Summary: Hi I’m Cherie from Renovating for Profit. Did you know that there are sixty things that you should research on a property before you buy? Yes you heard right, sixty things. Today I’m going to give you one of the research tasks that you want to do before you actually sign any contract of sale. Now that one thing that I’m going to show with you today is called, a council search. You can do a council search either on the phone or going to council and just walk to the customer service counter and it takes about five minutes and asks this key questions. The first one is, “What is the zoning of this property?”. And ideally most of you are buying what’s called residential zoning. Can you tell me; Is the property in a heritage and conservation suburb? These are suburbs where that council has stricter development controls, so it is good to know this before you start any renovation project. Can you tell me, Is this property heritage listed? Not all heritage listed properties made their bad deals, I’ve certainly bought a heritage listed property in the past and made fantastic money in renovating. Can you tell me, Is this property in a flood prone zone? Don’t think that old bad properties are that incur flooding are on terrible sites. Okay, now the key question, Can you tell me, is this property in a bush fire prone zone? You can have a little reserve at the back of your property, a little creek and that can dim your property to be a bush fire prone zone that instantly wipes out any development potential and this is really important if you are doing structure renovation. Another question, Can you tell me, Is there any known land contamination in this area? Councils can piece together sometimes have this information systems of where sites are contaminated, this is really important if you doing a structure renovation for mediation cost can be quite expensive. Can you tell me, have there been any development applications or building permits lodge on this property from the past? Do you think people un sell their property when they cannot get what they want to do totheir property approved by council? We want to make sure we are never buying lemons. And probably the most important I want to ask you is, can you tell me, have any of the neighboring properties been approved for development. Again, a lot of people, if they know there is something bad is going to be built close to their property they will quickly put that property on the market and hope to sell it. So these are the key questions you want to ask, if you can do this you have a much better chance of weeding out the lemons, the good deals from the bad. I’m Cherie from Renovating for profit, see you again soon.
