Lake Country Play House

A luxury home without a swimming pool is like a hotdog without a bun or an aussie meat pie without sauce! It just feels as though something is missing! A common perception of a luxury home is that it is classed as a luxury home due it having additional extras or perks that are part of the home not as a necessity, but as an extra feature that is there because you as the homeowner can afford to add that little piece of luxury to your home. Therefore, an upmarket home which does not have a swimming pool, may struggle to attain that ‘luxury home’ designation.

The jury is out on whether or not a swimming pool adds value to a home and if so, by how much in dollar terms. What the experts do, however, agree on is that by adding a swimming pool, you generally increase the marketability of your home and in turn, the property often sees an increase in potential buyers checking out the home whether it is for sale or rent. This is particularly the case with luxury homes or homes in upper class areas where generally speaking, the large majority of homes all feature swimming pools. A home in this luxury category or located in these upper class areas which does not have a pool may struggle to attract interest and potential buyers do to the expectation that a luxury home in these areas will have a swimming pool. Not having one could actually hurt the marketability of the home.

Of course, potential home buyers are not looking for just any old pool thrown in which sacrifices space and is not in keeping proportionally or visually with the overall design of the outdoor area. Buyers are looking for a swimming pool which fits in with the design of the outdoor space and which is in keeping with the landscaping of the property. A pool which is close to the home and main living areas is becoming increasingly popular due to the ease of which families can keep an eye on children in the pool, as well as ease of entertaining. Australian families really love their outdoor barbeques and parties and having a pool close by to an outdoor entertaining area so that guests can move in and out of the pool with ease, is very popular with buyers. This also saves space and allows for more green areas and useable backyard space for your family. Fortunately, there is a large range of pool available these days in a wide range of sizes. Small, yet deep plunge pools are becoming increasingly popular with homeowners who wish to add that touch of luxury to their home, but don’t want to sacrifice all their backyard space. This has the added benefit of being far more appealing to potential buyers than a giant pool which overwhelms the outdoor space, leaving no room for anything else.

All in all, a swimming pool is a welcome if not an expected feature of a luxury home these days and whilst certain homes may not see added value to their home with the addition of a swimming pool, this is arguably not the case with the luxury home market, for the many reasons we have outlined above.

Have you ever wondered how luxurious houses are kept in a pristine condition? Well, the answer is no different to how the average home is kept clean. At the end of the day, a house is a house. Maintenance chores are very similar. The only major difference is the amount of work required to be done to it. For example the difference in size between a normally big luxurious house (compared to an average family home) will obviously mean more work is required for maintenance.

Many experts out there would agree with me that one of the must do chore around the house (to keep it in a clean and well presented) is to throw away waste at regular intervals. This point is the very main reason of this post. That is, hiring a skip bin form time to time is a great way to make sure that unwanted stuff and waste are thrown away to avoid cluttering. Why a skip bin? Quite simple really… the extra capacity of waste to be thrown out, when compared to your average sized bin. Another great benefit is not having to worry about going to the tip; especially if you’ve got hazardous waste, over-sized waste etc etc.

As always, I turn to the experts for their opinions to why we should hire a skip bin rather than going to the local rubbish tip ourselves. This time around I was lucky enough to ask a local skip bin hire company in Perth called Wizz Binz Skip Bins Perth for their view.

Below are some of the advantages mentioned by owners Mark and Julie:

• Getting someone else to do it! Instead of going out of your way to drive to your local rubbish tip, your skip bin hire company will do this for you! It is all included in the hiring price
• You don’t have to worry about hazardous waste, obscured items and other difficult situation
• Extra capacity to get rid of more junk in a single run (compared to doing multiple runs using a trailer)
• Local council approved for bulk sized rubbish removal – instead of risking of getting fined using a “home made” container
• Affordable pricing; when you consider the multiple round trips you’d have to do yourself using your own car, the cost of hiring a trailer and not to mention the total time spent

Apart from keeping your home in tip top condition and waste free, reputable skip bin hire companies helps to keep the environment clean by properly disposing of waste. Many will also help you get rid of asbestos waste, something that you should never do yourself.

So next time when you’re doing some spring cleaning around the house, think about hiring a skip bin to make your job easier and faster.

The overwhelming benefit of decorating your luxury home with antiques is that they never go out of style! Antique pieces of furniture were crafted in a time before mass production took over and because of this, antique pieces were all hand-crafted by artisans who needed to create a piece that was individual and eye catching, in order to sell it.

