Owning your own home

It's good that you've got a potential neighbour who have been along a journey with their place - you can ask them who did what and have a ready source of recommendations. You don't have to trust them (they might be clueless) but it's a better place to start than from nothing.

Same as everyone else, you could turn it in to a nice home with the money and some knowhow. The extension thing next door is something you can't really sort out though, so you'd need to take that in to consideration.

Possibility that it needs the entire roof replaced, timbers and all.

Put in a flat roof extension and get the loft converted properly. Then you might see a return?

I'm on the 'fuck me that is a lot of damp' side of things though. If lucky, roof could be OK and it could be leaking windows, guttering and fucked internal plumbing / draining?

General q, but would bathroom at 5k cover suite, tiles etc.? We're looking at getting ours done and have priced those bits up, but have been getting quotes close to 5 just for fitting!

Those pictures remind me of the state of (dis)repair of my school, painting over anything that looks troubling rather than fixing it.

Sounds like you need to head over to the thread I started for exactly this kinda question... https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/359046/?offset=100#comment15807234
But for here too.

I am currently paying
2.5 k plumbing
1 k electrics
500 plastering and door hanging.

Suite can be £400 or 40k.

FWIW I think the prices I am paying are great and the guys doing the work are solid. The main guy is working 9-6 everyday and its looking like around 3 weeks work.

@Quincy this is great advice thanks very much. Hope your build is progressing okay and it'll be worth it in the end when its finished for sure :)

5k is wild for just labour

@tbc @grams

Who installed that fireplace!?

yep upstairs master bedroom fireplace so makes sense it isn't in the middle of the chimney breast but it is wonky?

@konastab01 yeah it is not nice at all. The front of their house looks nice and it did look well maintained from that side.

@bq @chrisbmx116 that is quite the list. Perfectly done might get 380 for it now based on my estimates of the area - so if got it for 280 could be slightly in the green. Lots of risk. And then you'd still be looking at a shit extension with a shit plastic chimney flue

You could also get lucky... the damp may just be due to a bad window or a ventilation brick blocked up. The blown plaster is something you can bridge for a while (I have done same in my house).
The street is lovely and you can defo do something to disguise the view.
Also worth noting living on a building site is hell on earth, we never have the money to move out so live onsite during works, cooking and cleaning out of 1 bedroom and a gross bathroom wasn't much fun for 4 months.

It’s a flue pluming kit that’s fitted to the boiler, because where it’s fitted it’s not been in with clearances. They are a fuckin eyesore though.

You could put an offer in under it at what you think it’s worth, but I defo think it’s overpriced at what the estate agents got it up for considering the work it needs but you might get someone who can do all the work or goes in with rose tinted glasses that they have managed to hood wink with there patter.

Estate agents are shyster, not trust worthy at all imo.

Don't ever go to Croydon, this extension is a dream by local standards

Thanks! I think we need to get a better breakdown of what's being done. Will take a look at that thread.

man, french & tye really dropped off

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I'm also using a broker

whole of market? i.e. they work with a large number of different providers?

Some are limited in the number they use, and that can effect the rates you are offered.

Yeah

@chrisbmx116 @konastab01 was chatting to the neighbours non-flue side and they were a really nice recently retired couple.
Also chatting to the guy over the road, who was a builder working on his own house. Spoke to him for about 30 mins about the whole thing. From speaking to both of them, the couple paid about 420 with the loft already done. And then spent loads doing more to it. So unfortunately I think it'll go close to asking price which would eat a lot of the do it up budget. Will keep my eye on it from a distance

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You could put an offer in under it at what you think it’s worth, but I defo think it’s overpriced at what the estate agents got it up for considering the work it needs but you might get someone who can do all the work or goes in with rose tinted glasses that they have managed to hood wink with there patter.

There's like this weird thing where completely fucked unmodernised places have a premium on them because they offer a blank slate to work on, allowing a buyer to realise a home where they know exactly what has been done and when and up to their specific standard. Doing up a fixer upper is in some ways easier than paying for and fixing someone else's middling shit show.

Theory: the potential for full renovation has value, making unmodernised homes more costly to buy compared to partially modernised places (like the 'house b' in the original post).

We went through this in the summer. there was an unmodernised three bed on the road where we now live and they wanted £900k for it. It was fucked...all the features were gone, the owners were smokers.... I offered £840k for it which I thought was generous but they rejected it and fuck me, I was not paying more for it. At the time, the most a place had gone for on the street was just north of £1m.

We ended up getting a modernised place just down the road that had all the fireplaces, rails, good kitchen, loft conversion, studio in the garden.....and we had a fair bit of change from £1m. Fair enough it needed work and there was a little risk priced in to it but it highlights that 'modernised - but a while ago' is a shit place to be as a seller.

Honest advice, walk away from that. As a FTB that is a fucking big project. Roof looks knackered, damp everywhere, electrics need re-doing, re plastering, floor is going to all need to come up and be re-levelled, windows will need redoing and then you'll need a new kitchen, bathroom, flooring, painting, curtains etc etc. The boiler is probably quite new but it's a less well known brand (think that range started in 2018 according to Which). Neighbours fucked up rear extension looks to be leaning into your garden and as others have said is an eye sore.

Punt a lowball offer if you're up for it but don't go anywhere near asking, the house is a mess and the owners aren't going to fix it anytime soon. But corr not for the faint hearted

Good, honest advice. This is the sort of thing that I wish I had solicited a couple of years ago. :)

I have to agree that as a FTB I would avoid something needing that much work.
You can budget for the stuff you can see but it's the hidden issues that can really sting you.

Aye that’s the thing, it seems fuckin mental that stuff like this commands a premium because it’s a blank slate. When in reality any house is a blank slate, bunch of flats I’ve looked at have been semi done up or tarted up to look lovely but would have been stripped had I bought it but people go in and see house with rose tinted glasses and think they won’t have to do anything and then buy and go shit

I’d change the boiler, alpha is bottom of the market pish like vokeras are too.

Just managed to get someone to short our Ideal after 3 days without hot water. Please tell me they are surprisingly good for the price 🙏😅