Thinking of buying massive empty house, been unoccupied for three years

[RollingThunder]

Anyone done similar? What did it cost you? What do you wish you had known before hand?

It was a HMO so sinks in every room, bathrooms and kitchen need to start from scratch, needs serious redecorating.

No idea about electrics, plaster, roof etc yet, will be getting every survey I can think of (any thoughts?)

No building work necessary although may knock down a wall in kitchen to make one big room.

We would have to rent nearby (moving area) so how long did yours take? What did it cost? What did you have to do?

Are we crazy to even contemplate it?

if you have damp, first thing is to find the cause and fix it. Then it will dry out.

Do you mean you have some perished plaster, or plaster that has soaked up mineral salts?

We do in our current house (very small patch) and have indeed had a damp specialist out who recommend we spend a fortune on their special anti damp plaster. He did say it had soaked up mineral salts.

Sorry, should have said we know the cause and are having it fixed on Friday.

In response to your question above: a HMO is issued by the local council and is mandatory if more than a certain number of people are living in a property. It's to ensure adequate facilities /safety procedures for them.

As far as I know they only last for 5 years, and then have to be renewed. I'm not sure how it impacts on the long term status of the house for mortgage purposes. If it has run out then I guess you don't need to inform the bank.

Sorry not to be more help. I think the local council planning department might be the best people to call. They'll know if it is a HMO.

House in Multiple Occupancy

House of Multiple Occupancy

Work on the assumption that plumbing, wiring and CH will need replacing. We have renovated a couple of bungalows and basically replaced all services back to the front door. DH is an electrician and was also happy doing water plumbing. By doing a full rewire and replumb (inc CH) then you will know that you are bang up to date with current building regs.

Our experience was that by doing most things except gas plumbing ourselves we kept costs down to materials only. Dont be frightened off by the big jobs, its the little ones which are sodding expensive. We were able to treat woodworm and replace all floors for a few hundred pounds. We spent more on paint!

Go over it with a fine toothed comb & price up everything.

E.g. our house was a repossession that had been let out as (un registered) HMO. Every single internal door - which were cheap hollow ones in the first place - had been split or damaged in some way. We are replacing them slowly but it will have cost us £1000 in doors before we are finished. That sort of cost is really easily missed from your initial assessment.

Our council wouldn't give us any sort of rebate on council tax, because it had been unoccupied for 2 years, & although we were having kitchen done it didn't count as uninhabitable

KatherinKrupnik - that is very much the plan. We have arranged childcare for the kids so that DH and I can go round with the builder and look at everything! - Doors will be an issue as there are lots of horrible cheap firedoors that will need replacing.

Will look into the council tax rebate thing, its a good point.

Worriedteenmum, we just don't have those kinds of skills I'm afraid - sound brilliant that you and dh can do all of that though.

DOG, not in deepest darkest cornwall I'm afraid.

RollingThunder, the big thing you can offer is labouring and also project managing yourself. If the builder says something, read up about it. Be involved as much as you can. This will help keep the project on track.

Many of the things like tiling and painting and decorating are things you can learn for yourself on the job (there will be lots of opportunities to practice!).

Do cost things up for yourself. Dont assume that a builder will get things cheaper than you can. They will be passing the cost on to you so have no vested interest in getting a bargain.

Taps are one of the things where you can spend a little or a lot simply by how you buy. We buy all of ours from ebay (there are some excellent ebay shops).

If you do buy materials then make sure they are delivered to you not to the builder. Be careful about ordering things up front and having them delivered to site. That gorgeous slipper bath may look to you like the perfect place to relax but on site it looks like somewhere to keep tools!

About everything remember to think lots and decide once. Changing your mind can be very expensive.

we done a 4 bed victorian house 3 yrs ago, needed windows = there was 10 windows, complete heating system as there was nothing at all in the house, 2 bathrooms, roof work, garden completely re-done, re-wired, most rooms needed some plasterwork, replaced fireplace. it took 9 months and just over 60k - that doesnt include decorations like flooring, curtains, paint etc. Also instead of going with real wood on the floors we opted to go with amtico in 2 of the rooms - i didnt want to be 5 yrs down the road and having to sand floors back to redo them, everyone who comes in though asked where we got our wood floors from the amtico looks so realistic. the floorboards were too bad for them to be saved and we didnt want to rip the floorboards up.