“Rarity at it’s best”

You have to remember that back in those days, catalogues were not delivered to every home for it’s occupants to browse at their leisure, television commercials (and in fact televisions) were not yet invented and social media was not a concept that could be grasped at the time. The only tool that artisans had to sell their wares, was those wares themselves. Therefore, they had to be eye-catching and arrest passers-by in order to sell them. These days furniture and home goods production is completely the opposite. Furniture is rarely hand-crafted by artisans, instead a designer will come up with a concept that can be mass produced and a factory will churn out thousands of copies of that item. Ease of mass production and cheap production costs is favoured over beauty and durability.

Furnish your home with antiques and you will be adding pieces of timeless beauty that not only give your home a feeling of grandeur and individuality, you will also be investing in pieces of furniture that are of a lasting quality which you can pass down to future generations. The same certainly can’t be said about furniture bought from many popular large chain stores!

Many luxury homeowners also choose to furnish their home with antiques because unlike those items that can be purchased from large chain manufacturers, antiques are an investment in themselves. Antiques are collectors pieces which often hold, if not increase in value over time, particularly if they are well cared for. We recommend that you use a well respected and registered antiques broker or dealer, if you choose to invest in antique pieces.

“One of a kind..”

Not all antiques are created equally, nor do they all have the same value. Like any collectors items, antiques have trends and as such, their value can fluctuate accordingly. For example, Japanese antiques were previously a very hot and stable market and were a good investment to make. Now the Japanese market has cooled in favour of antiques from China and Russia. Antique experts now suggest that Indian antiques could be the next trend and investment in antiques from India could be a wise idea. We suggest that you do your research before purchasing antiques as an investment for your luxury home, however, like anything.. If you fall in love with an antique for it’s sheer beauty and you aren’t concerned whether it is a good financial investment, then go for it! Adding a timeless antique piece to your home is never going to be a bad decision.

To many people, luxury is purely what you can see with your eyes. I’m not going to write and lie to you that it’s not. But what I wanted to remind my readers is that there is more than meet the eyes. This post is a great example of how a luxury house is able to keep a fresh look by constantly changing the contents in a subtle but creative ways. How is this possible you might say? The answer is storage. Storage is a great way of keeping the house items that you don’t currently use but at the same time keeping it. It is a service that many people I know utilise to keep a fresh look inside their luxury house.

In fact, local businesses who offer short term and long term storage are plentiful. If you asked the owners themselves, it’s probably too much competition to their liking. But it’s good news to you.. the customers. You are able to negotiate a better price or pay less for longer storage term; or even get an additional service (eg. removals) thrown in for free. Don’t believe me? Go ahead and ask them yourselves.

There are plenty of advantages of keeping your house items in storage. Instead of listing the advantages myself, I’ve decided to ask my local storage company that I’ve used before and whom I was very happy with. The company I’m talking about is Storage Perth WA. After calling the owner up myself, I jotted the following advantages mentioned by them:

• Extra space at a relatively low cost (compared to creating more space in your own home)
• Peace of mind – credible storage facilities have strict protocols to ensure your items are kept safe
• Flexibility – as mentioned at the beginning of the post, storage compartments are usually easily accessible. Therefore swapping items back and forth from storage to your house (and vice versa) is easy. Hence why many people I know utilise the service to rotate their house content from time to time. In fact if you do it smartly, people might think you’ve purchased new stuff everytime you rotate the furnitures!
• Out of sight – out of mind. Have you ever had that feeling where you can’t handle looking inside your house because of the clutter? Well, storage gets the excess content out of your sight. That means no more headache and bye bye clutter!

There are many other advantages to using a storage service, but I’ve decided to keep this post short. Let me know what you think about storage .. both the good and the bad!

Let’s be honest. When it comes to “luxury housing” or anything related to it, the definition is different from one individual to the next. It is the number one reason to why we have created this site to explore and share it with the rest of the world. It is by no means we are dismissing the opinions of majority with regards to “luxury housing”, in fact far from it. What we are merely doing is providing information to the readers and to highlight the differences in people… their perception and thoughts.

To start of with, we have collected quite a few thoughts from different people from different walk of life. Their opinions on many different aspects of luxury housing. For example; the gardening, design, furniture and even home services that is often required.