To want to share my shock at this?

[GardenPart]

6 months ago - me and my siblings sold our childhood home for £500,000.

My parents bought the house when they got married in the 60s.

Both parents dead now, so estate sorted out between us.

We sold the house to an experienced developer.

My siblings and I have moved out of our home town but my daughter has moved into a flat about a mile away from our childhood home. Anyway - 2 days ago my daughter was visiting me and out of curiosity scrolling through her phone at local property sites and suddenly called me over -

anyway - to my surprise my childhood home was on the ‘for sale’ section - I was so shocked my initial thought was that it was the house next door to my parents that was for sale which looked identical from the outside. I honestly thought the developer could not possibly have done the property up so quickly ! But no, it was our old property.

‘I’m surprised about 2 things basically :

1. The speed it took them to develop and modernise many - or even most aspects of the property - it was actually on the market last month so that meant it took them 5 months. Don’t get me wrong - I know we sold it to an experienced developer - who wouldn’t waste any time and would be very efficient with the progress of the property - but even so !! 5 months? I thought it would take them at least a year.

1. The price. We sold it for £500000 6 months ago - it’s now on the market for £800000 - a 60.% mark up! If it was resold I expected the selling price to be circa £650k and only around £700k at the very most.

if it sells for the £800k asking price that’ll be the second most expensive sale ever in the street - this is surprising as it’s a semi detached house and the most expensive went for £820k 8 years ago - but detached.

The pics of the house look absolutely lovely - they’ve modernised it to a great standard - bathrooms, toilet, kitchen looks gorgeous and my goodness it needed loads of attention - my mum let the house go to seed after my Dad died - it was too big for her living there alone - it was a lot for a young adult in prime health to manage alone let alone an 89 year old !! They’ve also kept some of the lovely original features. It’s so nice to see our old childhood home so loved and modernised and less tired looking so I tip my hat to the developer and really glad we sold to him - but -

AIBU to be surprised by the speed of the turn around and the amount of the price elevation on the property? Or is this normal ?

We sold a family home for c1m and within around 12 months, less probably it was sold for 2m! BUT it did look as though they must have spent 100s of 1000s on it to get it looking like that, they had done EVERYTHING and it was nearly twice the size! I was more amazed they got planning (they did this pre sale incidentally)

An experienced developer with good tradespeople will blitz a large job like that. I think they have it fairly well tuned.

You haven’t watched “Homes under the Hammer” then? Always a fast turnaround on that show 😊

Yes I have watched it - you are right although sometimes the turnaround’s slower due to planning permissions etc - I think it’s the first time I’ve experienced this ‘in real life’ - so hence my surprise

The thing is, even buying at £500k a modest renovation using professionals is going to be knocking on £100k of work; more if extensions and landscaping are involved. Then there's the interest cost for 5/6/7/8 months or however long it takes to sell, plus stamp duty and fees from the purchase. The developer is probably in for £650k or so at that point.

Yes, it's on the market for £800k, but maybe it sells for £750k or less. So that's £100k profit (before tax) - but given the risk it's not surprising or unreasonable I don't think

The developer in your case was certainly very organised with all the planning permission etc. It will be interesting to see how much the house is actually sold for. Check on Zoopla six months after the sale.
If you want any work done yourself in the future, they are the ones to contact😊

Ha definitely !

I don't think that's especially unusual for a professional developer who makes their living out of it, employs lots of contractors etc - the quicker they can turn it round, the better from a business point of view so they're used to project managing work at that kind of speed. It'll be interesting to see whether they actually get £800K, but if they've made a brilliant job of it and also retained some nice original features, I can see why the mark-up's huge.

I think it's normal.

After my dad died, we sold his house to a developer. The developer then put it up for sale within 5 months.

Theu buy houses precisely to do them up, and then quickly sale them on

Developers locally did a fast turnaround on a bungalow and it looks lovely. It’s been on the market for months though, with different agents.

