smart property investment

Tips to look out for before signing a building contract

Avoid getting trapped in a building contract

Tradebusters Connect Member, Luke Carroll from EC Credit Control as featured in Smart Property Investment Magazine.

Luke Carroll shares valuable advice for home owners wanting to avoid costly mistakes when signing building contracts in this below video.

Electrician Sutherland Shire – Installing Recessed Outlets In Your Home

Recessed outlets are great to have in any home. However, they should only be installed by an experienced electrician Sutherland Shire has available. An electrician should be able to install them quickly, safely and efficiently. If you only have recessed outlets in a couple of locations in your home and desire to have more, a good electrician can replace all your regular outlets easily. Read more

5 Reasons Calling In Renovation Professionals Is Worth It

We live at a time when DIY seems to be the way to go for home owners when it comes to renovations. For many home owners, doing renovation work by themselves not only saves them money, but also gives them the satisfaction of having used their own two hands to create something for their own homes.

A DIY renovation project is good, but the truth of the matter is, getting professionals to at least help in planning the whole thing is even better. They are more skilled and infinitely more experienced at planning a renovation project than the average home owner. To drive this point home, here are 5 reasons calling in the pros for a renovation is worth it.

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The Perfect Blinds For Your Home

For a long time, most homes depended on just curtains to add visual appeal to their windows. These days, however, many home owners go for blinds for various reasons. Aside from being even more aesthetic, blinds are also more practical in so many ways.

Aside from décor and sunlight control, blinds also provide you privacy. More importantly, blinds help your home become more energy efficient, especially during the summer when the scorching heat of the sun passes through your glass windows and makes your air conditioner work harder, which results in larger electricity bills.

If you’re thinking about switching to blinds, you need to know how to choose the perfect blinds for your home. To help you get started, here are the types of blinds that are available in Australia.

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Boost Apartment Value With A Second Bathroom

boost home value with a second bathroomHere’s a bit of great news for home owners who are renovating to sell. According to a report on Smart Property Investment, you can boost apartment value with a second bathroom, and by a significant amount at that.

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How to Make Your Relationship Survive a Renovation

For couples living under one roof, the idea of initiating a renovation project for their home together seems like a very romantic idea. After all, what could be more romantic than making your dream home come true by working with the person you love on it? Alas, a renovation project is not that simple. Exciting, yes, but easy, no. As a matter of fact, renovations could prove to be so stressful it’s not uncommon for couple to get into arguments or fights over the way they’re going. Some relationships may even suffer so much strain with the renovation that they eventually fall apart.

However, don’t let the preceding paragraph scare you if you’re a couple planning to get some renovation work done. Far more couples have survived a renovation than those that broke up. Here are some tips that we hope would help make your relationship survive a renovation project.

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Australians Love Renovating

If you’ve been doing some channel surfing lately, you’ll see that programs that deal with home improvement are becoming quite popular. Their popularity clearly shows how everyday Australians are becoming more interested in renovation. An article written by Cameron McEvoy for RealEstate.com.au talks about this love for renovation among Australians and more.

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Renovations to Create Instant Equity

renovations to create instant equityHaving a home you can call your own is perhaps one of the best feelings in the world. However, there is one word in the world of real estate that somehow brings a euphoric home owner back to earth, and that word is equity. It is the one word that reminds home owners that they only own the value of what they have already paid for the house against its fair market value. That means for a home that has been appraised for, say, $200,000 with the owner still owing $125,000.00 on its mortgage, the equity is $75,000, and that is what the home owner actually owns of his/her home.

Of course, the natural way to increase your equity would be to pay off the mortgage, but unless you have lots of cash lying around that will help you pay for it immediately, that would take a really long time. There are ways that you can create instant equity to your property, and making renovations on your home is at the top of that list.

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Tips for Financially Managing a Renovation Project

If you’re a home owner, there will eventually come a time when you have to get some renovation work done on it. While planning a renovation project can be a rather exciting thing, it can also get really stressful, particularly in the finance department. Managing your budget responsibly can get a bit tricky. If financially managing a renovation project becomes a bit of a problem for you, perhaps this article written by Tony Rigby for RealEstate.com.au can help.

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Furnishing and Decorating Tips For Your First Apartment

It’s a pretty exciting time, being able to rent your very first apartment, a clear sign that you’re finally independent. You are bursting with anticipation about the things that come with having your own place and the things you could do with it. That initial rush, however, is often replaced by a sense of being overwhelmed, simply because having your own apartment means that furnishing and decorating it is your sole responsibility and no one else’s.

When furnishing and decorating your own place, there a lot of things that you need to consider. To help you get started, here are some furnishing and decorating tips for your first apartment.

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