Renovating to make money is a lot of hard work. Cherie Barber, who is nicknamed the Renovation Queen, wants to make that clear.
But if you’re determined, educated, skilled, savvy and do your research, you’ve got a shot at success.
Cherie, who appears on Channel 10’s The Living Room, will be in Newcastle on Saturday to give a free talk on renovating.
“I bought my first house when I was 21 in 1991. At the time I didn’t do any due diligence, I didn’t even know what the word meant,” Cherie, founder of Renovating For Profit, said. “With my first two projects, I winged it.”
For her third project, in the year 2000, she did her research. She examined the “local suburbs, housing types, demographics, capital growth projections, historical capital growth, agents, auctioneers, absolutely everything”.
“Unfortunately, most Australians don’t know this sort of stuff, hence the reason their renovation projects – or any property project they do – tend to be fraught with chaos, disasters, tears, tantrums, budget blow-outs and arguments with tradies.”
When she buys a property nowadays, she’s prepared.
“I’m not doing it based on emotion or gut instinct, it’s basically a series of checks I always do on a property to mitigate risk.”
Cherie has renovated 113 properties, most of them in Sydney.
Her strategy is “buy, renovate and rent”. She flipped houses in the past, but said capital gains tax was a killer, along with other selling costs.
“Long-term capital growth is what ultimately makes you wealthy,” she said.
She will speak at the Rydges [formerly the Crowne Plaza] in Newcastle on Saturday at 10am. Visit renovatingforprofit.com.au for more details.
Queens Tower Reef
Can we just hold off on demolishing Queens Wharf Tower for a bit?
A reader has a cracking idea: “Let’s get the harbour dredge to drop the tower in the ocean off Newcastle or Lake Macquarie for use as a fishing reef”.
That’s a goer, don’t you reckon?
Bloody Burgers
Reader Mark took his family to a local pub and ordered three cheeseburgers.
“Pretty hard to stuff up, you’d think, but with all three the mince was cooked rare to raw,” Mark said.
He’s not one to complain, but “clear red liquid was oozing from the meat in my wife’s burger”.
The waitress took the burger into the kitchen and returned moments later, saying “the chef says that’s how it’s cooked these days”.
Mark’s reply: “That’s not how it’s eaten these days, though”.
“It got me thinking about trendy chefs – and why even the humble cheeseburger has to suffer.”
