OK, so we came back from East Timor in Sept 2008, and after 2 months of prayer about what God wanted us to do, Samuel was offered a 12 month job at St Andrews Christian school, Grafton. We soon decided that it would make sense to try and get a loan to purchase another house while Samuel was receiving a regular income. We also wanted to find somewhere that had some sort of space or land which could be utilised by Samuel's dad. We also wanted to be able to pretty much cover any loan repayments with the rental income from the property. We drove up to Lismore one day before school started in Jan 2009. We visited 7+ real estate agents, and looked at a couple of places, but weren't real keen on any. We were happy to pay up to AU$400k or AU$500k. (we owned our home at Ulmarra, didn't have any loan on it, and by now it had risen to $300+k in value. So we could use the equity in that to purchase another place. We finally walked into patchandtaylor and a yonger agent was chatting and listening to us about what we wanted. He finally said "There just might be something that may interest you" He explained about a large house on a huge block of land. The problem was there was no access to the large piece of land at the back.
So off we went for a drive to look around the area and decide if it was worth us looking through the house.
The house looked ok from the road, nothing special. The driveway was steep, and behind it was a lot of trees. We looked on the map and decided to try a couple of nearby roads to see if we could get close to the back piece of land. As we got closer we noticed a new development, and realised that we may be able to get access somehow with one of the new blocks and maybe buying access off a bordering neighbour. Somewhat feasible. We thewn imediantly drove to the council to see what exactly were the lands borders.
What a shock! The land backed right up to the new development! It also had one long border with a council reserve, and a small creek through the lowest corner, the rear border adjoins land owned by Summerland Christian School. We then started ringing the agent responsible for selling the new development. 2 blocks were already sold, the third had a sewer line running diagonly through it, as well as an easement along the border of the land we were looking at.
We rang the agent at Patch and taylor, and arranged a look through the house. Upstairs was 3 bedrooms, 2 with built-in cupboards. A lovely bathroom with spa, a nice kitchen, lounge, dining and a huge deck out the back overlooking the trees and the pool! Downstars was another bedroom with an ensuite, a simple concrete floor room, a laundry and a large rumpus room. We new that it would work for Uni students. They were asking $415k, we made an offer of $385k, we finally settled at $395k inc some of the furniture to remain. We also offered to buy the best block from the new development, but the new owners were keen to keep it. So we decided to buy the weird block and settled at $100k. (they were asking $115k). So by March we owned the house, and placed a family in upstairs with the condition that they rent out downstairs to uni students. Samuel and the tenant built two rooms in the rumpus area and built a 3 way bathroom and kitchenette as well.
We received about $500max/week this past year as rental income from it.
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