Did anyone buy a 'fixer upper' home? If so, how did it turn out? Advice needed!

[cabinbythelake20]

Looking to buy a new house and myself and my partner have found a bungalow (circa 1100sqft) in a desirable area on a large plot with a decent size garden. We are priced out of houses in this area that are ready to move in. We can see the potential - I am not sure if relevant on this thread but the property opposite the road sold for 100k more in March 2019- (ready to move in standard with a small extension)

There are lots of potential with this property but umming and arrhing as it does require complete renovation. We haven't viewed it yet but from the photographs I anticipate it would need:

• carpets ripping out and replacing
• painting and decorating throughout
• small kitchen fitted (currently a small open space with plumbing and an electric cooker point)
• possible rewire due to age of property and addition of plug sockets throughout
• connection to the mains gas and installation of combi boiler (houses on the road are connected, hoping this wouldn't be too messy)
• modernisation of bathroom but we could live with it for the time being- this would not be an urgent priority

Are we mad even considering this??? We have circa £20k available but after that we would have to build up funds again. We are FTBs, no DC (yet) and although neither of us are builders etc we do have contacts through work.

Have you done something similar? if so, what are your thoughts? did you regret it? do you have any advice?

I've never done it but I absolutely would.

When I opened your thread, I expected to see a much more serious list. Roof, rewire, damp etc. This is nothing.

It just may take a while. But it definitely can be done.

I'd do it.

When DH bought this place he just looked at location and potential. It took about 10 years to get it how we wanted. It needed new carpets, electrics, boiler, bathroom, double glazing. Then a few years later we extended out the back and swapped our 60s kitchen and cheap bathroom round (both ground floor) to give a decent kitchen diner at the back of the house.

All decorative stuff and some carpets we did ourselves (by we I mean DH ), he even helped the builder fit the IKEA kitchen. If you're practical it can save a fortune Electrics and plumbing we needed the pros for.

The only concern is can you stay longer term if house prices crash? Say 10+ years if needed.

If you are mortgaging, they might not like that it has no kitchen at all as most places won’t class that as mortgageable. Or at least that used to be the case when I was a mortgage advisor. Worth checking on though.

We bought a bungalow and turned it into a house. Huge project. The problem we had was unknown issues. We had a structural surveyor who didn't notice that many of the walls we wanted to keep had no foundations. Huge overspend. There was no come back as he had caveats on everything.

However, we now have a lovely house that we couldn't have afforded in a good location.

Your budget is tight but it's a really good way of getting a house you couldn't afford.

Your list will cost way more than £20k. Gas connection alone can cost £5k plus another £2k for a boiler. Rewiring can cost £5k too. As a pp said, it’s unlikely to be mortgageable if it has no kitchen because it won’t be classed as habitable.

I’ve bought a fixer upper in the past and after we ran out of money we ended up living in a building site for six years. It swallowed up our weekends because due to lack of money we had to spend all of our free time doing DIY. We had no holidays during that period either because the house took all of our money. We had a nice house but didn’t make a profit because the added value was roughly equal to what we’d spent.

No DC you say? Absolutely go for it although you'll probably get pregnant while your kitchen is non existent.

We've done it, but DH is quite good at kitchen fitting etc at the weekend.

I'd do it, but it will cost more than you think! Also, you may need a bigger deposit as the LTV may be small due to the work needing doing.
Some things can be done over time if you're prepared to rough it. I once lived without a proper kitchen for 2 years!

Tbh if it doesn’t have a kitchen I doubt you will get a mortgage.

We did. Our house was habitable but dated. We prioritised getting a new kitchen, plus living room and master bedroom (getting the walls skimmed, decorating and new carpets). The rest of the house we just prioritised.

I think there advantages of doing a house slowly;

1. you 'live' in the rooms beforehand to see how best to use the rooms, how the sun lights up/shades each room throughout the year, plug socket placement etc.

2. if you pay a premium for a decorated house, you could find some bodge work underneath it all and end up paying to put it right.

3. by doing some of the work yourself yourself, you can learn new skills and save money.

Forgot to say, we've never regretted it. It got us a house where we wanted.

If you can do it pre kids that helps!
DH's favourite phrase is 'builders and decorators aren't rocket scientists.' If you can DIY, do it, but do it well.

Oh and if you get an IKEA kitchen, they don't have a service gap, put your sink where the water comes into your house or it will take forever to butcher the cabinets!

