If you are thinking of buying a home to renovate you could run the risk of paying for unbudgeted repairs, costing tens of thousands of dollars.
If the house you are looking at has already been renovated, or has had extensions added already, you need to do some research.
Check with the local council to ensure a building permit was obtained. This is very important as any illegal alterations can become your responsibility!
If you are going to add onto the buildings structure here a few key points that need to be met by the council.
If you are buying with a view of doing a extension in the future, you need to obtain maximum site coverage and set-back distances (the distance from the house to road side and surrounding properties).
If you organize your renovations carefully you can add considerable value to the home and make good capital gain when selling, but on the other hand if you don’t plan it out and get costings you can lose money, maybe having to top up your mortgage.
As every job is different in one way or another I suggest planning out the job and getting prices and quotes before you start.