Any one bought/sold a fixer upper

[burnishedgold]

Looking to buy a fixer upper in south east London. We specifically want a fixer upper as we know we would want to configure and put our own style in the place, did the same in current small house ten years ago, but error we made was that it wasn't really a fixer upper, we just found we wanted to do things in our own style.

So, we've looked at about twenty houses so far and put/ will put offers in on two. My question is the pricing. The places we're looking at need about a third again spending on doing them up (ie 300-400k). Looking at sold prices in the areas, if we paid the purchase price this would make them the most expensive house on the street by a margin of 200k plus, with no increase in value by fact of the works being done or us taking the risk of doing a refurbishment (eg planning, hidden costs, market uncertainty). Whilst we don't need to increase value as such because it's a long term family home, we're also not mugs either! But estate agents seem confident of their prices and there seems to be loads of interest in both properties - what am I not seeing in terms of value? It just seems crazy to me to spent all that money and time in refurb only to have the most expensive house on the street by some margin.

Would be interested in any experience of buying a fixer upper and how you found one for the right price or how you priced if you were selling. At the moment in thinking that a house which has already been done up maybe a better buy even if we want to redo bits of it.

As context, we offered 1/3 under asking for first property we saw. This was rejected but we've left it in table and property is still on the market a month later. Saw another property yesterday, considering offering 10-15% under but loads of people were at the open house so suspect it will go.

Any tips on where we are going wrong ? Are we looking at wrong types of house ?

We just bought a fixer upper flat. We made sure the price of good condition flats in the area was sufficiently larger than what we were paying to make the work cost effective. Work has ended up being more than expected so we're glad we left ourselves a bit of a safety net. We offered 70k below asking and got 60k below. The house had been on the market for a long time and initially had been even higher, (200k above what we got it for), but I think after over a year they really needed to get rid of it.

What on earth are you planning on doing that would cost £200-£300k?! You could knock a house down and rebuild it for that. I think the answer to your q is that other buyers are not planning on spending anything like that money so it will be worth it for them to refurb and even if they don't make a profit, they will have the house done as they want so are happy with the price.

That does seem like a massive budget for refurbishing a house. You're planning on spending way, way more than anyone one else and your spending is eclipsing any increase in value.

What are you planning on buying (Victorian Terrace? 1930s semi?) and what work are you planning? People might be able to suggest a programme of work costing about a third of yours.

There are only two ways that I think you are likely to get a house that is -33% of neighbouring prices. 1) Look at auctions - they tend to be cheaper (but not usually that cheap, however, you might get lucky on the day) 2) Buy something completely unmortgageable.

Either way, you will need to be a cash buyer or have a very, very large deposit (c. 75-80%).

Like others, I would question the wisdom of spending £200-300k on a presumably run-of-the-mill house in SE London and I live in London so I'm very aware of prices both when purchasing property and having works done.

Fixer uppers do tend to be in short supply and are only priced down the cost of the necessary work, not the cost of perfecting a home to your personal standards and tastes. Especially in the south east.

Fixer uppers do tend to be in short supply and are only priced down the cost of the necessary work, not the cost of perfecting a home to your personal standards and tastes. Especially in the south east.

Agree. And even then I think they are priced at only the cost of the basic work with no 'developer' premium for your time and stress.

What on earth are you planning on doing that would cost £200-£300k?!

Wow that is quite a lot - but I can see how you get up to that if you do everything to your taste and top spec.

Side return or rear xtension, go into the roof, new windows, a £50k kitchen (I wish!) 3x£20k bathrooms.... New boiler and CH system, total rewire, new external front door, new internal doors, etc etc

I can see how you could easily spend that budget if you are looking to extend and redevelop with glass box extensions high end kitchens etc (not unreasonable in a million pound house imo!) However what the pricing is telling you is this would be an overspend for the area and developers could do it for much less and still make a profit. It's up to you if you want to overspend for your perfect house, scale back your plans to fit with the area or buy somewhere else to maximise your budget. Have you checked out all the rightmove sold prices to see what neighbours have done and if it adds value?

Thanks wise mums netters.

To give context both are detached and big , estimates have been given by builder and architect and are less than 1k per square meter, so probably more or less in track.

I agree I think we are pricing in how we would do it perfectly and forgetting that it's a home first and investment second