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?

Yes, I bought a bungalow to fix-up. It was perfect to get me on the housing ladder. We pretty much lived out of one room the entire time but got there in the end. Bungalows are always going to be in high-demand so a good investment. When refurbishing, keep in mind the target buyers for bungalows. Ie. People who need single storey living for mobility purposes etc. I ripped out the bath and fitted a large walk in shower x

@cabinbythelake20
Go for it!

I brought an 1880s town house 2 years ago which needed everything doing to it.

New kitchen/utility and bathrooms
Tanking of lower ground floor and excavation and relaying of the floor
Complete rewire
New windows and doors (including lovely bifolds)
New flooring throughout (engineered oak, carpets and tiles)
New internal doors
Coving and skirting
New custom made Venetian blinds on every window
Every ceiling re plastered and lots of the walls
Custom carpentry, (boiler cupboard, banister, tv unit)
2 new fireplaces
Garden completely redone including 10 tonnes of rubble removed
Completely redecorated inside and painted outside
New sofits, fascias, guttering and drainpipes
Plans drawn up for loft conversion (next to be done)

I was a first time buyer and we lived in building site for 9 months (with 4 kids and 2 dogs!) spent way too much but not intending move.

A standard Homeowners mortgage is usually cheaper than the self-build type. The definition of a working kitchen is quite low. A sink unit above a cupboard that looks like it’s plumbed in, and a free standing cooker would be enough.

We did it. Turned a three bed (two bed and box room) into a five bedroom whopper with office and utility. Three bathrooms, downstairs cloakroom, office, utility and open plan kitchen. It was hard going as kids were primary age and it took a year of upheaval plus we lived on site during the entire build apart from one month and it was a bit dangerous tbf. BUT it was the best thing we could've done. Our house is designed just the way we want it. Loads of space, quality of life is great.

We did it with two small children under 4.
Knockthrough, new kitchen, new bathroom, flooring throughout, plastering, roof works.

Never would've been able to afford a house this size in this location had it been 'done'. We probably spent £50k easily. We have just sold it for £100k more than we bought it for.

We had no kitchen during the beast from the east (got snowed in) and lived on slow cooker food for a month. We made lots of rookie mistakes (e.g. agreed to a daily rate for some jobs which then dragged on and on ).

It's very satisfying doing a house up though. Definitely better to do it pre-kids!

We bought pre DC and spent £10k. We -restored some original flooring
laid tiles and carpets in other rooms
boarded out the loft and put a velux in
changed lead pipes for plastic
rendered the outside of the house
dry lined the inside bedroom walls
replaced roof tiles
wall tiled the kitchen, painted cupboards, new sink and oven
tiled the bathroom
installed a woodburner
painted throughout
plastered walls and ceilings
new garden fence
new light fittings

We didn't need a new bathroom suite or replace kitchen units. Windows, roof and boiler were fine.

It got busy as we had our first child within a year of moving in, and 2 more soon after! But we sold after 5 years of owning for more than 50% more than we paid.

A standard Homeowners mortgage is usually cheaper than the self-build type. The definition of a working kitchen is quite low. A sink unit above a cupboard that looks like it’s plumbed in, and a free standing cooker would be enough

This place doesn’t actually have that.

I am surprised it doesn’t actually say Cash buyers only.

Be very careful before shelling out any money on surveyors or mortgage arrangement fees before you have it in writing that the lack of a kitchen or the state of the place isn’t going to stop you from getting a mortgage.

I'd do it
Live in it before you start to get an idea what will work for you
Take your time and don't cut corners
Make it fun

Yes, yes, yes. What everyone else has said, but my main tip is don't just rely on the surveyor's report but take a builder round too. They can give you a much better idea of what work is needed, and we found them - and in our case an architect too as it was listed - much more helpful.

Re the kitchen, that's quite easy to get round with an IKEA freestanding unit with sink, and a cooker, I don't think the standards for what constitutes a kitchen are very high at all.

Re the kitchen, that's quite easy to get round with an IKEA freestanding unit with sink, and a cooker, I don't think the standards for what constitutes a kitchen are very high at all

Can you start fitting a kitchen in a property you don’t own?

Hmmm so there IS a small sink and a few cupboards but that's it! There is an electric cooker POINT but no cooker!

Surely they would allow some time for the buyer to purchase equipment to live in it before deeming it unsuitable for a habitable precise? I have no idea though.. anyone else has any experience of this? I will clarify and discuss with my broker too!

I think everyone has one fixer upper in them, but then never again. Do it, definitely!

We wanted to buy in a particular area so we had to buy a house that needed work. We couldn't have afforded it otherwise.
We did the bathroom before we moved in as it was so bad and also had it rewired too. We decorated one bedroom and kept most of our things in there whilst we did the rest. We just did a room at a time when we had the money. It took us a few years but we love it here. The house is now worth a lot more than we paid out.
I wouldn't do it if you have kids though, the dust and mess is awful and although it worked out well I would never buy a house in that state again.

I would go for it. We are currently renovating our entire house. The property came with a kitchen, but we are replacing it, and doing it ourselves. We currently just have an oven and a sink, and we've got a make shift kitchen in the dining room. We found a solid wood kitchen on gumtree for £500 which is currently sitting on the garage ready for me to paint.

