Rennovating an entire house.

Cottage or house, doesn’t really matter.
Having been looking at houses in the area for a while, I reckon the house next door would go on the market for £210 -£230k so the financial investment would be sound (this shell is up for £125k), it’s in the area we want to live in and it’s the right size for us. We can live in our existing house after we’ve bought it for a number of years if need be (I’d rather not though). This is an option that I quite like the idea of, it’ll be interesting and quite fun at times and it’s one we’ve been considering while struggling to find a house we like that’s ready to live in.

Thanks all for the continued advice.

(this shell is up for £125k)

auction guide price? If your estimates on final value are right then it’ll go for more and you’ll be scrapping with cash rich builders/developers.

What Jam bo says. If the guide at auction is 125, and done up it will go for 230, it will sell for 170-190, possibly more

Nope, it’s up for sale at that. Obviously we’d offer considerably less.

Just had a look at the photos, jees it needs work.

I reckon the £10k+ on the garden is optomistic, if you want to make it a nice home, as has been said just getting rid of whats there already will cost a fortune. Then paving etc doesnt come cheap.

Definately live out if you are going to do it.

Cost it up properly and then add at least 15%.

How are you going to finance it? We were lucky that we could borrow money to do our place up, no mortgage company would lend the money until work was completed.

Nope, it’s up for sale at that.

then the cynic in me says there is something massively wrong with it…

It’s not that bad – there appears to be damp coming through into the bedroom, I assume that is from the leaking gutter.

Apart from that it doesn’t seem to be that big a job – I have seem MUCH worse – we recently viewed this place…

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-35010169.html

Walked away though – it is a MASSIVE job (the pictures on Right Move show the nice rooms. The other rooms are dilapidated/dangerous).

For a decent finish (not student house etc…) the very rough rule of thumb seems to be 500 per m2 for a “refresh” or 1000 per m2 for total refurb. I’ve even been told by many a builder to expect to spend the same again on what you’ve paid for a place so if that seems like a lot you’re either not being realistic or over paying in the first place.

When you do the above sums on paper it seems (and seemed to me!) like a huge amount of money but it’s amazing how quickly budgets get eaten up and it will end up coming near the above if you actually honestly add up every single penny spent – guess you’ve seen grand designs where they always spend twice as much and take twice as long…

If you do the majority of the work yourself and shop around for
everything then you can prob halve those figures above.

Guess the main thing is do you want to live in the house once it’s done as would be surprised unless you are a commercial developer you’ll end up making much money out of it, especially when it could take a long time and if yr working on the house you aren’t earning money.

I’m sure there’ll be lots of people saying you can do it for £20k etc… but unfortunately unless you are very skilled and own all the tools you’ll ever need already etc… £20k won’t last too long
(all the above IMHO).

I can cover the mortgage ok, we can put together a reasonable amount from savings which I was hoping would get it habitable, this is the juggling act we have to manage. The garden can wait till we’re in. After that we’d be renting out our old house which would hopefully provide a steady income.

Otherwise I’ll need to step out on the game which is going to be tough after doing a full days work *and* doing work on the house. I suppose my clients won’t need me to be awake though.

It is *very* tough renovating a house as well as working full time.

When we did ours, we would come home from work, rush some food down and go to the house for 7pm and worked most nights till midnight-ish. Then all weekend, every weekend.

Took us nearly six months before we could move in and that was when it was still only half-done. We ended up paying someone to paint the final room as we couldn’t bear to spend any more time doing it.

I’ve known a few people who’ve done this. Always costs way more than you might guess. We got advised by a relative who does up shells for a living, that it was pretty much never worth bothering unless you really have the time and qualifications to do all the work yourself (plumbing, electrics, plastering, roof etc.); he basically said that unless you know a lot of local tradesmen, and are commercial so buy stuff at trade rates, you typically end up losing out compared to buying somewhere that is ready done up. If it hasn’t been bought by someone in that trade already, then it isn’t a good financial prospect for a renovation, and they are calculating everything at trade rates, and hopefully without making any expensive mistakes while doing the work which us amateurs are more likely to do.

Not to mention that you end up losing any chances to ride bikes or whatever for years (however quick you think it’ll be, 3-5 years seems to be typical before they come back from DIY hell), which is rubbish.

But buy somewhere already done up and you still do stuff yourself to get it right. Don’t you?

And if it was done by a tradesman just to sell on then you’ll be re-doing all the shoddy work within 5 years anyway.

It is *very* tough renovating a house as well as working full time.

I was going to say this as well. Did it in our old house and are now trying to do it with a second home. Every weekend is gone as are evenings. However, the smug self satisfaction at the end of it is ..almost.. worth it.

Or biggest mistake has always been not properly managing and reviewing a budget. I’d hate to think just how much we have actually spunked vs what we thought we were going to

yep problem with doing your own gaff is you tend to stick better stuff in than you would if you were detatched from the process ie you specified a boiler and some rads ….. or paint the walls or stick down a wooden floor..

costs more…. looks better though 😉 depends if you want a home or you want to make money i guess …..

If you unfold that carpet in pic 3, is there a chalk outline on the floor?

My riding’s certainly suffered the last year because of the house, every evening and weekend + with Baby29er

But I still commute by bike nearly everyday and make sure I get out every once and a while for a ride/bivy/run with mates.

It’s all worth it and I’ll get back on the riding/running next year

btw we ended up £40k over asking price for our place, 50+ viewings in 3 weeks and turned into a bit of a bidding war in the end. We certainly paid more than it was worth (bricks and mortar) but location location….
We’re skint at the moment now but we love it and the area and Baby29er will grow up with open forest just round the corner.

If you unfold that carpet in pic 3, is there a chalk outline on the floor?

heh! On a slightly related note, one of the houses we’ve looked at we knew about because one of our friends was redecorating it before sale.

The woman told us she had to sell because she couldn’t afford the mortgage. She went on to tell us this was because her husband had been put in prison for growing and dealing cannabis, in guess where… yep, the house we were looking at. The house had this incredibly elaborate CCTV system installed and all the doors had these double locks on them. Our friend said before he could start decorating he had to strip out all the hydro kit from the attic and plug up a load of holes in the ceilings.

Anyway, you lot are well putting me off this now. Particularly the bit about not getting out riding. I work long hours as it is.

We’re still going round on Saturday morning though with a builder to get a rough assesment from him. The owner said she couldn’t show us round in the evening because there’s no electricity.

It’s probably just the angle/lens, but has the front right of the property dropped a bit, or are my eyes deceiving me?

Are you planning on lifting any of the floorboards up to have a peek underneath?

so what exactly did they do ….. get the keys and go round with a hammer and bash the living shit out o it ….. then get bored ?

Anyway, you lot are well putting me off this now. Particularly the bit about not getting out riding. I work long hours as it is.

That’s probably not a bad thing as taking on a project like this is not for the faint hearted. Listen to the advice of people who are qualified to give it and ignore those that aren’t.

At the end of the day (literally) you’ll need a lot of energy and drive to get home from work and get stuck in for a few hours each night. Then the panic can set in where you can only afford to do it yourself and there’s never enough time….think seriously if you have little experience of doing a project like this.