5 Dont's of an investment property in Port Hedland
Experts and industry leaders have been grappling with the question of What makes a good investment property for years.
The truth is that this is very much individual to each town, area or market at that particular moment in time.
It is really about understanding the target market at any given time, and keeping an ear to the ground on future projects and growth strategies of the town to make an informed estimate of the future target market.
A good property manager will understand their client and sell the benefits of a property according to the client.
If you have an investment home in Port Hedland or looking at purchasing, these are the 5 things you should avoid or be mindful to change in order to make the property more desirable to tenants.
1. Lack of Parking:
There have been a number of developments over the past couple of years including 2 bedroom units which are allocated just 1 parking space. There have also been 5 bedroom properties built with the provision of a car port for just 2 vehicles. If there is a lack of parking, there are a number of reasons why tenants will be put off renting in Hedland:
A. Port Hedland has a hot climate, during the wet season temperatures can rise to over 50 degrees centigrade. This and a lack of public transport services makes it essential to have a private vehicle to drive everywhere in an airconditioned vehicle. Generally a parking space will be required for each adult who occupies the property.
B. There are many jobs (especially in the mining sector) in Port Hedland which come with the use of a company vehicle. Your tenant may have more than 1 vehicle per adult occupier for this reason.
C. Although less frequent at present, in the past companies have taken up larger properties to house fly-in fly-out workers. Workers in shared housing will generally require at least 1 parking space per bedroom or the property may not be considered by this type of corporate tenant.
D. Living in one of the worlds beautiful and rustic environments and the close proximaty to the sea dictates an outdoor persutes lifestyle where caravans, boats and quad bikes are essential for any one living in the Pilbara long term.
2. Ducted Air-Conditioning
Ducted Air-Conditioned homes are cooled by one large AC machine which shoots the cold air through ducts into each room of the house.
With a lot of choice on the market at present tenants are turning away from properties with ducted air-conditioning units for 2 good reasons:
A. Ducted Air-Conditioning is far more expensive than split air-conditioning units. In my own experience of previously living in such a home, our bills could be up to $1000 per month.
B. There is a fear of the health impacts of ducted air-conditioned homes due to providing an environment in which mold can grow if not conditioned and cleaned on a regular basis.
3. Lack of outdoor enclosed garden space
During the mining boom over the past few years the most popular tyopes of houses were those in reasonable or new condition with large numbers of rooms to house multiple employees. Due to this reason, developers built homes which concentrated more on providing the maximum number of bedrooms possible at the expense of outdoor space.
Although there are still some companies renting large properties to house multiple employees these are now very few. Many tenants looking for the larger home are tenants with larger families including children. For this reason part of their wish list is for enough garden space for the children to play including room for such things as a trampoline,
With such a beautiful climate in the dry season and a sociable lifestyle, outdoor entertainment space is also a must.
4. Small rooms
As well as sacrificing outdoor space developers also built properties with smaller rooms in general to make way for extra bedrooms. I have had many objections from tenants renting homes because they fear their furniture is too big for the rooms. I have even had many objections to renting a home due to the fridge space being too small to house their fridge.
With smaller bedrooms also comes with lack of space for in built robes which are also quite high on a tenants wish list.
5. Old, Tired, Poorly Maintained Homes
It seems common sense that a home which has been neglected by its owner should be low on the list of a tenants choice of property. Due to the mining boom of the past few years where demand for properties far outweighed the supply, tenants had little choice when choosing a property, even neglected and poorly maintained properties were easily rented and at high prices (during the mining boom there was no consideration given to the quality of the home when assessing its rental value, it was merely based on the number of bedrooms and how many people the property could house).
The law has also only recently been changed giving minimum time frames for organising repairs and maintenance so owners did not need to keep their properties in a good state of repair as at the time the property would rent regardlessly.
With a shift in the market to that of high supply and lower demand, properties of this type are no longer desirable unless at drastically reduced rates.