DH’s aunt had a bungalow with a huge garden. It was sold for 600K and the house next door was sold too. Both were demolished and in their place are now 6 large million plus houses.

The market in some areas seems reasonable and stagnant in others.

Yes that’s the thing - from one or two photos on the website - it could be my old childhood home from the angles they’ve taken them! 😊 they’ve kept the nice banisters and stained glass windows

but the bathrooms look absolutely exquisite with them! I’ve never had a snazzy, modern bathroom before so love these! The modern trend in bathrooms seems to be for raised sinks not sunken ones - and don’t get me started on the gorgeous bath!!!

Two rooms at the back have been knocked through to provide a kitchen /family room. The kitchen’s so modern with one of those navy kitchen islands in the middle - I’ve never lived in a house with one of those!

our old kitchen hadn’t been updated since 1978 and looked like a much poorer man’s version of Ria’s kitchen in the 70s sitcom ‘Butterflies’

(One for the teenagers..)

Seriously though I can’t get over how light, modern and open everything looks ..

I think it can be a bit of shock after your parents die. You sell the house. Then the developer you sold it to, sells it for a lot more.

It happened to me too. Right after your parent dies, you have to deal with all manner of stressful financial things.

Me too! It is a nice way to look at it. As otherwise it would just be sad.

I also guess its called house flipping for a reason as it's done quickly.

Why do you care.

I’m the opposite of sad. The house badly needed new life breathing into it ..

A mix of curiosity and acute nostalgia …

I'm shocked you're shocked tbh! It really doesn't take too long to get things done like this once the house sale is complete if that's your job, so you have all the resources to hand.

The other thing that’s massively changed is that in our old house the was a little cove to the left when you came in through the front door where our goldfish used to be 🥲

also it was quite nice in that there was a big chest thing you could and and the landline was there and you could sit there and make phone calls and various phone directories - domestic and yellow pages etc…

but now of course - there’d be no need for this area - there’s hardly any landlines left now!!!

Experienced developers don’t hang around, the faster it’s done, the more money they make and they can move on to the next one.
It’s always nice to see how different houses can look with a new style. I’m in the process of renovating one myself (to live,
not to sell) and have taken everything out to all be moved around. It hasn’t really been updated since it’s been built, around the 70s. I can’t wait to see the end result!

My friend's neighbours bought at around £675k and re-did it themselves over 4-5 years, looking lovely it then sold for around £1800k through a 'posh' EA (along the lines of Savills). New people have apparently since discovered some bits were not up to standard you'd expect, looked lovely but things were hidden eg under new paint.

My dad's house and an elderly neighbour 's house + half a garden (all had big 3/4 acre type gardens) were sold to a developer about 20 years ago and there's 13 tiny town houses on there in a dinky cul de sac, each of which at the time were sold for more than dad's house! He said there was no way he'd have managed to project manage that and that he was well rid (rattled about in the old house)

Conversely, we sold my parents' house to a developer in late 2019. They also bought the rear of some adjoining gardens to make a single small development and in total built three new houses and also refurbished my parents' house. They completed them a couple of years ago, but two of the new houses plus my parents' house are still for sale!! Shocking in a different way. They must have lost a lot of money.

But I'm glad. The developer was an absolute piece of shit who lied and put pressure on us at a incredibly difficult time. Then made a right mess of things. The way they've remodelled my parents' house is just a stupid waste of money.

But it's a little sad that it's now not been lived in since 2018. It was a nice house in beautiful plot.

it's the same as in rental market, we moved out of our old flat in October, the landlord renovated it and put it on the market for a few months but now it's back on the rental market and the monthly rent has gone up by over £400. it's smaller and more expensive than our new rental place.

£400? Good grief!

Builders these days know they can make more money buying properties to refurb, than doing refurb work for homeowners. Where i live you can't get tradespeople for love nor money because they can make more doing up and flipping properties.