Mortgage broker Jolimont

Why a Jolimont valuation leans on the suburbs around it

There are only so many streets in Jolimont, and only so many houses change hands here in a year. When a valuer goes looking for recent comparable sales, the suburb itself does not always supply enough of them.

So the search widens into Wembley, Floreat or the Subiaco side, and the figure that comes back reflects whatever those sales happened to be doing. A recent run of strong ones nearby can help you, and a run of tired ones can quietly work against you.

It cuts both ways rather than always down. The point is that a Jolimont number is built on a thinner base than one in a suburb full of near-identical houses, so it is worth attention before the valuation is ordered instead of after it lands.

• Recent sales within Jolimont itself, which in a quiet year may be very few
• Comparables pulled from Wembley, Floreat or Subiaco to fill the gap
• The land component, which carries most of the value on an older Jolimont lot
• Whether the property is green title or survey strata, and what it shares
• Approvals for any extension or rear dwelling added over the years

Rebuilding, extending and building at the back

A good number of Jolimont blocks still carry their original post-war house, and some of those houses are worth less than the land under them. Buyers and owners realise that quickly, which is why so much of the local work is construction finance rather than a plain purchase.

A construction loan behaves differently to a home loan. The lender values the finished house as if complete against your plans and a fixed-price builder contract, then releases the money in stages as the build reaches them.

1. 1

   Confirm what the block will actually take

   Lot size, zoning and the local planning rules decide whether you are rebuilding one house or fitting two dwellings. Get that answer before an architect starts drawing.

2. 2

   Value the land as it stands today

   If the existing house is coming down, its condition matters little. The equity in the land is what funds the deposit and the earliest stages of the build.

3. 3

   Take the builder contract to a lender who reads them

   Fixed-price contracts, provisional sums and owner-supplied items are treated differently across the panel. Some lenders will not fund a build with much left provisional.

4. 4

   Expect the as-if-complete figure to be tested

   With few local comparables, a valuer pricing a finished Jolimont house has less to work from than usual. Any shortfall between that figure and the build cost is yours to fund, so budget for the possibility.

Putting a second dwelling at the rear adds one more question, which is whether the new lot has a title yet. Not every lender will value an untitled rear lot, and the ones that will are not always the ones advertising the sharpest rate.

Survey strata, green title and what Jolimont owners ask us for

The newer grouped dwellings around Jolimont are commonly survey strata rather than green title, and buyers often do not notice the difference until the contract arrives. A survey strata lot has its own surveyed boundaries, so many lenders treat it much like a standard house.

Where it changes is the shared parts. A common driveway or shared services means a strata company, an insurance policy and levies, and those levies count as a commitment when your borrowing capacity is worked out.

None of that makes the property hard to finance. It is one more detail that decides which lender the file suits, alongside the size of the loan and how your income is structured.

• Home loans for buyers chasing the older houses on the larger Jolimont lots
• Construction finance for knock-down-rebuild and rear grouped dwellings
• Development finance where a block supports more than two dwellings
• Refinancing and equity release once a rebuild or renovation has lifted the value
• Commercial loans for owners of business premises along the Cambridge Street strip

Being five minutes away is genuinely useful on the first two. We can go and look at the block, and we have a reasonable feel for what a Jolimont street does before any report comes back.