AIBU to say no to dh dream house?

[BakerBear]

We are first time buyers. We currently rent and have viewed a house today.

Its £300,00 and needs around £60,000 spending on it.

Its a lot of money even though we could afford it. Dh really wants it as its been his dream to renovate his own home rather than buy a home thats already been renovated to someone elses tastes.

I feel that as first time buyers buying a house needing £60,000 on it is out of our depth.

I dont want to live in a bomb site whilst things are getting done and also once you start renovating you can find all sorts of hidden problems.

Dh wants to do some of the work himself but i feel hes too busy with work and then it wont get done but he assures me he will find time.

We will have to get trades people to do some of the work.

There is nothing in the area that needs work doing that is such a big house.

The area if great with very good local schools etc

AIBU?

I'd agree to it if you like it as well, and if you get costs for having it done by actual contractors.

Even if he can do lots himself, one inexperienced man in his free time won't get much done.

So yes, if someone else does it straight away

Two things:

1. How realistic is the £60k estimate?

1. Does your DH actually have any useful skills or is he just an amateur enthusiast?

We've just done this, bought a house thats a bit of a doer upper. Currently got no carpets or paint on the walls, and no kitchen as such. It's all cosmetic though, nothing structural. We're doing bits and bobs when we get time. We both work full time, and my partner has joint custody of his 10 y/o son.
We're not rushing though, it's liveable at the moment, although it doesn't look pretty. We did all the moving ourselves and it was very stressful.
We got the house for £25k less than a similar one across the road that also just sold, and ours has a garage and more land.

Forgot to add, DP is very handy, he is a plumber by trade, and is trained in electrics too. He can do most stuff, but we have paid for a plasterer for ease and to save time.

I would never ever ever ever buy a property that needs work. Never again.

It depends what is needed imo.

Things like rewiring and replumbing are a nightmare because they have to be done in every room at the same time, so the entire house is a building site. Timber/damp treatments are the same, but tend to only affect the ground floor.

Kitchens, bathrooms and redecorating aren't so bad, because they only affect one room at a time.

I'd also want to be sure it was worth doing from a financial point of view. How much would it be worth if it was in really good nick? I'd want it to be a good bit more than the total of purchase price + cost of works, otherwise it's just not worth the hassle.

DSS bought a wreck that needed everything doing to it, and it took 2 years. For most of that time, he wasn't living there, and it made a huge difference to the value - nearly double what he'd spent on the work. He was lucky though, he didn't encounter any significant unforeseen problems and his lovely grandfather (retired building inspector and serial doer-upper) gave him a lot of advice and a fair bit of help.

Buying and renovating is a good way to get the home you want. I know a few people who have done this and have ended up with a fabulous house.

The whole thing needs to be project managed though. It's no use buying it and not being very motivated to get it done and done well. It takes a lot of time planning, sourcing materials and finding good tradesmen.

We did some work on our house, including an extension, new kitchen and a porch. Whilst the kitchen was done, we had a kettle and the microwave upstairs and lots of takeaways. I found it all quite stressful but we project managed everything very strictly. We had a finish date for the extension and kitchen and we made sure the tradesmen stuck to it.

The results are stunning and I'm so pleased now that we did it. We used a website called Mybuilder.com to find tradesmen and we got four quotes. It's not just about money though. In the end we went with the middle price, based on the enthusiasm and professionalism of the guy in charge.

Only do it if you are prepared to be fully onboard with it. Do your homework and keep telling yourself the mess and upheaval is worth it.

We have just finished - well almost renovating a house which needed everything (rewire, replaster, a couple of walls knocking down new doors, floors, heating and boiler, kitchen, bathroom and garden landscape) It was horrific and took around nine months. We moved on the week before xmas with a bathroom but no kitchen installed. We lived in a short term rental for six weeks whilst the bulk of the upstairs was done. It cost a frigging fortune. I'd say at least 60k . But our house is beautiful and has been valued at 65k more than what we paid for it. So was it all worth it really!!!! Sadly this coincided with a series of personal tragedies for me and some illness and I'm sure this has contributed to the break down of our relationship. It is worth doing if you can get a good plan together and get reliable trades however living in dust and grime is soul crushing and we have s toddler to keep
Safe in a building site. Never again!

