AIBU to buy the horrible house next door

[thegreenlight]

We live in a lovely (but small 3 bed semi with no scope to extend) next door has just come on the market - it’s horrible having been rented out by the guy across the road for years and he did the work himself. Our house has an extension, downstairs bathroom and utility. Next door has none of this but massive scope to extend to the back and side. We have never done a renovation before! Do we offer to buy directly from the owner and pay asking (it has been put on sale this morning through a local agent) what should I do? We LOVE our area but can’t afford a ready renovated house. It would mean a real dip in living standards while we do the work. Any advice? Am I being stupid!?

I am coming to the end of a large project. We bought a small 2 bed house with pretty well no kitchen and have put on a massive extension at the back. We moved the stairs, created 2 new bathrooms, new heating new wiring everywhere. So we lived in it while the shell for the new part put up. All the groundworks, and the roof. It didn’t affect us while that was going on. There comes a time though when you need to knock through to the old part of the house. We had to move out then for 6 months. It depends on the scope of the work affecting the original building. One piece of advise that will make a huge difference. While the work is ongoing pack up as much of your stuff as possible and put it all in store. Out if season clothes, any decent furniture, your decent China, book all your kitchen equipment you don’t use every day. It will all get destroyed by dust and it is so demoralising to be constantly cleaning stuff that you don’t use. We are at the point where we just have to finish patios, new windows in old part of house, then decorate and carpet. Been the longest 2 years of our lives. And don’t think you will be able to do stuff yourself with a young family. It’s just too much in my experience. I would rather work and pay a decorator than put 5 coats on 3 staircases of spindles!!!

Sounds like having a caravan or similar parked on site might be a useful option for cooking, sleeping at the worst of the renovation

Except the other house has been sold to someone else!

Definitely do this if you can! Tackle it room by room and you will have a great house and make money in the end. Kids are very adaptable and will get on board with the project.

Sounds like a dream! Good luck and go for it!

Won’t you miss your house, seeing people move into it while you’re in a messy house?

Also I think lots aren’t reading all your messages as from the first message I thought you were going to own both.

If you’re not going to do renovations yourself then it’s very costly and time consuming at the moment.

If I were you I wouldn’t

Hopefully someone competent will move in and do it up nicely

Omg ! Buy it! Buy it !!! What an opportunity!! Bet you’d regret if you don’t!!

You may easily get outbid by developer, if not sold privately, yes you are mad, too much work and drama

Well there was a post on here the other day, from a woman whose neighbour did just that to her parents, and she was asking if neighbour was being unreasonable, or 'cheeky' to ask.

Prob it's worked out for the best! Where we used to live a builder bought next door (both 3 bed semis) which had room to the side to extend. Except it didn't because the main drain for the street ran through that land so he couldn't get permission to go out sideways. I felt sorry for him!

This is what we did. We lived in a 1910 semi, extended it and updated it, but when next door came for sale we bought that one and did the same again. Next door (where we live now) has a small garage to the side, so a lot wider garden. We kept the back half of our old garden, so now we have an even bigger garden. Our old house still has a respectable 30m deep garden, and the new owners are no gardeners themselves, so it’s perfect for them. We could afford to buy it without having to sell ours immediately, so we were not living in a building site as we renovated and extended it. We insulated very well, got underfloor heating downstairs, and solar panels, so now it’s a warm and cheap house to run, especially considering its size (5 bedrooms) and age. We moved when it was ready and now I don’t want or need to move ever again.

I hope you don’t mind me throwing this in here.
During my childhood we were financially okay but reasonably modest, never had any holidays abroad and weren’t spoilt but never knew any kind of struggles for anything. My mum and Dad were both very hard working in reasonably well paid public sector jobs. Apart from the house I lived in when I was a toddler which I don’t remember, Both of the houses we lived in during my upbringing, were ‘do-er uppers’ renovations always take longer and cost more than expected, and both of the houses we lived in went from needing renovations to being very very nice houses, extensions, loft conversions, open plan this open plan that, conservatory. When the house is done, it’s time to do another room, and then so on. Then move to another house and do the same again. Unless you are loaded this is what will happen, you’ll prioritise one thing , then the money will run out for a while then you’ll do the next thing and it will go on for years and years . This went on for literally the age of about 5 to 15. Funnily enough I have been watching programs about house renovations and I thought about the houses I grew up in and how I remember them being done up, remember the loft conversions , conservatories, new kitchens etc etc being done, being talked about, dragging on, being finished , people coming round to see... then the next thing . I was thinking about how I remember that more than I’d actually LIVING in the houses , and actually the one thing I would change about my child hood , I wish we could have just lived in an adequate house, and spent more time just being together, rather than so much of my parents time and energy and conversation going in to us having a ‘really really nice house’ for me to suddenly be a teenager and then move out in the blink of an eye

Great idea. X

We bought a total dump (think untrained toilet habits of children, cats and dogs 🤮) and have spent years living in and renovating. Yes it’s been hard but it’s the best thing we did - we built our home and we love it

FWIW I think you had vastly underestimated the cost of building work right now. I've just finished my house reno, no extension just a bit of internal modelling, new kitchen and two new bathrooms, full redecoration. We spent £70k in the end - 50% over budget and we have nothing high end, everything was bought with economy in mind and for the most part we paid mates rates to tradespeople. There's no way you'd get a 2 story extension for anything like £100k!

*remodelling, that should say. Converted a garage into an office and removed an internal load bearing wall.

I'd do it. You can always buy a decent static caravan to provide construction free room whilst you renovate. I think the kids will find it exciting.

If all the figures add up, go for it. We’ve done a few complete renovations. The house we live in now was in a terrible state. We moved into one room with our disabled son who was 7 at the time and I was 15 weeks pregnant. My husband is super organised though and I was choosing windows whilst bringing in boxes from the van about an hour after picking up keys! We aimed to do two rooms at a time but initially all lived in one room. It seems like a distant memory now! It’s very stressful and hard work but definitely worth doing x

I did this. It's a very demanding game because you don't seem to live in either house for ages. But I'm pleased I did it. The 'old' house wasn't big enough and having the next door property has doubled my space and has been far better than moving to a bigger place.

Sorry you didn't get the house, that's a shame. Yours looks lovely though so maybe something else will turn up. More space more cleaning, look on the bright side

Get yours on the market and sold. See if this house is still available.
Check your agents contact thoroughly as they may charge you if you pull out of any sale (because next door is gone)

I think If you don’t go for it you will always regret it, especially when someone else buys it and then extends it. I regret not buying a lovely house in a lovely road which needed lots of work (husband didn’t want to) but that’s the house we should have bought, not the one we ended up buying. My daughter is extending and doing up a house now, theyve got to the nice bit, decorating and making it lovely, it’s been hard, she moved in last year when she was pregnant, she also has toddler, but she’s so pleased now

Go for it

Why are people still advising the OP to buy it? She posted yesterday that it's been sold