedom strategy where you want to build a granny flat.
So having the right shape of a blog where you can build a granny flat on it is going
to be important than maybe stumble blocks where it's not going to be possible just because
of the shape of the blog and the position of the House on the block position of the
house is super important.
So we're looking for something well positioned at the France so that if you're not building
a granny flat, you've got a nice big backyard for your tenant and family.
And if you are, you've got space to construct something.
Yeah.
And so the next one is what is the frontage of the property?
So this is how wide is the front of the property.
So that can range obviously properties range in width.
The wider generally the.
Yeah, I defense ladies out never ever watched videos.
A what watches all of that shit with these important for everyone.
But in this instance it's important particularly in some of the council areas in southeast
Queensland right now because you need a minimum lot size or width of the front of the property
to actually construct a secondary dwelling.
So that's why it's in this checklist for Brisbane.
Yup.
And so we actually did a video on what do we do, what was it called, how to find a property
to build a granny flat on.
So I'll leave that in the links down below if you are interested in building a granny
flat.
There's a bunch of other things to check for as well that we won't be going through today.
I'm still like, I'm still back where we were.
That was so funny.
I love it.
Kills gonna.
Edit this and this is it.
Um, next question is, is this a corner block?
Not a really important thing for me, but more important to some people.
Some people particularly that live to build granny flats like two separate drivable accesses.
I completely get that.
It's not a major priority for me personally.
Yeah.
So it's not a deal breaker, but obviously it can be a good opportunity for Julian come
and granny flats if you have a corner block because you can give access on the other side
of the street.
Easy to put a fence right down the middle of the block as well.
Very cool.
Uh, what's the approximate width of the site access?
So the side of the house to the fence line, I like to find that question out again because
it can be important if it's just going to be a single income home to be able to put
drivable side access in a shed, in the backyard for some people in the future or as a granny
flat.
It's nice to know whether you're going to just put a path down the side or if you're
going to be able to put drivable side access in our carport for a granny flat in the backyard.
Yeah.
So obviously it'd you have a granny flat in the backyard.
You want the person who lives in that granny flat to be able to get there, but it's pretty
important that they're not going to jump over the other house half.
So yeah, you generally either looking at pedestrian access, which means they need to park out
the front and then they've got a little bit of a walk to get down or ideally you get drivable
access so there's not enough distance between the house and the fence line that you can
put a driveway in.
So the person who lives in the graphite can actually drive down pat right at the front
of their grain flat and then walk in.
So that's ideal.
It's not required, but it is also like I have lived in a house where I only had been an
accident so I'd have to block out the front and walked down.
It was not that big a deal as a renter at the time and so it's not.
Yeah, it's not a deal breaker, but it is something to look for.
Look, almost every existing house in Australia will have a.
The pedestrian all drivable side access, but every brand new Julian coming built now just
as pedestrian side access.
So if you find the perfect property but it doesn't have drivable side access, again,
it's not a deal breaker.
People will live there like Ryan and I and just enjoy and so next one is, is it race
or is there a slab on the ground?
Why is this important?
You know, 70 percent of all these leading.
What?
Sydney and Melbourne roughly?
I don't know.
I just said yes.
I'm pretty sure that's like 60 to 70 percent of aussies live in those two areas.
Spend 80 percent.
Eighty percent of statistics are made up on the spot.
I just made some of that up.
I'm just thinking.
I know had cds of 5 million people.
So there's, there's a bunch of people live in Sydney.
Just Bang.
Gone on another rant.
This is like a third video recording because the day, so like we're getting sillier and
things like this.
Sun Is like having roommates to rinse.
Tendency to assault.
It's a male.
What was the question?
Will cause a bad phrase but slab on the.
And it's important to people in Sydney and Melbourne have slab on ground brick homes
because that is all they use the same.
Yeah, I completely understand it.
There's a lot about the places in Australia.
Once you get past coffs harbor where the design style completely changes, um, I don't have
a preference for either, but it is a little bit more expensive, longterm maintenance wise
to, you know, paint a house every 10 years as opposed to break switch chicken.
Just acid wash yourself.
Yeah.
Um, which is the next one, which is what is the house made of, whether that'd be break,
whether it be rendered, cladding, fibro, etc.
What you want is a high quality, well made home what it's made out to be secondary, unless
you want the lowest maintenance property house, which is generally slab on ground and break
with the tod roof.
