There are many reasons for selling a home.  You may be moving to another area or even another country.  Your existing home may be too small, too big, or too expensive to maintain.  Whatever your situation, selling your existing home may not be the only option.  Instead of selling, you could consider either:

• Renovating your existing home
• Keeping it as a rental investment.

Renovating
If you like the area you live in, renovating your existing home could be a good way to get the kind of home you need, while staying in an area you know and like.

However, renovating does have some potential drawbacks:

• It can be very expensive.  It’s often harder to work around an existing structure than build from scratch
• It can also be stressful.  You may have to move out for a while (which can also add to the cost), as it often takes longer than expected
• You need to be careful not to over-capitalise i.e. spending more on the renovations than you are likely to get back if you do eventually sell. 

For more information about renovating see our renovating page.

Keeping your home as a rental investment property
Keeping your existing home as a rental property could be a good way to get into residential property investment.  Because it’s your existing home you’ll know exactly what condition it’s in, plus you won’t have to pay any commission for selling it.

However, as with any investment property:

• Make sure it is financially viable.  For example, you need to be sure that you’ll be able to rent it for enough to cover your home loan and expenses (or if not, that you can manage the additional costs)
• Discuss the idea with a financial advisor
• Talk to a rental agency or property manager to get an idea of how much it could rent for.

For more information about residential property investment see our investing section.

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