We're looking to move on now and given the DC's ages, DH's age and my willingness to start over we've been tempted by something that doesn't need much work at all! But if something came on that needed work and was cheaper we'd take it!

Absolutely do it. We’ve spent £85k on our house (but done a lot more than you’re planning - loft extension, rear extension as well as central heating/kitchen/bathroom/decorating/landscaping garden - and have added approx £250k in value (that’s after taking house price inflation into account). We now have a massive buffer against a price crash plus much further up the ladder than we would have been. As you don’t have kids, go for it. We did and it was really hard but worth it.

Btw our house didn’t have a kitchen to speak of when we bought it, just one cupboard unit. We still got a mortgage on it.

Unless you're in the (majority) of people who can't bear living somewhere unless it's close to perfection then definitely, do it! You both need to understand it will be stressful, cost more than you think and take longer, and commit to that, but at the end you'll have something 100% yours, and it sounds like you will have added value. We did it and don't regret it for one second, but I'm happy to live in a building site, with dust everywhere and temporary cooking facilities.

We were in the process of doing our fixer upper at our leisure as a semi retirement project. We’d got a lot done in 3 years but then circumstances changed. Be prepared for this. Make sure you have a budget that is flexible.
We have to move again mid project due to work changes and the lack of time due to caring for elderly dying relative.
The project was exciting but now we don’t have the time to do it and are buying a ready made already fixed up house.

Ours had a roof and windows and not much else. We also had a 10month old! We stayed with in laws for a while and moved in after it was plastered and the kitchen/bathrooms were fitted. Tiled/painted/lay floors ourselves. Just about to finish the last tiling job 8 years later!!!😂

Absolutely do it! We have done slow property development as I call it twice now and it has made us a good increase in price.
If you can do it pre children even better as I did find doing some of the work on our second property which was a bungalow hard with small children.
Just done the almost final phase of a loft conversion going from 3 to 5 bed property.
Still bits to do but we just put up with it and slowly worked our way through. Spent 25k on initial works like new boiler new carpets, bathroom and kitchen but again we did this slowly and did a lot ourselves.
Probably spent about 70k including the loft and the property cost 226 now 5 bed worth about 425 in our area maybe more when last few bits done.
Good luck and remember that the discomfort of a few years can literally make you thousands.

I bought a house that needed all the work you list with the exception of being hooked up to the gas main and install of a new boiler.

I rewired, plastered, decorated, new floors in 3 out of 4 rooms, new kitchen with appliances and externally insulated.

I ran out of cash £35k later and I still need to replaster, tile and put a new floor down in my kitchen, add skirting board to 3 rooms and i need a new bathroom.

However, it looks pretty bloody good even in its unfinished state and im so glad i did it

I bought my first house for 19k and sold it for 88k. I lived in it for 3 years with a green bathroom a kitchen with no cupboards just work surface. No central heating and single pained windows. I saved every spare penny. I ate noodles and beans on toast, a fancy meal treat for myself would be curry and chips from the chip shop. I wore my clothes to a thread. It was so worth it l sold it and it paid a 50k deposit on a house for me and the family l now have.

In my opinion it was SO worth it, l do miss my curry and rice as well, it’s just not right for my now local chip shop.

We did two houses one after the other. Spend about your budget on the first which we gutted. New floors new bathroom new kitchen 2 new Windows plastering half the house new carpeting throughout brand new heating system.

Save money where you can buy doing the grunt work yourself. We ripped out two fireplaces a ceiling removed and dumped all the carpets broke out a concrete floor all ourselves. All the decorating we did ourselves. We sold the property was worth about 30k afterwards so worth it financially.

My advice is to make sure you preserve a couple of rooms as havens for yourself to get away from the mess at the end of the day. Also buy a cheap kitchen but a more expensive countertop. We used Ikea and built it ourselves then used oak tops. Just needed a man to fix it all together. Learn brick floating and tiling yourself. Buy cheap materials online. Discount flooring.com is good. Buy materials yourself that way you are just being charged for labour.

It's hard work but very satisfying and you end up with exactly what you want!