And so it's not.
Again, it's not a deal breaker.
You Want well made house, a brick house that's falling apart.
It might not be as good as a fibro house that's in really great condition.
So let me see onsite granola recently when I was down there with my mates walking past
and obviously the acid settled and they have to literally break out on one on the ground
had split into these guys.
Drive by was pretty much falling.
I've run the houses, look like it was ripped in two and he just got indonesian style, some
pieces of bamboo and it was propping it back up.
It's still completely living in the house like nothing that's wrong.
So you know there's flip sides on both flights, so you want quality house, which is the next
one looking at the condition of external construction material.
And so this on here, you've got a rating from zero up to five and so a lot of these are
good too when you're looking at the condition to rate them from zero being extremely poor
granola style house to five being an excellent condition again, so you can go back and compare
apples to apples 100 percent and also as an investor, the last thing you want is a high
maintenance property unless you're a diy sort of person or renovating for profit.
So a low maintenance property.
This just helps you identify, you know, what you're going to have to spend in the next
10 years fixing the house up and so you.
You could have two properties that are a similar price in a similar area.
That kind of looked the same, but when you go through this one could be a much poorer
condition and the other and you can see that from your numbers and the scale that you've
done, so the next one is what's the roof made of and what's the condition of the roof, which
is difficult to work it out really difficult.
Almost impossible without a building and pest and mobility and pest inspectors won't do
it either.
I really, really tough actually.
It's the hardest thing and probably the biggest risk with buying a property to the point where
I would probably get a roofing dared to go out and check the condition of the property
is part of due diligence before I buy only because time and time again, I've seen what
looks like re tiled roofs.
Colorbond roads in festus roofs have to be replaced within three years of buying them
and that's a huge cost.
Massive costs.
Have you actually done that?
Go and someone to come out, a roofing guy to come out and they get anal as man with
this stuff.
You know that like.
And only because I've had properties where I've had everything, it shows now twice and
it's not fun, like it's actually the opposite of fun.
That's absolutely the opposite of a combination.
You want to look at what accommodation there is for cars, whether that be carport, whether
it'd be garages, how big it is, how many cars you can fit on there, et cetera.
Um, that's again just to compare to each other.
You want the condition of the driveway, conditions of the garden, condition of the fencing, condition
of the gutters and downpipes, um, as well as the condition of the windows.
So again, this is all just to look at what sort of maintenance is there going to be on
the property, what's the condition compared to other properties?
And I just want you to think about these personally as an investor for a moment.
Thinking about the last 10 properties you've inspected, did you actually think about the
driveway when you walked up?
Did you think about all the downpipe center gathers?
Did you think about what was the other one?
The third one of the fences.
Sorry.
We face the windows as well.
There's also condition of the paint outside condition of the steps when you're looking
at all of these things across a heap of properties over a period of time.
We get invested for tay.
This enables you to accurately identify where a particular properties that now might not
seem like a big deal if you've got a condition of offense, that driveway and a couple of
windows in bad condition, but your tenant, the first week that they move in is going
to identify those things.
It's going to cost you rental yield and it's potentially those three things could cost
you 10,000 bucks.
It's just important to acknowledge that they are realistic things that at some point whether
you put your head in the sand today like I've done in the past on properties and just waited
until they pretty much blew up on me or you're more proactive like I now where you just fix
those little things as they come up so that you don't have this $30,000 renovation to
do once every 10 years and it's not hard to do this either.
It sounds like a lot, but as light on it, it's on a spreadsheet or a checklist that
you've got with you when you're walking down driveway, conditioner, driveway.
Just write down a number when you're walking up the stairs, condition of steps, write down
the number of zeroes, horrible.
Five's excellent.
And some of this stuff could even be stuff to go back to.
So the condition of the driveway is poor.
Like maybe you want to take a photo of it, but you could just write one or zero and then
you know, okay, if I'm actually seriously thinking about this property, this is something
I need to on the second inspection actually look at in more detail because I don't pretend
to be a building and pest inspector or a town plan out or any vertical.
You know whAt I mean?
So this checklist is just for my personal side of things.
Then I go and get my town planning checks, my building and pest inspections, the roofing
do that if I need it.
And you know, I've seen something there that might be an issue.
I might flag it with them and ask them what their opinion is and what it would cost to
actually fix it and that just gives me peace of mind.
