API Blog :: Have your say!

A lot of my clients ask me what kind of things are really important to have in your car and available on a building site when getting started with doing renovations. About a month ago I put together the first part of a list for you to consider and now I bring you the second part.

BY ANA STANKOVIC

It’s by no means an exclusive list of what you should have available and this list is likely to grow with the more renovations that you do, but it’s a good place to start and at the beginning of each renovation you should try and have as many of these things available.

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I’m often asked what kind of things are really important to have in your car and available on a building site when getting started with doing renovations. So I’ve put together this list for you to consider.

BY ANA STANKOVIC

It’s by no means an exclusive list of what you should have available and this list is likely to grow with the more renovations you do, but it’s a good place to start and at the beginning of each renovation you should try and have as many of these things available as possible.

Read more →

There are many things to consider when it comes to buying paint. You might think it’s simply a question of what colour, but you’d be wrong. Don’t fall at the first hurdle however and decide to hire a painter after realising just what you’ve let yourself in for.

BY ANA STANKOVIC

Do-it-yourself can be therapeutic – especially painting – and you’ll save yourself the cost of a tradesman, so have some faith in your abilities and spend the weekend doing some painting.

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An interesting aspect of travelling overseas is that you get to see various renovation techniques utilised by different cultures and their ancestors.

BY ANA STANKOVIC

I recently returned from five weeks away on my honeymoon in the United States of America, Mexico and Cuba. To say that it was the most amazing holiday would be an understatement.

But as well as enjoying our travels and our new beginning as husband and wife we took note of the various construction methods and renovation techniques utilised in those countries and by their ancestors.

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It’s uncanny how many parallels there are between organising a renovation and organising a wedding.

Having run a renovation company for quite a few years now and recently being involved in organising my own wedding, it’s been interesting to see how many skills and templates I could leverage off from one for the other.

It all seems to centre around planning, finding good quality service providers and suppliers and scheduling.

BY ANA STANKOVIC

So the first place to start is to work out the requirements. What are you trying to achieve? What are the priorities? Look and feel? Doing research here into what others have done previously and learning from their mistakes and knowledge will make this process go a lot smoother.

Then you really need to identify all the different things that need to happen. Do a task breakdown structure just like with a renovation and work out what order they need to happen in. Read more →

One thing I hear about time and time again in my line of work is just how hard people find it to source someone good to do the work on their property renovation.

BY ANA STANKOVIC

So the first question is, what constitutes “good’’ in the construction

industry? For most of us, it’s:

- Being on time and phoning when you say you will.

- Meeting all building, health and safety regulations.

- Being prepared to stand by the quality of your work.

- Cleaning up after yourself. Read more →

I always find it interesting when I speak to property owners that the one thing they often don’t consider with renovations is car parking. This can have a significant impact when wanting to sell or rent a property.

By ANA STANKOVIC

The days of only looking for a property through the paper have changed, with the majority of people these days starting their search online and loving the flexibility of being able to set up alerts and notifications so they get told when a property that meets their search criteria becomes available in the marketplace.

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There’s one question in particular that’s commonly asked by investors who are trying to learn more about making money from adding value to property, and that is: “What suburbs do you recommend for finding profitable deals to renovate/resell?”

By ANA STANKOVIC

The answer to this is simple. While the old mantra of ‘location, location, location’ is right on the money when looking to purchase/renovate and hold a property, it doesn’t hold true when looking at turning over properties.

If you’re looking to make money from renovating and selling a number of properties, your focus will be on adding the most amount of value in the least amount of time possible.

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