To want to share my shock at this?

Depends where you live. Round my way most family homes are sold within days

Some people put uplift clauses in sales contracts to share in profits if they know they are selling a renovation project

There’s a house near me that took about 6 months to be renovated. They striped it right back and everything is brand new. I have no doubt the developer made a huge profit but they also spent a lot on it.

This has just reminded my of a friend who saw her old house was on the market and was most miffed that the people who bought it from her redecorated. She said she didn’t particularly like the colours of the walls when she moved in but got used to it 😂

The bungalow next to me is currently undergoing a redevelopment. The previous owner moved out seven weeks ago and the bungalow looks almost completed, new roof, large extension and most interior walls initially removed - according to my rather nosy window cleaner!

Literally within an hour of my neighbour leaving, two huge skips and a porta loo turned up and scaffolding was being built. The builders arrived that same day and started filling the skips with rubble before the end of the day. The team worked in the dark using torches on their helmets and started work at 7 am, doing 12 hour days even over the weekends. They were very quiet though, no radios, no loud talking although obviously there was some noise from machinery.

The main inconvenience has been the parking of vans in our street although the foreman seems to watch out and get them moved if they are a nuisance for the neighbours - some elderly with carers, gardeners, cleaners etc.

So house can be turned around very quickly if the developer has a team of workers ready to get going. I reckon the bungalow will be on the market in a couple of weeks.

Just because it's on the market for that price doesn't mean it will sell at that price.

But to be honest, if you sold a property that was in poor condition and needed renovating for half a million pounds, it doesn't particularly surprise me that the same property could be marketed at such a high price post renovation.

You sold it for 500k they probably spent at least 100k on it.
Probably bought it in to line with other properties locally.
They say buy the worst house on the best street , that’s what they’ve done.

We experienced similar with our childhood home, only ours was repossessed.
Someone bought it for a song, did it up beautifully and made it worth loads more.
I was mostly happy to see that our family home, despite all our happy memories, was in a very poor state and that someone put a lot of love and care back into it.

YABU to be surprised at the speed - five months is not that quick at all, even if it needed major structural work: new roof, full rewire etc. Professional developers with dedicated teams of tradespeople can work incredibly quickly in an empty property. It's not at all comparable to the timescales of a renovation when the owners are living there, and when you have to wait for decent tradespeople to be available.

They will have spent a lot of money doing it up to that standard and theres no guarantee it will fetch the asking price so it’s not that astonishing. It must be strange though lovely to see it like that. Hope it goes to a good home, as it were.

Five months is easy if you've got the tradespeople and the cash - both of which a decent developer will. They're not doing the kitchen, the moving onto the bathroom, then moving onto some decorating - they're doing several jobs simultaneously.

We used to do that sort of development. So, you have an extra five percent on top of the usual stamp duty before you start. You have lots of hidden costs too…council fees, legal estate agent conforming with all the regulations. Honestly most jobs made some profit but nothing like it looks on paper. We had to stop because it became too hard to make any profit in London / outer London.

AIBU to be surprised by the speed of the turn around
Have you never heard the phrase "time is money"? The longer it takes, the more any profit made is eroded away by interest charges.

No. The developer might have had their team ready to go from day one and it’s a formula doing up houses (I used to flip them myself, albeit much lower price wise). I had my favoured suppliers and could get materials in quickly. Contacts at the local planning office - that sort of thing helps speed things along. So the five months doesn’t surprise me. Not does the price. Stamp duty alone would have cost the developer £40k. And easily spent £100k doing it up. The fact a detached sold for £820k EIGHT years ago sets precedent. I often broke the highest price on the streets my houses were on. Because I did my houses up to a high standard - not the fix it up cheap a la Homes Under the Hammer. I included washing machines, dishwashers all integrated. I landscaped the gardens, put in blinds and furnished the place. I put in nice accessories. I wasn’t fooling anyone that people actually lived there but it sold a lifestyle.

I think five months for a developer is actually a long time!! I would’ve expected a 2-3 month turnaround tbh. A friend renovates flats and he’s so well organised his turnaround is weeks. The price is probably also explained by the fact it took them 5 months!

That wasn’t her question ffs

Experienced developers tend to be bullish on how much they pay in the first place, and they may well be being ambitious with the sale price. It might be interesting to look up what the agreed price is once the sale goes through.

The difference in buy and sell prices needs to cover all their fees for both transactions as well as building costs and profit. With a substantial upgrade you might be surprised how much they need to make just to cover their costs.

I don’t think this is true necessarily.
Developers need a big margin and if you are doing it yourself you can take a longer view.
I have bought a property at auction before which was a wreck and made money on it. Not enough for a business though.

I wouldn't be that surprised. I just had my bathroom renovated and it took two men three weeks to strip it back to the brickwork, do some rewiring and plumbing, put in a new window, redo the ceiling, tile and refit. If this was a professional developer I'd guess they'd have lots of tradespeople to throw at the job, so if they were doing multiple rooms simultaneously then 5 months would be a breeze.

I'm pleased to see this is a happy story, rather than you being devastated at what they have done to your parents home.

I see this a lot in the area where I live, but mostly with detached houses. A small old house will suddenly become a massive flashy house sold for twice the price it was on the market for, so it doesn’t surprise me at all. I do wonder what my DMs detached bungalow will turn into one day, as she has tall houses on either side, and she has a decent sized plot, so there is a lot of scope to create something much larger. None of her DC are property developers though so we won’t be making big money from it.

It’s amazing but also a little sad also because I imagine with the rise of these property developers, there’s very few ‘doer uppers’ for the average person or first time buyer to be able to afford to get on the housing market 😑

Something very similar happened to my grandparents' house! The turnaround and finish was astonishing.

Building costs are so extortionate now that I expect the profit is not as much as you'd think. It's interesting though what you can do with a house if you have enough cash to invest!

Developers can do an all fur coat and no knickers job pretty quick

Our house was like this. Untouched since the 1960s . Developer bought it then us. People will pay for the convenience of having a turn key property.