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!?

@thegreenlight

It’s livable currently but has a tiny kitchen. I’m concerned what we would do for cooking when the whole back of the house gets knocked out!

Set up a temporary kitchen somewhere else and move it wherever the need takes. A small table, microwave and a washing up bowl is all you need. We have always bought the worst house in the street and sold as the best. All it takes is a bucket load of enthusiasm and a lot of imagination. And money obvs Don’t worry about the kids they will take it all in their stride.

@thegreenlight, listen to what @OakPine has said. Don’t comsider it unless you have at least double the funds that a builder quotes for the work.

My NDN have just built an extension while living in the house with young DC. Their building work has gone on for a year longer than expected and it still isn’t completely finished. My neighbours seem to have visibly aged 10 years with the stress of living with their renovations going on!

If you want a bigger house, I would strongly advise you to look for a house that has already been extended, even if it means moving away to a slightly cheaper area.

Personally, I wouldn’t. I just wouldn’t want to live next door to where I lived before. Renovations while living there aren’t easy, particularly with a young family. How are you going to feel when you are let down by trades living in rubble, knowing next door the home is comfortable for another family? Even if you get in the market and sell quickly, £100k equity after paying EA, solicitor, SDLT etc rising costs of building materials and availability of trades. I think the type of Reno, adding extension you will be looking upwards of £100k.

Do you have to sell your house first in order to do that? If so then it obviously all depends on you getting a very quick sale….

Cooking - cheap crock pot and air fryer set up a fridge in the living room and just deal with it - use the box room - kids can have sleep overs

I think it’s a good plan - maybe worth asking and see how flexible he’ll be with you selling yours

We did something a little bit similar in that we moved 100m down the road from a 1 bed flat into a 3 storey house. The house had been a rental for ages and needed rewiring/replumbing.

The seller had already had his tenants move out when we exchanged, and wasn't in a chain, so we were able to get the trades in for a couple of weeks before we moved in. We had minimal mortgage on the flat, so paying two mortgages was doable.

It will depend on the layout of the house as to whether or not you could live there whilst major extension work is underway, but what you are proposing sounds sensible.

Others viewing the house will almost certainly be having similar ideas about extending it, so you would probably be living next to a building site anyway!

Good luck

Not sure I'd want to pay top price where the house next door will be in the process of renovation for years. Something to think about when the agent (who really, really wants your business) tells you how much your house will sell for.

We lived in a project with a baby just walking and a 4 year old .You need to be fit and young and have a sense of humour !we had a ladder for a staircase for months ,up and down with a baby was fun but we had land so we’re able to be outside.We did all the work ourselves as money was tight.The cottage was great and we sold it and made a very good profit.Materials are now very expensive and you need to be able to tackle DIY to save money.Cooking was a Remoska and washing up in the bath.Go for it is my advice but be prepared for hard work.Good luck.

As someone who is going through a renovation at the moment, I think it's a wonderful idea to create the forever home BUT I would caution you about the costs - ours has ended up nearly double what we expected because material costs at the moment are HUGE - maybe see if you can get a rough quote first if it's finances leading the decision, as it may end up around the same as buying 'ready made' in the end? x

@BarrelOfOtters2

What’s the advantage of buying next door?

Read the OP!

I would have done this 5 years ago but probably not now with the costs all going up and difficulty getting trades in. It's even put me off getting a new bathroom for now

If you buy it your building work will inconvenience your neighbours for ages. Is someone else buys it their building work will inconvenience you.

Our house worth £290k + (not had it valued) next door on for £285k (probably due to extension potential) all semi houses in our road with extensions over garage go for £400k + £500k for detached. We have the smallest houses in a VERY nice area

It sounds like a great idea but at £285k is it it a tad over priced if it needs extensions and renovating to bring it into the £4-500k price bracket.
For what sounds like standard semi detached houses in a road, why the £100,000 difference in the price range.

Have you got a quote on how much an extension will cost, how much to rewire, maybe replumbing, central heating/radiators/new boiler if you need a bigger boiler to cover the bigger house. Plastering, doors, handles, kitchen, bathrooms, decorating, floors, tiling, skirting boards, door frames etc etc the list is huge and so is the amount. Every single brush, can of paint, screw, nail, tub of glue, tile adhesive, tile and grout etc needs to be chosen, bought and transported whether by paying someone or getting it your self
Even handles for my kitchen took time shopping around to find what I wanted for the cheapest price and even then it was another £200 and then they didn’t come with screws so they had to be sourced and bought. They were about £5 just for the screws

How long are you going to spend doing this house up. Have you added your time into the costings.
Why not just buy one that is done and use. the time you would have worked on this house doing 2nd and 3rd jobs to pay for it.

You wouldn’t go to work for free so why spend your time working on a house for free. Yes you can add value but you can amass money by going to work. How much of that is the normal rise in houses in your area and if prices fall then you could end up having the privilege of paying to work on the house.

