To want to share my shock at this?

Me too! It is a nice way to look at it. As otherwise it would just be sad.

I also guess its called house flipping for a reason as it's done quickly.

I think it can be a bit of shock after your parents die. You sell the house. Then the developer you sold it to, sells it for a lot more.

It happened to me too. Right after your parent dies, you have to deal with all manner of stressful financial things.

Developers locally did a fast turnaround on a bungalow and it looks lovely. It’s been on the market for months though, with different agents.

DH’s aunt had a bungalow with a huge garden. It was sold for 600K and the house next door was sold too. Both were demolished and in their place are now 6 large million plus houses.

The market in some areas seems reasonable and stagnant in others.

I think it's normal.

After my dad died, we sold his house to a developer. The developer then put it up for sale within 5 months.

Theu buy houses precisely to do them up, and then quickly sale them on

I don't think that's especially unusual for a professional developer who makes their living out of it, employs lots of contractors etc - the quicker they can turn it round, the better from a business point of view so they're used to project managing work at that kind of speed. It'll be interesting to see whether they actually get £800K, but if they've made a brilliant job of it and also retained some nice original features, I can see why the mark-up's huge.

The developer in your case was certainly very organised with all the planning permission etc. It will be interesting to see how much the house is actually sold for. Check on Zoopla six months after the sale.
If you want any work done yourself in the future, they are the ones to contact😊

The thing is, even buying at £500k a modest renovation using professionals is going to be knocking on £100k of work; more if extensions and landscaping are involved. Then there's the interest cost for 5/6/7/8 months or however long it takes to sell, plus stamp duty and fees from the purchase. The developer is probably in for £650k or so at that point.

Yes, it's on the market for £800k, but maybe it sells for £750k or less. So that's £100k profit (before tax) - but given the risk it's not surprising or unreasonable I don't think

You haven’t watched “Homes under the Hammer” then? Always a fast turnaround on that show 😊

An experienced developer with good tradespeople will blitz a large job like that. I think they have it fairly well tuned.

We sold a family home for c1m and within around 12 months, less probably it was sold for 2m! BUT it did look as though they must have spent 100s of 1000s on it to get it looking like that, they had done EVERYTHING and it was nearly twice the size! I was more amazed they got planning (they did this pre sale incidentally)

People pay for the convenience. It's much cheaper to buy a run down house, but it's not easy arranging and living around work being carried out for extensive renovations. Out of that price increase a chunk will go on the payment of people doing the work and the items themselves as well as the 5 months of planning/arranging. It sounds about right for the turn around, carpets and decorators don't take long, bathrooms and kitchens usually have a 2-3 month wait, gardening again doesn't take too long. If money isn't an object there's not much reason for a delay longer than the contractors waiting list length.

How much were modern, good condition similar properties selling for when you sold yours?

Nice to see new life being breathed into your old family home.

I sold my parents house. I got to see it after the new owners had done loads of work. They didn’t extend it but reconfigured it internally and completely renovated. It was wonderful to go back and see it. It didn’t even feel like the same house.

A developer won’t want a house that cost 500k sitting around. An 8 month turnaround is pretty slow so they must have carried out a substantial renovation. A substancial renovation would have cost a lot of money, they will no doubt have an army of traders at their disposal which again, cost money.

It’s also more expensive to renovate a house than to build from scratch.

YABU, a 25% profit sounds a lot, but I’m betting it’s not anywhere near that when you take into consideration parts and labours.

you could have done this yourself if you had the disposable cash to pay parts and labour. You could have employed a project manager to manage this on your behalf but I bet you’d struggle to see a massive profit, probably wouldn’t be worth the stress and hassle

On top of what others have said, there is no guarantee that the quality finish is anything more than superficial. A PP mentioned the roof of the house they knew of and that seems to be a common issue around here.

Our house had been flipped about a decade before we bought it and we uncovered some serious bodging like a downpipe that was blocked because it just rested on a grill at the bottom and kitchen waste that was supposed to empty into the same drain but just missed completely, soaking the ground. Both discovered under decking that had to be lifted because the supports had rotted.

Renovating a property can cost 100-200k (and more) depending on where you are. So YABU to think they’d renovate and not mark it up.

But YNBU being shocked at the whole thing. Seeing the family home move on can be upsetting 💐

Doesn’t surprise me, we had a similar experience when we sold MIL’s house - though suspect it was rented out after being done up as it only went on the market recently, a few years after we sold it. They’ve done a great job, including some re-jigging of the upstairs to make it a proper 3 bed (rather than one where the bathroom
is through the bedroom). It’s on the market for about double what the developer paid and fair enough.

I find it a bit unsettling seeing what people do to properties I know well! Even when they’ve done a great job - we sold a flat to a young couple who did a lot of work to it (mostly cosmetic) - looked great but I felt really niggled when I saw the photos for some reason.

Before the developer has bought your old home, they will have built up considerable experience. Probably bought properties where they have made mistakes, sold at a loss, just about broke even.
At the level they are at now, they will work with trusted people eg kitchen fitters, plasterers. But from what I know they will have been bumped along the way, left with houses not properly finished, had purchasers pull out.
While it is a huge turnaround in terms of money, it’s possible they have spent 100k or upwards on it.

We had a big two storey extension done on our rather small bungalow (on a big plot), a huge amount of work including knocking out the back wall of the existing building, moving the bathroom plus adding a second bathroom and a cloakroom, moving the kitchen and adding a utility, it took three months and the transformation was amazing. Probably added twice as much value as it cost, but we're not selling. It was always our intention to make the house bigger we really fell in love with the plot initially, but it took quite a long time before we could afford the work.