Brisbane Boarding Houses refer to a type of property in Brisbane that allows rooms within one dwelling to be let out separately on individual leases.
It is essential first to point out that definitions of rooming houses and boarding houses vary across different Councils. We will use the Brisbane City Council (BCC)guidelines for simplicity.
Click here to see the BCC guidelines.
Boarding houses and rooming houses are one and the same. A boarding house is a class of the rooming house. Hostels, monasteries, and off-site student accommodation are other examples of what is defined as 'Rooming Accommodation' in the BCC guidelines.
However, the rooming house investments we are referring to are much different from the boarding houses of the past. While some social housing takes the form of boarding houses, we refer to a type of privately run, highly finished product aimed at young professionals.
Brisbane Boarding Houses generally have many small rooms with only a bed and minimal facilities. The occupants will utilize large shared facilities such as kitchens, laundries, and often toilets and showers. The rooms are generally tiny and don't offer much in the way of a self-contained space.
The Rooming Houses we produce have semi-self-contained rooms that are more akin to an apartment than a boarding house bedroom and are often referred to as micro apartments. Each micro apartment has an ensuite, kitchenette, bedroom area, lounge area, storage cupboards, etc. We also make them lockable from other rooms by utilizing electronic pin-coded smart door locks.
Each micro-apartment room will have access to common areas such as a complete kitchen area, a laundry with two 10kg washing machines, and, sometimes, shared external facilities.
When tenants move into one of our semi-self-contained mico-apartments, they are provided with everything they require.
We have developed this product over several years with the inclusions and designs to ensure that it is as appealing to potential tenants as possible; this has been done with extensive consultation with our knowledgeable and experienced property managers to create a specification offering that attracts a high yield without capitalizing.
Front doors to the rooming houses and all of the internal unit doors have smart electronic pin-locks that are wifi and Bluetooth enabled. Property managers can change the pin codes remotely if a tenant moves out. Thus always ensuring the property is safe for the current tenants and minimizing any mucking around with sets of keys.
Shared areas have a complete kitchen and sitting space for tenants if they choose. This has inclusions such as stainless-steel kitchen appliances; however, we have found that most tenants use their kitchenettes instead. The laundry has two seven or 10-kg washing machines for tenants to use.
Also included is a Wifi System with and Wifi boosters fitted throughout the property, comparable to what you may see in a shopping center, with Wifi Access points in each micro-apartment for tenants to plug into directly.
Each studio has semi-self-contained inclusions:
Structurally, the property has been specially designed and also includes the following:
Each design has been specifically designed to minimize the noise flow between the micro-apartments and maximize the privacy of the rooms.
We have a specialist group that provides furniture packages for our micro-apartments. This means a tenant can move in and have everything they require.
We favor a higher quality specification and inclusion list for our builds. We find that they attract a higher quality tenant and set our micro-apartments apart from others in the marketplace.
In Brisbane, the BCC allows rooming houses to be built on a standard residential lot and have up to five lettable rooms (mico-apartments), with a maximum of 5 unrelated parties with a floor plan no larger than 300m2.
This means that if the block of land can be built, we can develop a design that will work for it. It's imperative to look at each block of land for the individual constraints and nuances and create an effective design tailored to the block.
Because our rooming house rooms are akin to apartments, we find that the rooms compete with and offer a better alternative to single-bedroom furnished apartments. In addition, because of the high levels of fixtures and fittings and the furniture packages, we have high-quality tenants waiting for our rooms and generally have them fully occupied within the first week of completion.
If you would like to explore the option of a rooming house investment or have some more questions that you'd like answered, please feel free to send through an inquiry, and one of our friendly team will come back to you.
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