Cost of doing up vs moving and cost of digging in a drain

[SquidgeyMidgey]

My head is spinning at the moment as we'd banked on extending but that involved buying land and that rug has just been pulled.

Two questions then, the house is tidy and fine but not how we'd want it if we stayed. Purely in terms of cost, what home improvements are worth doing for the purposes of selling a house? It's a nice building in a nice spot so doesn't need to sing and dance to sell but want to know if it's worth spending ~£30k on tarting it up, or save the money and get a lower selling price but end up with the same net amount...

Second, thinking of having a showerroom in downstairs but it would need drainage digging and the nearest manhole is c.40 feet away. Any idea on cost of digging? It's only under garden so no great cost in making it right after.

Thank you!

What kind of house is it? How many bedrooms? How many reception rooms? Etc, etc. It's usually living space which people value more. At the moment kitchen diners are in vogue so extending your kitchen might be a better idea. A separate utility room is great. Can you convert the loft?

The important thing is not to end up with an overpriced house in order to claw back the money you've spent. If the house in its current layout has some obvious drawbacks it's probably more sensible to have plans drawn up and obtain planning permission and sell the house with this instead of putting yourselves through the stress and expense of extending. A lot of buyers would rather do work to their own tastes.

I should have typed 'expense of extending or refurbishing.'

Thanks wowfudge, we had planned to extend but can't now. We have a shared drive and were going to buy that to extend onto a small part of it but that's not happening now and it's not something we can change. The only other direction the house can be extended would incur massive costs (due to reworking half of the roofline) and wouldn't actually get us that much more space, other directions are stuffed due to power lines one way and conservation restrictions the other.

We live in a nice village, good schools, restrictions on new builds. It's a barn conversion with 2 beds and a bathroom upstairs which can't be usefully reworked (have had people try to draw it) due to rooflines. These rooms are in the roof so there's no loft as such, just the low edges of one room that are enclosed. Downstairs there's a large brick porch room, kitchen, sitting room, utility room, possible shower room, playroom/dining room and another bedroom. It's a decent enough family house but not your average layout. All the rooms are a useful size but none massive. There's really nothing that can be done, except the shower room, unless we did the extension we'd planned. Pah. I was thinking of the 'new' effect for a sale and maybe putting new kitchen doors on (the current ones are fine), new carpets etc. I'm thinking leave it tbh and sell it for someone to tweak to their own tastes like you say. P*ssed off is an understatement.

Leave it - a character building in a nice village will be attractive enough as it is.

Thanks lalalonglegs

I agree with lala. Make it look the best you can without spending a lot of money and sell it. Save your money for your new place.

Leave it as it is if you are going to sell, except maybe freshen any tired paint in key areas. Make sure the house looks clean and bright from the front, with nice pots of seasonal flowers, for that 'kerb appeal' and to look lovely in the estate agents photo.

Thanks for the replied. Short version is we're staying as we are nowhere near affording anything with space for a downstairs bedroom and enough living space. We're going to get a new kitchen (finally!) and we'll get the shower room in downstairs. Bit ugh about it still but I'll survive.