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Priced out of the Sydney market, an interior designer re-skilled, packed up and left for a chance at financial freedom interstate – saying it’s never too late.
Single mum Christina Reed is among Queensland women making the leap into renovations to boost retirement funds. In her 50s with her two daughters now adults, she plans to undertake a splitter block project – with a house she can renovate to add value and then either build on the second block or sell off the land to build up her war chest.
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“To do anything in Sydney, I’d have to go so far to the outskirts that it’s just not practical,” she said.
“Whereas I can be close to the city in Brisbane and for my money, I can get so much more and do so much more”
Having passed 50 with two adult daughters, she decided it was time to do things for herself, taking on renovation classes with gusto in the hope of one day boosting her superannuation.
“It’s never too late to start. There are a lot of women in the group that are older than me. Education is key,” she said.
“I had gone through two marriages where I’ve worked in small business and had a very, very small amount of super, and I knew if I don’t start doing something now, how am I going to retire and how am I going to leave something for my kids?”
Christina Reed is among those choosing to supercharge their retirement funds through renovations – moving states to do so. Picture Lachie Millard
That, along with price surges, was a wake up call for her, though even she is shocked at recent prices houses are fetching, with a recent Brisbane auction going for $2.5m – around $300,000 more than she’d expected.
“It was in Wilson, the property wasn’t a development site, it was purely a renovation project. I think it really is a sign of more people moving up from the south.”
Her goal is to engineer a 20 per cent profit margin on real estate projects in the future.
“It’s so easy to make a mistake,” she said. “None of us have a crystal ball. We have to be really careful and know what you’re doing. You’ve got to have done your research. You need to know where to spend money and where to save.
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The biggest difference she’s expecting between her interior design day job and undertaking her personal renovations was having to manage all the trades herself rather than the builder doing so.
“When you’re renovating yourself, you’ve really got to be on top of all of that. You need to know the sequence that things have to be done, often it’s like a dance trying to keep the trades happy,” she said.
“When you’re doing it for yourself, you really need to maximise every penny and being a single woman, you don’t have a partner to bounce things off. You really need support and education … It’s a business and you’ve got to treat it that way.”
The post ‘Never too late’: I relocated in my 50s to find financial freedom appeared first on realestate.com.au.
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