To want to share my shock at this?

New kitchen, new bathrooms (possibly putting up walls to fit in en suites), secondary glazing, complete rewire, dealing with the garden and any hard landscaping, new boiler (and possibly cylinder), any necessary repairs to roof, woodworm treatment, dealing with any damp, carpets or other flooring, insulation, repointing - I doubt the developer saw any change out of £100k, as others have said.

And if the developer bought the house with a loan, there will be interest to pay between purchase and resale - that could easily rack up another 15k.

Except if I could afford to do it up, and was young and energetic enough to justify having such a large house and garden, I would sell my house, move into it and pass the inflated inheritance tax problem to my kids!

But mostly I feel sadness that they let such a beautiful house fall into disrepair and have left me trying to sort/empty it all out because my siblings live too far away.

They are building new houses across from me. In 5 months they have nearly finished and there are 4 of them

I'm taking you've never watched "home under the hammer"!

What a little bubble you've been living in, I suggest you stay there, it sounds quite nice!!

Neither aspects are remotely unusual, I would love to buy a bungalow, but they are snapped up before they go on the market by developers 'done up' and sold for a price I can't afford!!

🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️

i'm pleased you are happy with what they've done to it, and aren't upset by it being so pulled about!! Objectively it is a very good thing, but sometimes it's hard to see the family Home being so chopped about.

Yes thanks for that. Maybe I can see it working If you are buying something that required planning permission say from a single house to 7 or eight flats. But if it’s just one house and you’re just making it into a better house. Profit would be too tight to do that.

Good money in trades these days I think, the days of cheap renovations are long over. That being said that is quite the mark up, I would think it might have cost 100k max to do depending on the quality of the materials and fittings. So £200k profit in 5 months is very good going. However, they do need to sell for that. Lots of overpriced property sitting around right now, not a lot of sales happening. Personally I wouldn't buy from a developer, you can guarantee all the choices have been made to maximise their profit rather than your enjoyment or the works longevity.

The idea would be that the asking price is lower so they don't have to pay as much up front which saves on interest and leaves more for renovation. Then you take a share (not all) of the profit to reflect the risk taken and also to get the money back that you discounted.
Probably more worth it if you don't need the cash urgently and want to sell to someone with less cash on hand

@GardenPart I think that is a pretty fast turnaround tbh. The developers near me don't do it that quickly.

Someone lucky is going to get a bargain, and I am going to pay a lot of inheritance tax!

We'll be a lot more if it was 5m!

You can do it yourself if you're a good DIYer of course but you can't make nearly as much money as a good developer. For a start, it's going to take massively longer, most people will be limited to fitting it around another job, weekends etc. You might not have the necessary trades contacts and you won't get trades rates aand discounts at merchants because you're bulk buying.

The developer hasn't made even nearly 300k either. He's probably spent at least 100k+ on it especially if it's got new bathrooms, kitchen, he's had to pay upfront for all parts and labour. Then he has stamp duty and fees to pay on sale. Even if he sells at roughly asking price, he's might have made around 100k ish - that's before tax. So yes a tidy profit, but every week that it takes to sell eats into that profit - so the quicker he can get it flipped and on the market the better for him.

My parents house will be one of these. It has recently been valued for probate at around 2M, despite being completely rundown and never really been updated since it was built over 100 years ago. It isn't even double glazed, and has the original horse hair plaster and the garden breaks my heart, the way they let it go It could easily be worth 5M if done to modern standards due to size, land and location. I would love to be able to do it myself, and dreamed of living somewhere like that but I don't have the time or money to finance the renovations, nor do I want to upsize as I am approaching retirement!

Someone lucky is going to get a bargain, and I am going to pay a lot of inheritance tax!

Builders these days know they can make more money buying properties to refurb, than doing refurb work for homeowners. Where i live you can't get tradespeople for love nor money because they can make more doing up and flipping properties.

it's the same as in rental market, we moved out of our old flat in October, the landlord renovated it and put it on the market for a few months but now it's back on the rental market and the monthly rent has gone up by over £400. it's smaller and more expensive than our new rental place.

Conversely, we sold my parents' house to a developer in late 2019. They also bought the rear of some adjoining gardens to make a single small development and in total built three new houses and also refurbished my parents' house. They completed them a couple of years ago, but two of the new houses plus my parents' house are still for sale!! Shocking in a different way. They must have lost a lot of money.

But I'm glad. The developer was an absolute piece of shit who lied and put pressure on us at a incredibly difficult time. Then made a right mess of things. The way they've remodelled my parents' house is just a stupid waste of money.

But it's a little sad that it's now not been lived in since 2018. It was a nice house in beautiful plot.

My dad's house and an elderly neighbour 's house + half a garden (all had big 3/4 acre type gardens) were sold to a developer about 20 years ago and there's 13 tiny town houses on there in a dinky cul de sac, each of which at the time were sold for more than dad's house! He said there was no way he'd have managed to project manage that and that he was well rid (rattled about in the old house)

My friend's neighbours bought at around £675k and re-did it themselves over 4-5 years, looking lovely it then sold for around £1800k through a 'posh' EA (along the lines of Savills). New people have apparently since discovered some bits were not up to standard you'd expect, looked lovely but things were hidden eg under new paint.

Experienced developers don’t hang around, the faster it’s done, the more money they make and they can move on to the next one.
It’s always nice to see how different houses can look with a new style. I’m in the process of renovating one myself (to live,
not to sell) and have taken everything out to all be moved around. It hasn’t really been updated since it’s been built, around the 70s. I can’t wait to see the end result!

I'm shocked you're shocked tbh! It really doesn't take too long to get things done like this once the house sale is complete if that's your job, so you have all the resources to hand.

Why do you care.