We did it. We bought an uninhabitable, unmortgagable house and turned it round in 10 weeks. We were not living there though. We took it back to brick, had a new roof put on, re-did the electrics, had a new heating system, plastered and decorated through out, fitted a new kitchen and bathroom, new carpet/laminate flooring replaced all skirting and architraves, had new doors fitted, made repairs to double glazing, took up an asbestos floor and thoroughly cleaned EVERY part of the house. Total cost of works was around £30,000. We did very little work ourselves but used local tradesmen and researched cheaper options for the kitchen as it was going to be a rental property initially.

As someone else mentioned the biggest problem we had was getting a mortgage as there was no working kitchen or bathroom. However, there are options out there and a good broker would be able to talk you through it although it's not without risk as long as you are confident in your tradesmen and timescales it is well worth it.

Ah we bought a house that was liveable and structurally sound, with new double glazing. Every single room has been taken back to the stone though over 8 years and we did it room by room. We did almost everything ourselves besides new wiring (We moved the kitchen so the wiring had to be moved). DH bought a massive DIY book and YouTubed like mad. It isn't as mysterious and impossible as I thought to say, build a stud wall. We had lots of advice from experienced and knowledgeable friends. But confidence and common sense goes a long way.
If the location is perfect, do it. It will take ages but in our case totally worth it. Love our house now and know it so intimately if anything needs adjusting or fixing we know exactly what's going on.
Doing things bit by bit as you can afford it can be frustrating, but is definitely the done thing where I live, everyone is partway through some room/shower installation or other!

Yes we did this. Not a bungalow but very similar work. We:

• took out storage heaters
• installed gas connection
• gas boiler and rads, new water cylinder
• full rewire throughout
• attic insulated and floored
• stripped wallpaper throughout
• completely replastered throughout and got rid of stippled ceilings
• new floors throughout

€25k (note euros)

We didn’t do the 70s kitchen as we are about to extend that.

The bathroom is not to our taste but not too bad (just one single lady living in the house before us). It is completely functional so we will do that last.

The bit where the whole house was just a grey shell with wires hanging out was a bit scary but it was worth it in the end!

Yes - we've renovated and I wouldn't be daunted by your list. New flooring and decoration is something I'd expect to do anyway unless the house was immaculate and completely to my taste and new kitchen and bathroom are pretty standard projects.

We've still got a few things to do on our house but I'm glad we did it. House was cheaper than neighbouring houses and we've got it how we want it rather than having fittings someone else chose.

Wow I am finding this really inspirational, it sounds like some amazing work has been completed. Perhaps due to my age, I have no friends or close contacts that have done something similar. My excitement has turned in to being overwhelmed despite being able to see what a great opportunity it could be. The biggest pull for us is the location, proximity to the village and the (freehold) land that comes with the property - it would be a lovely place to bring children up in and I imagine they would have lots of fun playing in the big garden! I do love bungalows too - there would be room to extend in the future - up, sideways and backwards should this be needed!

I honestly thought the answers would be to dodge it like a bullet, particularly due to the fact that it isn't on the main gas supply! I have checked and next door neighbour definitely is, so maybe not as much of a concern as I initially thought!

It hadn't even crossed my mind about the mortgage and the kitchen - thank you so much for bringing this to my attention i will raise it with my broker! Not sure if this would be relevant at all, but we would be able to live with parents whilst the kitchen is sorted and we would be looking to put 15 or 20% deposit down?

The bedrooms and lounge areas look fine - old fireplace to be taken out but generally it's a case of new carpets & painting and ceiling lights to be readjusted in the ceiling.

Priority would be given to connection to the main gas supply and combi boiler installation, complete rewire and fitting a kitchen!

Can only repeat what other people have said -

1. It's very unlikely that you'll get what you want to do for that budget. Things always cost more than you think.

1. There will be hiccups or massive issues that will disrupt your plans. We exchanged on our "fixer upper" having kept back enough money to do immediate works. Received unexpected call 5 mins later, husband had to fly half way around the world & pay for funeral of relative. Used up all of the budget for our immediate works.

1. If you're going to live in it whilst you do it, be prepared for that especially if its going to take a long time. Not wanting to invite friends round, being embarrassed by the mess / dust / half done jobs. It can get you down when you've had a hard day at work and you don't want to do DIY when you get home.

BUT as others have said, its worth it in the end - financially it was brilliant for us, if you don't have children it will be much easier and you'll get a great sense of achievement out of it. Just go into it with your eyes wide open that its not easy as all the TV renovation programmes make it look.