How Will People Maintain Their Homes with The Increasing Cost of Living?

ForkSnorter on 24/05/2023 - 11:40

I'm seeing prices rising massively for basic services, trades, renovations, building, materials, etc.

These prices are rising much faster than incomes, plus there seems to be a bit of a mini recession at the moment.

With many people owning older houses that will need a lot of maintenance and/or renovation, I wonder if there will be a nationwide disaster in terms of quality of housing over the next decade.

Many people won't be able to keep their house in decent liveable condition, especially if we have a lot of rain or a few floods. I'm in a reasonably comfortable position, but my house is pretty old and already needs a lot of work. I don't know if I'm going to be able to afford all the things I need to do to the house over the next few years.

Any ideas on this?

Home & Garden

Comments

  • Hangryuman on 26/05/2023 - 10:49
    +1

    learn to DIY - and you can fix things for nothing that would cost $400-4000 with a professional

    we exchange money for time

    if you want to save money you can spend time DIY - if you don't have the skill you may bodge it and make it worse in the long run - if you're interested you can learn from YouTube and build lifetime skills.

    if you want to save time you can spend money - and get a professional to fix it in 20 minutes and charge you $200 call-out fee plus parts and labour - and more likely feel ripped off - 'huh - he only spent 20 minutes - how come he billed me $300 !?!?'

  • eek on 26/05/2023 - 10:58
    +2

    DIY! Trades are SUPER expensive in Australia. Received four quotes of $20K-$27K to paint the exterior of a 2 storey weatherboard house. House is 8 years old, requires some spot sanding and priming, no filling/rot or cracks. Some equipment was purchased off Marketplace and can be sold again once job is done. Actual consumable materials were about $1,100: paint, sandpaper, brushes, rollers, masking supplies. Job done for about $1,200 using Dulux Weathershield.

  • Dack Smith on 26/05/2023 - 12:24
    +1

    Judging by how many people frequently buy stuff on OzBargain, increased sales of exotic luxury goods and housing prices…

    No riots anywhere

    The answer is : Very easily

    Looks like many people have money coming out of their holes

  • Heaps for Cheaps on 26/05/2023 - 13:08
    -1

    I feel the pain of high rentals ATM. I am a landlord, fortunate enough to have been able to physically work and pay off 6 Sydney homes when the market was calmer.

    Every few weeks I have to email the RE and demand to know why rent is late for one house or the other.

    When I tagged along for an inspection a few weeks ago I saw the tenants had a new ladder in the garage. Bunnings has that ladder for $379… So they obviously aren't budgeting as they could have purchased a 2nd hand ladder for $50 off Gumtree.

    • Jolakot on 26/05/2023 - 15:28
      +1

      What made you think the ladder was new?

      A mate of mine pulled a sturdy aluminum ladder from a hard rubbish pile a bit ago, looked brand new other than dirt and grime. Cleaned it up and sold it for a good penny.

      • Heaps for Cheaps on 26/05/2023 - 16:13

        That's fair enough. I certainly hope they were as resourceful.

      • Willy Beamish on 26/05/2023 - 16:18

        what's more likely to you, someone bought a ladder from a store or multiple people found a perfectly good brand new looking ladder in a hard rubbish pile?

        • Jolakot on 26/05/2023 - 16:46

          Moral of the story was that plenty of people sell new-looking ladders for cheap or even give them away for free

          Small world though, could very well have been the same ladder

    • RedSky1 on 27/05/2023 - 09:12

      Can't help but think what was the ladder for in a rental? Maintaining the property…? Maybe doing odd jobs for extra money to pay rent?

    • Thinkswithelbow on 29/05/2023 - 06:27
      -1

      So cringe. I'm a landlord too ….but this. Checking on the types of goods they have if the can't pay rent. Just taken them to the tribunal.

  • Franc-T on 26/05/2023 - 14:48

    Regardless of anything else, get the important stuff done. Ie make sure you get no water leaks or problems (such as blocked gutters) which will cause more damage down the line.

    Most other stuff can be put off.

  • tap on 26/05/2023 - 14:51

    They won't.

  • Willy Beamish on 26/05/2023 - 15:59

    same way they did many years ago, not buying thousand dollar + phones and garbage every year.

