Do you like this house?

[YummyFoodie]

What's your opinion? I'm starting to have second thoughts, so I could really use some feedback. How much would you pay for it?

www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/50941389

Yummie, this is what spending a bit over 100k would give you - very similar but done up house in your area:

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-81465530.html

It'd be interesting to see what it goes for. I've also had a look what could be had in that 500-650 price bracket and nothing that impressive. Your house is genuinely a very big size for the money.

That’s pretty much exactly the same as every other house of that period. If only buy it at a very good price given how much work it needs.

I like your house, especially as it has some original features. It looks like a home, unlike the one that has been done up with all the character removed in the other link.

Houses of that era tended to have one smaller bedroom, and I like the sunroom (strange conservatory) would love to have something similar.

I like the house, but as pp have said, it hasn't been updated for a long time.

This means that as well as refitting kitchen/bathroom and redecorating, it is likely to also need new plumbing, new boiler, electrical rewiring, windows, alarm system, maybe new roof.

Lovely house, big rooms, parking, beautiful big garden. Move in and do it up as and when you can afford it.

It’s got a lot of potential. But you would need to empty the contents into skips and spend about £100k on it. It clearly hasn’t been touched for a long. The 3rd bedroom would put me right off

It has a lot of potential and would really appeal to me as I could do everything exactly how I wanted rather than inheriting other people’s taste. That said, you’re probably talking £100k to do it to a decent standard. However, if houses in the area selling at around the 600k mark are 4 beds and/or detached I’d say you’re probably overpaying and perhaps you should reconsider.

I'd say the third bedroom is an asset- normally 30's or period houses have a box room/study there but this one has a double bedroom.

We've got a wide hallway and it really is an asset. At first I thought it was a waste of space but it's almost another room. Great for storage and the kids to play. Plus keeps 'stuff' away from the other rooms.

That's a lovely, solid family house - I wish I could get one like it for anywhere near that price here. Is Sutton nice?

It will take way more than 20k even to do a basic job modernising it though.

The potential is huge, the bedrooms are massive. Prob needs whole overhaul though as clearly hasn’t been touched for years, I would expect rewiring, new boiler etc before any cosmetic work is done. That will cost substantially more than 20k.

Can I ask, if the house is up for £500k, why have you paid more?! We’re there several parties interested?

How much more are you paying?

I think it's a bit overpriced at £500k. It needs gutting and everything doing to it. £20k won't touch the sides.

@makingmiracles, there was another offer, so I had to bid higher.

Have you already bought it op?

I thought it said sold.

@KooMoo, my offer has recently been accepted, but haven't exchanged yet.

I'd get a really thorough survey if I were you, that will highlight all the areas that need attention. You can get indicative quotes for any urgently needed work and reassess when you've got some figures in front of you. Have you got much of a budget for renovation set aside? We bought our house and immediately spent £35k on part-rewiring, part-replumbing, new flooring throughout (that alone was 10k!). In hindsight, we wish we'd bought cheaper and could have done all the work in one go.

Loads of potential.
The boiler looks newish, but in a stupid place, so you'd need to move/replace when you did the kitchen.
There are weird skirting board heaters.

Are there enough plug sockets? Will it need a rewire?
Decoration... can prob live with for a short while.

Ha! I bought exactly this house in another London burb and best thing we did. If you’re going to be putting in new kitchen bathrooms etc and replastering, carpeting etc you may as well do it from a house in this state as it makes it more value added. You can have exactly what you want! It’s hard work and expensive but worth it.

Btw I live in an area of houses like this, all renovated in the last 5 years after being occupied for many years by the same people.

The houses are good and solid and rarely have serious problems. With things like rewiring I’ll bet you’ll find a partial and tidy up is all you need (the sockets might be in the wrong places, or drawstring light switches you want replaced) but these sorts of houses are easy to work on and you’ll probably find it’s been kept decent through the years

I think you are overpaying for a 3 bed house... I think just to refurb as is will be 75k+ and that is only at 500/ft2 for refurb... many south east and London companies charge double that... spending an extra 50k to get a 4th bedroom in the loft will probably make it worth 650k but it will have cost you that to get there... on the plus side you will have a house that is perfect for you... in the state it is in I think a price around 450k would have been about right

Roughly £8k for a rewire, £10k for a replumb (but should include a new CH system if you get a baxi boiler or some such). If it’s the same as our 30’s terraced house then the walls will be rendered with cement rather than bonding and shouldn’t need redoing, rather should simply require a skim over and patching where the plumbing has gone. Call that another £5k (for the whole house and ceilings).

So yeah, £20k will get you new wiring, plumbing and a fresh plaster job. But then you have a blank canvass to work with!

Things to watch out for- look for any issues around penetrating damp. Bad guttering/flashing can cause damp/cold walls which is an issue in winter (as the walls will be solid brick 9” thick walls). Also our genius previous owner had removed chimney breasts from the second floor but not the loft so we had to put a gallows bracket in.

Otherwise these homes tend to be good, solid, reliable homes. If you are going to replaster it is definitely worth having the insides of the external walls lined with 1” of insulation. It’s not going to make your heating bills drop to zero but it will prevent any cold walls in winter sucking up your heat and will make the house significantly more comfortable. Obviously more insulation is better but 1” isn’t much room to lose and if you strip back the render to brick you’ll lose less than 1”.

If the wiring or plumbing has been done recently then you may not need to redo the lot.

OH also- very important- get your builder to upgrade your water supply pipe. These houses were all built when 12mm lead pipe was the standard. You upgrade it to 25 or 32mm polypipe you won’t believe the difference it makes to your water pressure.

Also if you redo all of this, take the opportunity to get a hatch to your crawl space cut into the floor so you can get under there easily. We didn’t have one and it was a massive pain in the backside.

Re price - another thing that worries me is that an identical house on the same road with a brand new roof and parquet floors downstairs sold for £512k in August 2018.

Great size house
I’d live in it first before refurbishing to see how it works

It's a lovely house op, just check that the price is good for your area. Nice room sizes and good garden. Its got great potential.

Don't let people quote of work put you off. There are ways to spend on renovation but it is 40 %more expensive to get one builder to do it all. Subcontract and get the individual trades in and then with each part separate, if things go wrong they go wrong in isolation.

A good Worcester boiler, fitting and sourcing the rads yourself can cost 3 to 4 K not 10k. I think people get ripped off then think their stupidly high prices are correct. Also with a rewire, source the fittings yourself and pay the electrician for labour and wiring and you can half your bill. Lots of electrical contract shops sell to the public or order direct online.
Plastering is cheap, just shop around and see work.

I think if you have done your homework then go for it op.

When you have the survey done you may get a reduction in the price. I think for the area it is a good price at £500K - I hope you haven't had to pay too much over the odds.

Lovely family sized house but agree with pp it will cost a lot to renovate.