Also, people think that they can paint in their spare time, you need good light for a lot of jobs.

Some of them are also weather dependent.

The thing to take from this thread is that it needs proper planning and your DH will have to have realistic expectations and a willingness to compromise and possibly change plans.

One thing that I've learned is that I love to mess about with electric sanders.

If this were a relationship thread, I'd be posting 'red flags, the hills are that way'.

Unless you can comfortably afford for those costs to spiral beyond your worst-case-scenario estimate and you are at a stage in your lives where you can happily accept sinking every free minute into it.

The mantra buy 'the worst possible house in the best possible area' is a sound one. I would go for the fixer-upper. Anywhere you buy will require some tweaking and If you buy somewhere smaller but in better condition you will probably want to buy somewhere larger in a few years time and the estate agents fees/legal costs/stamp duty that will entail would cost the best part of £60,000. I'd much rather spend that money on perfecting a dream home near good schools.

OP, do you have children, if not would you want to have children and do you have a timeline for when you want to start TTC?

We built a house. And the one we are in now has turned out to need loads of work that wasn't obvious when we bought it. I no longer care if the floor needs replacing, and the slight musty smell in the downstairs loo? It can stay there. I'd be happy to just not use that room.

In your situation OP, and with the benefit of hindsight, I would tell him to crack on and you'll move in when the work is finished.

The house could be a good investment if it's in a good area and you can add value, but you need to be realistic about timescale and costs. My thoughts are:

1. Is the house liveable whilst the work is being done? Or would you need to really rent somewhere for 6-12 months whilst the work is being done, which obviously will increase your costs.
2. Definitely pay for a full structural survey first, so you know what the hidden issues and costs are likely to be.
3. What skills does your DH have? Can he plaster? Paint? Lay flooring etc? How self-motivated is he to get on with the work?
4. Always allow about a 20% contingency in the budget for the works, as all big projects generally hit some additional issues.
5. Have a really clear timeframe if you decide to go for it, ideally allowing a month per room or something.

Dh wants to do some of the work himself but i feel hes too busy with work and then it wont get done but he assures me he will find time

^^This is what sticks out for me. You think he has little spare time to do a house renovation and that's before you come to skills, motivation and inclination.

How is he with 'house jobs' now? If you've always rented these could be thin on the ground but you still have gardening, minor repairs, blocked toilets, building flatpack etc. Does he get on with things straight away or leave them for days/weeks/months? Has he demonstrated any particular skill (helping out a friend or relative for example, knowing how to fix things)?

Renovating a house is boring, hard work if you don't have the time or inclination to do it and can drag on for years if you let it. I would be very very wary and probably wouldn't want to take on a project like this.

I would do it, in your shoes, but that's because I know we can work well as a team and would enjoy doing it our way. Someone has to keep on top of the finances, and life has to go on alongside work - no big holidays for a while.

We did it prior to having children but I wouldn't entertain the idea if I had children. When my first child came along and she was about 1 we didn't have a kitchen for a week/10 days and we moved in with my parents. I would have a proper survey done so you know exactly what needs to be done. My husband could do quite a bit of the work as he is tradesman and worked very hard. It has paid off and we have a made quite a bit of money on our house which is also located near to a good primary and secondary school. I didn't realise at the time what a godsend that is.

Ha! yes, it's a big house, but it was (is) the structural conditions that have cost the time, money and mess - needed a kitchen (there wasn't really one :O!) new roof (didn't last as long as we'd hoped it would!) but also damp & rotten floors, and v ropey rotten windows. And we knocked through a massive stone wall in our youthful enthusiasm. Added another bathroom, installed central heating. Oh and built a small extension (just one room).

