How do you estimate renovation budgets?

How do you go about estimating renovation budgets? Do you work on very specific budgets & if so, how do you estimate them before you purchase?

How do you estimate structural renovations such as removing walls?

 

If you've never done it before, ring a few people and get ball park quotes. Look at bunnings for rough fixture prices.

 

If its toying with ideas its best to search around and get an idea of rough prices so your familiar with numbers. Then do a quick calc in your head when first looking, if it looks like it has potential sit down and go through in more detail. Have a list of what you want done and stay tallying up costs.

There are a number of varying factors for each house and job. Some people will follow off guide prices based on %of prop value.

As for walls you can search online or here for square m rates, or if your familiar with what's involved do some rough numbers yourself - how many hours work, cost of materials etc

Once you get to know costs you'll be able to look and say "that bathroom would cost $x,000 to do " then work out how that works with your goals

 

I agree with Jess. Easiest way is to get a bunch of quotes. You could be surprised, I did a full unit reno incl. moving some walls around, moving the laundry to another location (it made functional sense to do so) and the installation of a new kitchen and bathroom for 43k all up including all the fixtures. But my unit went from being purchased for 292k (this was in 2011) to being worth around mid 4's immediately after (ps. I bought under market value too by around 40k based on the next unit sold just 2 weeks later... but I wouldn't have bought at market value in any case. I knew this was a heck of a great buy and got in quickly). This property (4 years on) is now worth about mid 5's if I was to sell it.

My tip, if you decide to accept a quote, make sure your reno timeline is very clear and is agreed upon. You dont want work that can be completed in 3 weeks blowing out to 13 weeks because your tradespeople are working on other people's jobs every second day....

Also I'd go with someone who has been recommended by someone you trust or has recommendations that are impartial.

If you are in Brisbane today did you know there's a meetup on?

https://propertychat.com.au/communi...er-the-shady-palms-at-stones-corner-1pm.3666/

If you can, try to get to it.
Gockie.

 

Thanks Gockie, I'm not in Brisbane at the moment, but I'll check it out.

 

Thanks everyone,

Are there any good guides available for average costs of bathroom & kitchen renovations? When I'm looking to buy a property, I wont have an opportunity to get builders in before I've purchased, so wanted to have ball park ideas of what things cost.

Any good resources you can recommend?

 

Here and Ss there are plenty of threads with costs.
Depends on the property and how much you do yourself.
Say median basic type property 10-15k by others. Depending how much you can do you can get it under 10
Kitchen same 10-15 or do it yourself for <10

 

I price everything at Bunnings or similar and get quotes for what I'm not doing myself, I then add 50% to the figure I worked out.

 

If you want to make money renovating for profit it needs to be a business you are running.
First, you need to fully understand the job you are contemplating or how can you price it?
Break it down to materials consumables and timeframe
Dont forget rubbish removal
I break it down to the generation of a material list including consumables then I generate an ordering list of materials so instead of buying studs at 2.2mtrs long I will get a 4.5 or If I want noggings, go a bit longer. Consumables must be accounted for as if you do a typical 6m x 6m extension you may very well use $1000 of sanpaper, nails, screws, silicone, putty adhesives and grout.
I price it exactly but I also have a contingency

 

In other words...dont estimate it, price it

 

I love it how you read my mind and write my answers lol. I might just sit back on the forum now and just be a spectator.

 

I was thinking the same thing!

We must be right then!

 

A good guide for kitchens and bathrooms is 2 % of final sale price value.

500k unit 10 k kitchen.