  • helpme on 26/05/2023 - 17:38
    +1

    The funny thing is, I feel that we are far from the bottom. We talk about houses being 10x average income but your average Australian house in an Asian country is like 20-30x average income (e.g. Malaysia where average income is around 60k per year but a 4 bedroom, block of land, detached house 40 mins from CBD will set you back 3mil).

    • drprox on 26/05/2023 - 20:31

      Sounds like we're far from the top to me..

      • helpme on 26/05/2023 - 21:37

        there's that too

    • sal78 on 28/05/2023 - 00:53

      But you have multiple families living together and as much as 6 x income combined so that's $360k pa,

      • helpme on 28/05/2023 - 09:14
        +1

        Exactly, that's where we are headed aren't we

        • George Washington on 28/05/2023 - 19:56

          Oh lordy please no

          'Grand dad what is that banging noise in the bedroom' - Grandkid 1
          "Just rusty pipes" - Grand dad.

  • pogichinoy on 27/05/2023 - 00:42

    How?

    Making sure to have enough savings for rainy days.

  • macr0hard on 27/05/2023 - 16:13
    +3

    High cost of living is one thing but why all the tradie tasks are so expensive in Aus is beyond me

    • Willy Beamish on 28/05/2023 - 12:30

      if they stopped buying their red bulls, V and smokes from the servo they wouldn't charge so much.

  • Wt133 on 27/05/2023 - 22:55

    I’m just going from what I’ve seen but a lot of Indians don’t do proper maintenance on their homes. They go all out in the beginning when they build or buy but after that then nothing. No proper maintenance or hardly any basic up keep. I’ve even had friends who would just buy an entire new place other than repair or do maintenance on the current one.

    On the other hand when people don’t own homes and have apartments instead. The strata fees eat up a lot of money. I don’t want to be paying strata when I’ve retired

    • George Washington on 28/05/2023 - 20:01
      +1

      They are the worst land lords.

      Case #1:
      Neighbours are tenants, leaking roof broken shutters, extension cable running from one room to another via the windows (exterior) Tennants tell me the problems.. I tell them to raise it to the RE. They want to move but they cant afford.

      I texted the landlord in goodwill, saying that the tennants have kids and the broken shutters extension cord dangerous could be a fire hazzard
      Land lord replied to me to "mind my business"

      Case #2:
      Parents property, neighbour are tennants landlord Indians….. has a flooding problem due to blocked gutters. heavy rain water spills to parents yard. Tennants complain problem is they have a special needs child so finding a property is very hard. Parents yard have good drains so its fine. We raise it up to the landlord to fix.. Told water is natural. Anyways dobbed them to council and they recieved a notice, they didnt act on it… recieved a fine

  • sal78 on 28/05/2023 - 00:38
    +1

    Debt is great to own multiple properties etc but that's usually for ppl that have never been through a deep recession. It only takes something like losing your job, falling prices, high interest etc

    Cash is king and no debt is best. People that paid off their PPOR instead of over leveraged will always be in a better position. Buy low sell high

    • Kongzi on 04/06/2023 - 01:25

      Cash is never king. Always a depreciating asset

  • drfuzzy on 28/05/2023 - 07:27

    People need to either work harder or lower their expectations.
    It's as simple as that.

    • poisongodmachine on 28/05/2023 - 22:46

      Working harder to get richer is a fallacy. That doesn't actually happen.

  • Spamazon on 28/05/2023 - 08:18

    Albo will fix it!

  • beefmaster on 28/05/2023 - 09:24

    This month I started spending carefully. Before I just buy whatever I like or I think I might like. Before I would have bought the DJI mini 3 pro battery kit that just posted in Ozbargin in a heartbeat, not anymore.

  • [Deactivated] on 28/05/2023 - 17:04
    +1

    I can easily maintain and buy an investment property cutting down on one avocado for my breakfast.

  • MrBillions on 04/06/2023 - 17:26

    My la Marzocco Micra is my last discretional spend this financial year.

    • pufffdragon on 05/06/2023 - 01:06

      Awesome. Was that from that recently posted deal here?

  • MrBillions on 06/06/2023 - 19:16

    another nail in the coffin for the economy today

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