to wonder what happens when the DIY SOS team goes home?

[lessonsintightropes]

Not sure if anyone else saw the one tonight where the team extended a 2 bed house into a 6 bed house for a bereaved Dad and his 6 kids. They did a fantastic job and it looked great, very tear-inducing.

I just wondered though if it's all a happy ever after? A friend of mine works in telly and used to work on that room makeover show with Linda Barker and the foppish guy - apparently about 6/10 people were mortified (with good reason - the finishes were pretty terrible in a lot of cases) and paid for the work to be redone.

AIBU to ask if anyone knows of a DIY SOS that ended up nicely? I am keeping my fingers crossed for Paul and his brood.

Expatinscotland, US property taxes are higher than British ones, at least they are on bigger homes, sometimes 10x higher.

My sister's neighbour had a DIY SOS makeover, quite a few years ago now. She hated it, said they did the exact opposite of what she wanted, claimed Nick Knowles spent lots of time sleeping on her sofa and that they trashed the rest of the house. I went round there not long after they left , and I have to say some of the decorating finishing was poor. But this was years ago, so maybe has changed! And when the programme went out you would never have guessed she hated it, she was all "ooh lovely"!

Depends on location, too, Aga. I am from there, lived there and owned property there. My parents' property tax is the same as a Band D home here, and it's worth quite a bit for their location. And the property tax on the terraced home/townhome I owned in another state was more expensive than theirs. But the cost of living in their state is very cheap.

Well, my band has gone from A to B. It is an HA maisonette starting on the first floor.

DDs best friend had DIY SOS in a few years ago on a big build, Nick did indeed do a lot of the work and the house was lovely when it was finished. They were a very lovely, deserving family with lots of issues.
Still is lovely actually, looks as good as the day they left and did genuinely change their lives for them.

Well the thing there is its a percentage, so at the top end can go very high.

Here in the richest borough, Westminster, council tax peaks at £1353 on properties worth millions, which as a percentage is very low indeed.

The peak is about £3400 anywhere in the uk.

On one of the extreme make overs the property taxes went from $1600 to $5600. That % of increase couldn't happen in the UK, because Band H is 3 times by Band A, but the houses being made over would probably have been Band E or higher to start with, and Band E is more than half as expensive as band h.

I've no direct experience of DIY SOS but a couple of years ago we were having some work done on our bath room and our builder decided to take himself off in the middle of working on our bathroom and help out on a relatively local DIY SOS.

It only took a couple of days, but we did think it was a bit cheeky.

I could never understand why EMHE people hadn't worked the property tax thing out. They are different to council taxes, not only in the fact they tend to be a lot higher. Ours is $25k a year. It makes my eyes water.

But you pay more for having more rooms, more square footage, an extra garage, a pool, etc etc. In EM, they also tended to be the best house in a crappy neighborhood and difficult to sell as people just don't want to/ can't afford to pay that.

Oh yes the more expensive your home the higher the property taxes...In the US most states have no State Income Taxes so the state collects most all its revenue through property taxes...In Houston a 200 thousand dollar home will cost the home owner and average of 5000 per year property tax...If you buy a 100 thousand dollar house you would owe half that amount.There is no government help with any tax bills.
Most all make over shows end up over improving the home and the once lucky home owners cannot afford the extra bills and have to sell and end up losing there home...It is sad but true!

I haven't really watched diy SOS but love cowboy builders. They seem to do a very good job so hope it's ok after they've been - some of their stories are very sad. It's frustrating though because Dom doesn't seem to really make an impact on most of them

on extreme makover though, they lots of times are paying off the mortgage or some large cash bonus type gift in addition to the house at the end.

they will go up when they are next valued

As others have said, the law is that the band cannot be changed until there is a "relevant transaction". That means the band won't change until the property is sold or leased. See [http://www.voa.gov.uk/corporate/CouncilTax/increasesFollowingImprovements.html here] for the official position.

Please bring back the boys, I know you think you might be updating, but you are losing a lot of the banter, especially between Jules and Chris.