Property for $50,000 in 2017

A year ago I wrote about what you might be able to buy, property wise if you had $50,000. It’s a tiny amount considering the booming property market in Australia, but is there anything available that you could actually live in? Or at the least live in while you renovated? 

For this search I’m restricting it to Victoria as it’s the state I live in and I’m using the domain.com.au app for iOS on an iPad as it lets me draw a circle to search an area, the browser-based search forces you to state a suburb or area you’re looking for. 

When I began researching this I wasn’t hopeful of finding much, but I thought I’d find a few more awful properties or barely liveable properties than I did, in fact all I found were two properties.

First up 40 Nelson Street, Nhill - $39,000 (stamp duty if this is your first home $343, if this isn’t your first home then stamp duty doubles to $686. Making this house $39,343 for a first home buyer or $39,686 if not).

It’s a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house, however it does have a detached 2 room bungalow, I would say it looks like a shed, except it’s got two doors on it, so it could be used for accommodation.

This property is interesting in that there’s a prior listing for it on realestate.com.au from two years ago. It sold on the 29th July 2015 for $30,000.

So what’s changed in 2 years? 

When it was sold 2 years ago it was sold as a deceased estate, with the deceased estate’s belongings still within as the listing states:

The home itself is in need of a lot of attention INSIDE AND OUT and buyers be aware your buying this at your own risk. The home itself comes FULL of contents everywhere and in every room (as far as the vendors are aware).

In the 2 years since it was sold it now looks like the house and 2 room bungalow has been painted, and as the new listing states:

new hot water service, new toilet and even sections of the roof has been replaced

Looking between the two listings and the Google Street View photos it looks like the roof has been replaced, at least on the front and in the last 17 years it’s been improved upon significantly.

Regarding Nhill itself, it doesn’t look too bad in terms of facilities, there’s three primary schools, The Overland train stops at the train station three times a week. Luv-a-Duck has a processing facility in the town,  while not listed anywhere that I could easily find, after looking at Google Earth for a while I found it, located at 160 Rupps Road, Nhill. Nhill also has an airport, golf course and three pubs. 

I’m sure there’s lot of downsides to Nhill. Chief amongst them is that it’s far, though not impossibly so from Melbourne. It’s about 4 hours to Melbourne, or 3 hours 45 minutes to Adelaide. This even measurement makes sense when you consider several logistics companies use Nhill as a switchover / half way point for trucks. 

The second property is 59 Lower Roy Street, Jeparit - $45,000 (stamp duty is $415 for first home buyers and $830 if not. Making it $45,415 for first home buyers or $45,830 if not).

It looks worse, is in a smaller town than Nhill (although it’s just a 30 minute drive up the road). 

It does have one extra bedroom being a 3 bedroom 1 bathroom compared to the house in Nhill.

And that is the only positive. The house in Nhill appears liveable, albeit rustic, this house, however is really one you’d need to rip up the floor coverings (carpet, lino etc) and go back to bare wood before you moved in.

Positives...? It has an outdoor laundry. And the town is the birthplace of Sir Robert Menzies. 

Unfortunately, that’s it for property for $50,000. There are some other properties listed that I haven’t mentioned as they don’t technically meet the definition of property that you can own forever. These are dwellings like cabins at caravan parks (sometimes referred to as “villas”). With these you might own the cabin, but pay rent on the land. So there’s little security with these things, unless you’ve got an ironclad contract. At least compared to a house and the land it sits on where you own it forever.

I acknowledge that $50,000 is a tiny amount of money to begin with for purchasing property, but I think it’s an interesting place to start researching what lies at the bottom of the market.