It also gives me negotiating power with the agent and with the seller to go, hey, well
here's a list of things that I now need to be maintained or fixed.
You can either fix them for me with uncertified, you know, build up or you can give me a decent
price reduction and you can actually negotiate a cheaper price after you've agreed on the
price upfront.
And so there's one is there room for a grannY flat.
That's obviously if you're doing the two properties to financial freedom strategy and then I love
this question, what could you do cosmetically to renovate the outside of the house?
I love that question because so often we're just looking at properties as they are, but
as investors we want opportunities and ways that we can generate extra capital growth
or generate extra income and cosmetic renovations can be a great way to do that.
And so to start imagining what this property could be a love that question, so much of
our time of investors and owner occupies is spent focusing on what is wrong with something
as opposed to just going up a level and going, well, the house across the street's were 700
k minds were at 620 the I might need to put $30,000 into it, but I can replicate what's
across the street and that is a huge opportunity.
You've got to start thinking like that
and this is so hard for people to do, to look at something as it is and imagine what it
could be.
It does take practice.
Both of our wires do this intuitively.
It's just their minds are crazy.
they see it as what it is.
They look at an empty space or they look at a derelict space and they can see how good
it can be.
They know exactly the things to buy to make it work.
I like we were in the office today, we bought a run for it and just looking at like my wife
just knows what to do.
She was at target and she found this road like someone had tucked it away somewhere
and I know that this is going to be perfect for this space and I just look at it and it's
just an empty space, but she sees what it can be, so it's an acquired skill that's more
difficult for some than others.
Just have a checklist because I don't have it, like 90 percent of people can't say it.
It's a, it's a gift.
Like it's so how cool is it that our wives can do that?
Yeah, but then it's also going to be comparing apples to apples and you've got a property
where there is cosmetic renovation opportunity versus one where there isn't.
Then that can allow you to dIfferentiate those two properties and choose between them because
one might have more opportunity than the other for renovation for capital growth and increasing
the rental yield.
Yeah.
Or you might even find two properties are the same and it comes down to they subtle
differences between them.
You pick the low maintenance, high quality option.
Yep.
And then the last one is a flat sloping book.
How many kandalam spit 'em flat blocks up benefit longterm capital growth, particularly
when they've got nice big back yards if you are buying is sliding block, try and have
the slope coming towards the street, as I said, the building game, which is my background
prior to starting this business, pumping shit up a hill and expensive.
So if you ever want to do a granny flat, just thinking about that for a second life, it
doesn't grab any fade and there's all sorts of extra costs associated with building on
that.
Yeah, so again, not a deal breaker that if it's on a sloping block you wouldn't touch
it, but it's just something to think about.
Something that you may incur extra costs as a result of not having a flat block
and if you're looking at apples with apples versus apples in a market.
Let's say you're in sydney for example, and you're in the hills district and you've got
to two properties that you're considering both on 600 square meter blocks, both with
comparable houses.
One of thoSe is on a sloping block and it's 100,000 dollars cheaper and you go, well,
they're the same.
They're absolutely not the same to an owner occupier.
His kids, again, I play in that yard, so just put that hat on for a moment and go, you know,
what would I like to live?
What if I had three kids in this house or something?
Yeah,
and so that completes this episode on how to inspect the outside of a property.
We didn't mention that.
Generally you would actually inspect the inside of a property first and then go around
and inspect the outside.
So that's something of note as well.
you're probably not going to be walking around the exterior before you first do the insIde
of the property.
we talked about that in terms of the process.
In one of the other videos, you've really building rapport with the agent when you first
get in, getting them to take you around the property and show you the benefits while you're
building that rapport.
Then doing a good check of the inside of the property, a good check of the outside, and
then a straight check on the way out, and so we've also done episodes on questions to
ask the agent as well as looking at the street and the properties in the next episode will
be on inspecting the inside of the property.
If you want to check out all these episodes, go on property dot condo.
You fall the sash inspect and we'll put all of the episodes over there so you can see
all of them and you can become a master at inspecting property and you'll know exactly
what to look for if you haven't checked it out already.
We did talk a lot about granny flats and building granny flats in this one.
So check out the two properties to financial freedom video that mean ben did over on property
dot kondo.
Four fight five way if you haven't already.
Inspecting your property is good, but getting your strategy right is even more important
than that.
So check out that video, see that strategies for you and until next time, stay positive.