Every room needed stripping, skimming and repainting. All the carpets have/are coming up. The bathrooms are ok for now but they will be changed and tiled at a later date. Not everything has to cost a lot. We thought we would need to rewire but thankfully we didn't. We just had a consumer unit put in.

Carpets are obviously expensive, so for now we have stripped them all out and varnished the floors instead as the boards underneath were good condition. A tin of Ronseal costs £40 odd and makes such a difference.

Just make sure you get good house insurance! We've already had to claim because a pipe burst above the dining room, which I finished a few months ago. That was the only ceiling we had professionally plastered too 🙈 but it's all getting taken down, replastered and painted.

There are always going to be unknowns, but so far we have been lucky. But it's so satisfying seeing the changes and having everything how you want it. I would go for it - good luck!

Now flexible is your budget? £20k seems very tight to me, the gas connection could be expensive, my kitchen & family bathroom install cost £14k 12 years ago. Unless you have a healthy contingency I would be cautious. It’s really awful to live in a rundown house without having the money to make it a home. When you start renovating there are always extra things to do that you did not figure in initially.

@cabinbythelake20 if there's a cooker point I think that's enough - it is for building control sign off on a new building anyway.

When it comes to the kitchen, if you do it yourself you don't need to spend 10s of thousands. We spent £500 on the gumtree kitchen, £500 on a solid oak worktop, £400 on tiles (I liked a particular type and they were expensive), £500 on tools to fit it plus a bit more on paint and floor varnish/worktop varnish. Having said that we haven't fitted it yet so it may not go to plan!!

We did it. Pretty much a complete gut job, all new electrics, plus unforeseen issues with damp and the roof. It took a lot of work and much more money than we had thought it would. But it’s a lovely old house and we’re very happy in it now.

There’s still lots of little nightly bits to do; it’ll probably take another couple of years and another ten grand to get the whole thing done to where we want it to be.

I have done it once and now doing a second bigger house.

First house couldn't live in it for six months and took two years to finish but we did a huge job on it. Lived in the house another three years then sold it.

After that we bought another house that needed more work and are progressing with the work now.

The first house we did:

Re wire
New boiler and radiators and plumbing
Re plaster
New kitchen
New bathroom
New flooring
Replaced the windows
New fireplace
Boarded the loft and re insulated

We did a huge amount of work ourselves but still spent £35k in total. Sold that house in 2015 so I am not sure that money would go that far today.

Cost it up to replace and then give your self a 20% overrun to the budget.

Yes I've done this. Wasn't a fixer upper, more of a 'what the hell were you thinking-er' Was an enormous victorian home once, waaaay back but when I bought it it had been turned into 14 bedsits 😬 but when I went to view I just knew, I could feel the potential it had to a beautiful home again. DH needed some persuading...... Now its all but finished (10 years later) and we have a beautiful 4 storey victorian house with more rooms than we could ever need but I absolutely love it and could never envisage moving.
It's a steep learning curve but for what it's worth:
Every job will end up costing more than you budget for, mainly because you end up having to rectify previous owners bodge jobs before you can actually do what you want.
Live in it first, see 'how' you live, no point knocking walls out for a big kitchen if you hate cooking and don't spend anytime in there.
Buy the best you can afford.
Educate yourself, watch YouTube videos etc and do as much DIY as you can, this will save you thousands. I can lay tiles, cut skirting boards, wallpaper, paint etc etc
Get your bedroom done ASAP so you have a haven to retire to at night after living in chaos and washing up in the bath.
Good luck!

Surely they would allow some time for the buyer to purchase equipment to live in it before deeming it unsuitable for a habitable precise

They are lending on what is there now and not in the future otherwise why would any mortgage company deny a mortgage on a property with other things wrong. They would lend and hope the work gets done at some point.

I think everyone saying go for it is encouraging the op to lose a lot of money.
Please be careful and don’t spend money you don’t mind losing on organising a mortgage that might get denied

I’d say that a good rule of thumb is to look up and research what everything you can think of to do in the house would actually cost you. Don’t pull prices out of thin air. Ask around from others who have had work done recently on similar properties, or get quotes from people you know in the industry. Whatever the projected total comes to, double it. That’s your bottom estimate. Plan for a contingency fund too.

And plan for it to take at least five years.

I think your budget is tight unless you can do a fair bit yourself.
We took our current house back to bare bricks, rewired, replumbed, rear extension, loft extension, new windows, new doors, replastered, moved the garage.
But
DH did it as his full time job (I am the main earner)
This is what he does (doing up properties)
He knows tradespeople and can do a lot himself.
We had somewhere else to live

We have a lovely house and the cost of the work was probably 25% of the increase in value from the work.

We bought a fixer upper. It had a sink in the kitchen but nothing else and we couldn’t get a mortgage on it. Lenders won’t lend on the basis of what you plan to do with it - it’s based on its current condition. Only way round it would be to get the sellers to install one cheaply (not possible for us as it was a probate sale with lots of red tape).

Anyway we got a specialist renovation mortgage which cost a fortune and did it up. Lived there while I was pregnant. It was totally worth it - we spent about £70k and it’s now worth about £200k more than we paid for it 3 years ago.

It’s still not done though and I think we’ll be working on it for years.

As pps have said, you’ll likely need more than £20k to do all of that, but if you can live in it and take it slowly then maybe that’s ok.