lots and lots of good comments. but it all depends on your goal. i recommend to my young clients to very clearly identify what your goal is ie. just moving out for fun, to live in to next, to create financial security and to have your mo ey work hard for you. And the earlier you start, the better. So, My people start on a planned path that steps them through the process to get to their goals. so, for you, you have to consider the current economy and laws, and your financial situation. At the end of the day, you must buy the right property in the right area at the right price and theres ways of working this out easily. Remember, buying and investment property is about one thing only: Money. And if it isnt makingyou money eitber by capital growth or rent do t do it.

I also place safety from all sorts of hazards very high on my list - so high I won'y buy land unless it is free from such problems. In NSW Australia checking on this is now a few clicks away. If you search for NSW Planning Portal - you can input a NSW address and hey presto - all information collated about bush fire risk, flooding or other water inundation, mine subsidence and geo tech problems, things like acid sulphate soil - along with lot size, zoning and any permissible and prohibited activities. Apart from ensuring the NBN is available at a prospective purchase in NSW and crime stats are low - this portal hosted by Planning NSW is a fast way of checking on safety, zoning and other issues affecting a property. It saved me a lot of time as I could eliminate a high percentage of properties [and save myself pointless inspections or shelling out money for checks] immediately and only put time and resources into genuinely contenders. It assisted me whittle down 100+ properties down to 4 solid options. Phoning an insurance company and asking what they would charge you to insure a property is also tremendously revealing - as a rough rule - the more outrageous the premiums the more serious the underlying safety and other problems are.

Have you thought about wallpaper? feature walls? Our wallpaper peals on and peals off with easy. You can do it yourself without fuss or extra cost. We also custom make our designs to your chose of colour and size for free.

Hi RePete, another app for drafting is Home Sweet Home which is free. My experience has been that some of the really good architects are happy to share their ideas when they visit as they enjoy the creative process so much. Eg Williams Burton met with us years ago (we are still figuring out what to do!) - and I was very impressed. We didn't use them as they are very fastidious so their builds take a long time and we can't cope with that but they do some amazing work on character homes in particular and although people think of them as only doing very expensive jobs, I am aware that they have also done some cheaper jobs where the project has got their interest. You could try talking to them and a few others from that "tier". I can't remember if we paid for the initial meeting, but if we did it was only a very small amount. I would seek as many views as possible (including here), keep trawling the net and pinterest as well as Houzz, look at lots of magazines etc, go to every open home that is vaguely like your style and ask the real estate agent who designed/built it... (hmmmm this is why we haven't started building yet after 8 years...) As Ok says, probably the only person that can determine what accommodation is required is you, so make that thought process a parallel one to looking at pictures. Good luck.