We knew it needed a whole lot of rebuilding, but of course had no idea what that really entailed. And a lot of the time we aren't doing building work (we have jobs! and kids! and a life!) - tends to be in exhausting and expensive bursts of a few weeks followed by 18 months of "we really must fix up" whatever the next most urgent bit is..

Our house was barely habitable and yes, in a fabulous location. It also came with a massive garden (well, acreage of jungle some of which is now a garden and some not), so energies have been divided, and neither part has been finished.

However it is now a very nice, warm, dry house - but of course we tend to look at the not-nice bits and feel nagged by them! Resigned to the fact that basically we'll have a bit more space to juggle furniture once the youngest goes off to uni, then we'll in effect be finishing it so we can sell and downsize. So we've never lived in a house that feels 'finished'.

Telling the story like this so you can see that a lot if it is about how you deal with it and not everyone would mind, and a lot of the time I don't think about it either, it's just home, but there is no doubt that if I had my time again, I would not be so ambitious. It does get me down sometimes. The 'husbands who bite off more than they can chew' resonate here, that's for sure!

Few friends did this at various times and in all cases it nearly broke them. Will you end up chasing your dh to get stuff done? can you bear a mess constantly around you?
Do you have any help in extended family ..your df or dbs who could row in to speed things up?
I would not do it based on families l know.

We are serial renovators/builders.

The disruption for me is liveable with provided that it doesn't go on forever.

But you need to be careful. Renovations on old houses are more difficult to cost because often you uncover problems as you do work. You will need a large contingency. Do not do work unless it adds value and doesn't take your house above the ceiling price for the area. Make decisions based on value rather than what you like.

Our first house was a total wreck - a thatched cottage. It was subsiding, had woodworm and no floors. I loved that house and made all decisions based on my dream for it - we made money but only by chance.

Our current house, is a barn conversion that we did - it is unique and it's our forever home but the decisions on that were more commercially focussed. Still spent more than we needed to and therefore added value but the profit margin is less.

Our last project (a complex) of barn conversions doubled what we put in mainly because unless it added value, we didn't do it and if we did it we pushed the costs down as far as possible which is a lot harder with you own house!

It could be financially beneficial for you but unless you are happy to put up with the stress and inconvenience- don't do it.

What does it actually need doing? We can help you decide if £60k is reasonable. I suspect it isn't.

Generally price of a fixer upper + renovation work = more than the price of a dome house.

People pay a bloody premium for a fixer upper because they get all excited, so they end up spending more let alone take any kkkd of developer margin. Not rational.

You'll find loads of issues (probably) that will be a PITA to fix.

You know even things like decoration.... to do my sitting room and dining room took me and my dad 3 days to get to a good finish. That's six man days to do two rooms... and that was just over existing paint as well not over bare plaster that needs more coats. You think 'oh it's just slapping some paint on' but the prep work is v time consuming. And good prep gets you a good finish.

I loved my first house which we did up exactly as we wanted.
I am less keen on my second house which we bought done up.

We bought our first house in Nov 2015 it needed a lot of work done to it. Neither of us had ever done anything DIY related (even painting) as we'd rented before.

We did quite a lot to the house, took down internal walls and ceilings, put in insulation, moved the bathroom (put in new soil pipe), put in a utility, rewired, new windows, roof done (bits fixed and new ridge thingy).

We did the ripping out, insulation and plaster boarding ourselves but got a plasterer to plaster. OH did the bathroom and utility and learnt how to tile etc.

I did the rewiring (under supervision of electrician who did the connections to the mains).

Multifuel stove was put in by proper fitters and so were windows.

We sanded and varnished floors ourselves and did all the decorating.

The kitchen still needs done and we want to put in an upstairs shower room.

It was hell living here in the dust/mess etc and really exhausting having to do it after work. We got a lot of help from friends and family.

I think we've spent around £20/25,000 on renovations so far. I glad we did it and I'd say go for it but be realistic about prices.

Our house was a bargain as it really needed the work and even with the money we've spent we still wouldn't be able to buy a house like ours.