Buying a Melbourne Home to Renovate? Reduce stress and save time and cost with early access.

Often people buy a home to renovate, wait the 90 days for settlement and then undertake a three-month home renovation to align the property with their tastes.

Doing this creates several hidden costs and stresses that most people often don’t realise – including the stress of living amid a home renovation.

But all this can be avoided. A little planning and forethought can go a long way to making the whole process less costly and less expensive.

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And this is where early access comes into play. If you’ve negotiated early access while purchasing the Melbourne home you plan to renovate, you can begin home renovations during the settlement period before you move in.

That means no matter your circumstances you’ll be saving your money and your time:
- If you’re renting, you’ll save 90-days of money spent on rent.
- If you’re already a home owner, you’ll be able to move into your new Melbourne home sooner, and sell your existing home sooner too. And that means if your home renovations can be completed during the 90-day settlement period, you can avoid bridging finance on both properties too.

What you need to know about negotiating early access:

- Negotiating early access, or what’s called a licence agreement, must be done during negotiations to purchase a property.
- There is little value asking for early access after the contracts are signed as most vendors would be advised that they won’t lose the sale by saying no.
- If the property is going to auction, ask the agent before auction day to enquire if the vendor would consider early access.
- Licence agreements, drawn up by the vendor’s solicitor, will generally cost a few hundred dollars.
- Sometimes the vendor will ask for rent during the 90-day settlement period, however this is up for negotiation.

Once you have early access, you can get the ball rolling on your home renovations. Take your Melbourne designer/builder through the property to show as soon as possible to get discussions happening. Beginning your home renovation project immediately (during settlement) means it will finish sooner, and, hopefully, you can take possession of a fully renovated home on the day of settlement.

A recent client was purchasing an inner-city Melbourne apartment, but requiring a full-home renovation. They negotiated early access of the previously rented apartment, and were able to get their designer and builder in almost immediately to discuss and begin home renovations on the property. During the 90-day settlement period major renovations to the kitchen and bathrooms were completed, leaving only minor cosmetic renovations to be completed once they moved in. This meant the couple could move straight from their currently rented apartment into their newly renovated home on settlement day.

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Try our Online Renovation Costs Calculator

• Melbourne clients wanting advice on home renovations can see www.themakeovergroup.com.au or phone The Makeover Group on 1300 768 464.

Richard Armstrong is a Director of Melbourne firm The Makeover Group. He has more than a decade of home renovation experience, including kitchen design and build. He has helped hundreds of Melbourne clients undertake full-home renovations to modernise their home.