What Is A Quantity Surveyor?
b'ARVE Error: Mode: lazyload not available (ARVE Pro not active?), switching to normal mode\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n{"@context":"http:\\\\/\\\\/schema.org\\\\/","@id":"https:\\\\/\\\\/onproperty.com.au\\\\/what-is-a-quantity-surveyor\\\\/#arve-youtube-sigo0-vxbk8659a0b2e72585336092236","type":"VideoObject","embedURL":"https:\\\\/\\\\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\\\\/embed\\\\/sigo0-VxBk8?feature=oembed&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&autohide=1&playsinline=0&autoplay=0"}\\n\\n\\n\\nWhat is a quantity surveyor? What do they do and when do you need to hire them?\\n\\nWhat is a quantity surveyor? What do they do and why is it important to you as you\'re building your property portfolio?\\n\\nHey, I\'m Ryan from onproperty.com.au, helping you find positive cash flow properties. I wanted to teach you today about exactly what a quantity surveyor does and when it\'s going to be worth you hiring them.\\n\\nA quantity surveyor is someone who\'s a specialist in the measurement and the estimation of construction cost. Now, this means that they\'re really good at looking at plans of a property and working out how much concrete? How much steel? How many bricks? What is going to go into this property and how much is it going to cost? They\'re also a specialist at looking at an existing property that\'s already been built. Maybe it was built 20 years ago.\\n\\nThey can assess it and say they used likely this many bricks, this much wood, this many tiles and how much would that have cost 20 years ago when that property was built. So they can estimate the cost of a property that\'s going to be built. They can also estimate the cost of a property that has already been built.\\n\\nNow, why is this important to you? It\'s important to you because when you\'re investing in property, there\'s a valuable tool called "depreciation". Depreciation is the lowering in value of an item. The easiest example that I can give is when you purchase a car brand new \\u2013 let\'s say you paid $40,000 for a new car. You know that as soon as you drive that off the lot, it has lost value and is now worth 10% less or something like that. That loss in value is called depreciation.\\n\\nEvery year, that car is going to get worth less and less and less and less. So a car that you might have paid $40,000 for 10 years ago, isn\'t going to be worth $40,000 in 10 years\\u2019 time. It might be worth something like $10,000. So there\'s a big difference between what you paid for it and what it\'s worth now and that difference in value is what\'s called "depreciation". So a car you bought 10 years ago for $40,000 has depreciated $30,000 and is now worth $10,000 today.\\n\\nThe reason this is important when you\'re investing in property is that the ATO allows you to offset these depreciations and count them as a loss on your property. And with the current negative geared laws, which may change in the future, you can actually offset that against other taxable income that you\'re earning. This is why it\'s so valuable. Because if you\'re a high income earner and you\'re paying of tax, over 30%, high 30%, maybe even over 40%. If you can claim $10,000 in depreciation, there\'s the possibility that you could get some of that back from the government or you don\'t have to pay as much tax.\\n\\nAnd so, depreciation is very, very valuable because it can improve your cash flow because it lowers your cost \\u2013 one of your major costs, and that is tax. Because you are claiming the loss in value of these items in the property, it just means that the property, on paper, isn\'t making as much money because you\'ve had all these depreciation losses. So this can be very valuable in terms of cash flow, in terms of giving you the extra cash that you need to be able to service more loans, buy more properties, pay for that next renovation, etc., etc. So depreciation\'s not to be overlooked.\\n\\nI know there\'s a lot of investors out there who invest and don\'t do depreciation, but this is generally due to the fact that they\'re uneducated about what depreciation is and why it\'s valuable to them.'