Homes Under The Hammer Selfish Ruiners of EVERYTHING

[LNPW]

AIBU to really hate people on HUTH who buy beautiful Victorian family homes and turn them into scruffy flats set for a life of minging curtains and a million wheelie bins parked outside?

I know it makes financial sense to do this if you buy a big property but ffs ... leave the Victorian shit alone!

I watched one where they bought a gorgeous 5 bedroom Victorian terraced house. Huge original fireplaces, stain glass windows etc etc ... it needed a lot of work doing yes but the building itself was amazing.

“So, what are your plans for this gorgeous property”

“Well I’m gonna turn it into flats innit” fuck off

tragedy

I feel cheated when nothing has been done to a property and we are told it's been sold on for quite a bit more than it was bought for or bugger all has been done since it was purchased.

I think it gave me an unrealistic expectation of how much a house renovation would cost & take. On HUTH it's all "it'll take 6 weeks and £4k to paint, new kitchen & bathroom, rewire, carpet and put in a new boiler".

We've just been quoted £1,800 just for a new boiler. The cheapest quote we got for windows and external doors was £8,400, but builder BIL is going to do it for £5k. I can't even bear to think how much a new bathroom and kitchen are going to cost.

Builder BIL does a lot of renovations for someone with a big rental portfolio, and he thinks most of the people on HUTH are crazy.

I caught this the other day. A couple did the house up to rent & spent the bare minimum. Instead of proper floors or tiles, they used swirled spray paint and epoxy resin. I haven’t got over how bloody hideous it looked.

@LakieLady this! Either they find suckers who do the job at cost if the materials or work themselves. We wanted to refund a fence in our garden and maybe replace part of it with a wall, we were not able to afford the quote. Same with everything else. Where do they find workers who teddy wiring, replastering, repainting, new kitchen and bathroom and floors and windows and construction with like 3 grand I have no clue.

@GnomeDePlume

The Victorians did exactly that to the Saxon church in my village. Well, they didn't stick on a porch, but the ripped out all the 'old fashioned' interior. It now looks like a small, whitewashed barn inside.

The Saxon sundial is still quite nice though.

I'm on the fence. The first flat I owned (eons ago) was in a grand Victorian house that had been converted. Top 2 floors, absolutely huge. Gorgeous, but a nightmare to heat. There was no parking space out front (street parking was difficult) and the back garden which wasn't huge had been converted to parking spaces.

If the house had still been a house, it wouldn't really have worked for a family with 3 kids as the schools in the area were also poly and Victorian and not very good.

All those poor neighbours, their hearts must sink when they realise that the terraced house next door is going to become student accommodation.

It's a show about greed Yes I agree Chic Most of the other effing shows about buying property are the same.

I get really upset about the ones where townees with huge budgets buy in the country pushing up the prices and making it impossible for the locals to live in their own towns/villages

The environment is also suffering due to the extreme 'modernisation' of the houses. Ripping out perfectly serviceable kitchens because the colour or layout isn't 'fashionable'.

@Bertucci I watched that episode - it was horrific what they did to that house!

HUTH is my guilty pleasure at the moment (working from home) but I do question a lot of people's taste on that show.

I’m not an avid viewer of this programme but I have seen it many times over the years and I’ve never yet seen a “beautiful Victorian property.” The shows I’ve caught have all involved properties that look like they have just survived the blitz.

I hate it when you see that the developer has blocked up a chimney- usually without a vent, which is going to cause damp in the future.
Either remove the chimney breast to maximise floorspace or put in a gas fire that fits in with the style of the building.

Well they do tend o focus very heavily on London and the South East

They really don't. The most popular area by far (and I can only assume that production is based there) is Derby and the East Midlands. I feel like I almost know the auctioneer at the Derby auction.

YY every episode I’ve seen has involved Derby.

Oooh I love HUTH! It gives me the rage when they go back and NOTHING has been done though!

I watched one and nothing had been done THREE YEARS later! Waste of my fucking time.

Did anyone see the show the other day? The house had big cracks running through it, including one which could be seen on both sides of the wall.

In the reveal of the work that had been done, Lucy asked about the cracks and they replied that they were nothing much

Funnily the 'spec' built Victorian (and earlier) houses, which were complained about at the time have survived for well over a 100 years. I doubt if the cheaply built ones that are being thrown up now will last for 20!!!

I think this show bears a lot of responsibility for the huge amount of BTL landlords we have now. As another poster said, it’s a show about greed

Oh yes. The ones with obvious subsidence where they say something like " we squared off the floor and bunged some ties on the wall". Jesus.

We've done the opposite and bought a beautiful, run down Edwardian house that was badly converted to flats, and are slowly putting it back to one glorious large house.

Going to take years but worth it 👌

YANBU it really annoys me too.

Welcome to Cardiff and lots of other cities or towns where many buildings are split into student lets.

I've lived in a number of big, scruffy converted mansions in London and loved it.

They provided me with a home which had history and atmosphere...a couple of ghosts too.

But YANBU. I suppose in the end though...they're just bricks and mortar. People have to have somewhere to live. And it's not sensible to keep giant houses for the few when the many need somewhere too.

I think Martin is big mates with Graham Penney ( the auctioneer) so that’s why it’s very Derby-centric.

Yanbu
I hate it when they turn them into flats. It’s not about shortage of housing it’s about maximum profit for the owner. And yes, doing the bare minimum to the house to rent out. Not many of them sell on, they want money from rent and they’ll sell on at a later date when the house price has gone up even more.