As home renovators, we often set ambitious financial objectives for ourselves, and renovating properties is how we achieve them.
The ability to make a profit from renovating is without a doubt, the most important goal for anyone in property development.
Whether you are renovating to build wealth for retirement or to replace your income, you must follow the best business practices to achieve success and ensure that you are making enough profit to meet your objectives.
Bernadette Janson, the founder of the School of Renovating, discusses her transition from DIY to a more structured business model.
In my early years of home renovation, I was known as the DIY queen because I was right there laying the tiles, painting the walls, and being extremely creative with the remodeling until I realised that DIY was not for me.
Anyone who considers themselves a DIYer (someone who does their home renovations rather than hiring a professional), will attest to the fact that home repairs can be physically exhausting.
I reached my breaking point as a DIYer after nearly two decades while I was finishing up a remodel where I had done a lot of DIY and was left with no energy.
At that point, I realized I needed to restructure my business and start working smarter to become more profitable and sustainable. Stopping DIY was difficult for me, because as we say in the profession:
Stopping DIY is like giving up smoking because it is such an addiction”
How Does DIY Kill Your Renovating profit?
- If you measure your success by what you can do physically, such as painting, tiling, and decorating, you will burn out quickly, affecting your capacity to generate a profit.
- If you perform your home renovations, chances are you will not budget enough money to pay yourself, so you will be working for free.
- Because you are not a professional, you will work at a slower rate than your tradespeople, and this will have an impact on your revenues.
- With DIY it will be harder for you to get a good quality job and so it will cost you more time in holding.
- When you do DIY, you are more likely to look at properties that would never be profitable if you approached the renovation as a business.
How can I avoid making DIY mistakes?
- When you are looking for a property, you need to find one that has enough upside to cover your costs while also allowing you to earn a profit.
- If you are trying to save money by completing the work yourself, avoid picking properties that are mine pits.
- Structure your business well, so that you can gain profit and also undertake more renovations in a year because you are not exhausted.
We encourage our students at the School of Renovating to dissociate themselves from DIY as early as possible in their careers to become more profitable as a business, build a sustainable income, and profit significantly from their renovation projects.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please see the link in the comments section if you want to learn more about this. We look forward to hearing from you.