Taking on someone else’s diy project needs a very open mind as to whether building regs were followed, a lot of head scratching to see what has been done and what needs to be done to put it right and deep deep pockets.

Last house we had, the previous owner had run the gas pipe into a cupboard, up the wall and across the inside of the cupboard to double up as a hanging rail, he had cut off all the Earth wires from any light fittings and moved a supporting beam in the “attic” to allow him to get an extra room in there so the roof was being held up by the plasterboard and a supporting beam that was adrift from the apex by about 50cm and resting on the ceiling of the hallway below (which did look like it was straining under the weight) and not on the supporting wall 50cm to the side.
To put everything right we spent about £80,000 to get it into a proper functioning house. I think if this guy had left it alone and we were tackling a normal older property that hadn’t had any work on it I think we could have saved £25000 on the renovations. We did get the house for £122,000 less than what we reckoned it would be worth if it had been in a good state of repair. So my salary for doing the house was £42,000. Given how much I could have earned going to work for a year it was a very nice boost

If anything at £285k if yours is going for £290 and you have only £100,000 equity can you actually afford to do anything to the house. I presume you will need to put a proportion of the £100,000 down as a deposit. Have you taken consideration of solicitors fees, agents fees (2% at £290,000 + vat is the best part of £7000), + stamp duty.
What will you tackle first and can you afford to complete it and not end up like a friend who ran out of money to get everything done and lived for the whole of the winter with tarpaulins flapping in the wind where her roof should have been and a boiler which she had managed to afford but couldnt afford to connect to the new radiators.

Remember what you are buying.
You are buying the plot and what is there now, not what could be there in the future.

I would work out price per square foot for what it is worth now and in the future if you add square footage. Then take off what it is realistically going to cost you.

I usually don’t have any emotion when it comes to house buying. The places I would love I can’t afford so everything comes down to costs and values and square footage

It’s not insane but I would remortgage your home a as buy to let, release the equity to buy the other one if you can

Also as others have said. Atm costs are prohibitive. But not just a case of throwing money at a project but also can you actually get what you want.

Can you get the floorboards/bricks/wiring/plaster etc to actually do the job.

If you want the house and it is liveable in then at the right price I would go for it.

However I would love in and although a hard ask. I wouldn’t plan to do anything until all this crap has blown over and you know you aren’t suddenly going to grind to a halt with a 1/2 built extension because the U.K. has run out of cement or breeze blocks etc

Not a bad idea as others said but I would

• consider that 100k equity you have will not cover building and renovation costs
• not pay 285 for the house. It’s over priced if perfectly done up houses go for 500

I have read the OP and I cant see the advantage actually either of buying it.

@thegreenlight I wonder if you havent considered your equity you have in the house twice. Because you seem to think having the equity will have it left over. But if you sell for 320 and but for 285 your equity is included in the 320 and you have very little leftover.

If you can get and afford another mortgage - and houses that are done and bigger are 400k then actually the difference between the two is what you would need to get the house next door done. At least because costs are prohibitive and the moment and builders are backed up

I thought you meant buying next door and keeping yours. Could you afford to buy next door while keeping yours (perhaps going interest only on mortgages) to get the majority of building work done while living in current house to make next door livable then sell your property.

We have around £150k equity in our house I was hoping that would cover some of it and only £5000 stamp duty according to calculators. I will ring my mortgage advisor and ask for advice

It's definitely worth exploring, you have the advantage of knowing what the immediate area is like. Maybe just vet your buyers extra carefully!

An electric pressure cooker like an Instant Pot would be a good investment for kitchen works. Also toaster bags.

Good luck I hope it's viable

Sorry but if 12 viewers before breakfast it will be sold by the end of today for over 300k. Unless you can go straight to the owner.

You may not be able to sell your house quickly if you are going to have some extensive building work done next door, with all the disruptions.

I don't think I woudl do this unless I could afford to not sell and knock through.
However if they are already signed up with an agency they will have to pay the fee even if you go to them directly.

A couple of years of renovations, dirt, dust and confusion all around you as you live amongst piles of masonry, builders tools, light plant, dealing with delay after delay as contractors fail to turn up, don’t stay long enough, don’t agree to fixed prices, don’t do a good enough job, or maybe you’ll find the perfect bunch of builders like they have on Grand Designs....

Front, side and back gardens will become contractors storage areas.

Watch some youtubes and see if you can live with the chaos.

Can’t you extend upwards into the attic?

If you’re a family who’s all hands-on, gritty, not fussed about mess, dirt and chaos, living day to day not knowing what work will or won’t be completed or even if contractors will turn up, go for it!

I think the before and afters on instagram are turning my head 🤣 it all looks so effortless with a single swipe and done! Then they say it’s 5 years! I could think again about extending our house but it would be a very small amount! I love our house and I’m very happy here, I just worry about having 2x 6ft boys in here. Maybe it is vanity.