Selling a house that needs work

[GenderApostate19]

My FiL died last week and we will be selling his house, it will be a few months away as we have to get probate and register the house with the land registery, assuming we can track down the deeds 😱
His house needs a lot of updating, he was there for 50 years, but we don’t know how much to do to make it ‘saleable’, having never sold a property before.
It’s a big 1960’s 3 bed semi with a drive and large garden.
We plan to get a neutral downstairs carpet laid, plus new kitchen and bathroom flooring.
We have to take the kitchen fully out to have a couple of floor joists replaced so dont know whether to refit it but have new worksurface/sink or put in a more modern kitchen, the current units are good quality but a bit dated.
Downstairs will also have to painted and the whole house deep cleaned.
The drive is fairly steep and over half the ‘council slabs’ needs relaying, I’m convinced the condition it’s in now - very wobbly slabs, will put people off.

Houses on his street rarely come up for sale, the last sale was 15 years ago, it’s a section of main road out of our village, with views of old school fields and countryside.
It’s a ‘cheap’ area and the house is probably worth £150k on a good day,.
We just want to make it appealing without spending a fortune, I’m thinking £3 - 5k will do it. There will be £12k left in his bank when the funeral is paid and he also has 2 cars to be sold so the money is there for renovation, it’s just knowing how much to do, or not do.
Any tips/ advice would be welcome 🙂

Have you had some estate agents out to it yet? I would probably get a few agents round to value it in its current condition and then give you an idea of what kind of things you could do to make it more appealing to buyers and how much it might go for if you do their suggested rennovations.

A good agent should be able to give you some idea of the things that are worth doing and the things that won't add much value or the buyer would prefer to do themselves to their own taste.

I wouldn't do anything , little point , people who will look at this as a project wouldn't want a cheap kitchen putting in , it will just get ripped out. Give it a clean and leave it at that.

Honestly, just put it on the market as it is. If you are going to try and do all of those things for £5k it will obvious to buyers and they are going to offer based on having to redo the kitchen, floors etc.

I'm selling my parents house at the moment, and literally we just had it emptied (inc carpets) and nothing more. The people who are buying it (and I didn't even have to put it on the market, I was approached as not done up houses there come up so rarely) will be extending it and wanted a totally blank canvas to work with

I put my DMs house on the market as-is but priced at level that reflected it. I didn't want to spend the money or time renovating and modernising it and figured that it was attractive to someone who wanted to invest. We sold it very quickly.

id sell as it is, dont do any work as you may not recoup the money spent

There's a big demand for houses that need renovating. Leave it as is and I'm sure it'll be snapped up

I'm looking at moving in the next year or so. I prefer houses that need work rather than ones that have had new kitchens and bathrooms - I don't much like modern shiny kitchen units, especially in layouts that have obviously been done just to put a kitchen in to sell the house, and I want a big walk-in shower rather than a bath and a little shower.

Ask an estate agent how much difference any work would make to the price. It may be worth losing a few thousand just to avoid the time and stress of doing the work.

I think I’d get some estate agents around to price it now.

I think I agree with you though, that people who can view a house as obviously being that of a deceased elderly person instantly think they will have a bargain/mountains of work. You want to get people out of the headspace of ‘this isn’t even their house anyway, so they’ll take £50k and a curly surly’ mentality.

Have you spoken to any estate agents?

I went through this exact scenario when my nan moved to a carehome. We had several estate agents in. 1 said to freshen the inside with paint, most said to do nothing at all. In hindsight, I wish we'd done nothing and just sold it. Instead, my aunt was adamant it needed repainting, but refused to pay anyone to do this. Due to other commitments, this dragged on over many months, in which time house prices had dropped.

Unless you are doing a complete refurb of the entire place, you dont know what the new owner will want to do. Take down walls, open things up, add an extension, knock it down etc etc. Dont waste your time and money. I'd keep the garden neat and give it some street appeal from the front, but dont spend money on bits and pieces.

"I wouldn't do anything , little point , people who will look at this as a project wouldn't want a cheap kitchen putting in , it will just get ripped out. Give it a clean and leave it at that."

I second this. And with the uncertainty over houses prices you might find the work costs more than the value you add to the house. Empty everything out of it and leave it at that,

I agree with all the advice to talk to some estate agents first. Get a few local ones round and ask their opinion on what would be best to achieve a sale. They will know what kind of market there is for projects etc and could save you spending money you don’t need to.

Based on my experience when selling an inherited property, I would recommend getting it cleared (some charities will do this for you, or you can pay someone - estate agents should have contacts) and then thoroughly cleaned. Also give the gardens a tidy up too. Basically make the property look as spacious as possible so it appeals to more buyers. In terms of the kitchen just make sure that it’s fully functioning so that the property is mortgageable if needed.

We sold my Mums house after she died. Spent a few hundred pounds on a gardener to tackle the madly overgrown garden and power washed paving, but inside just cleared, decluttered and cleaned. First buyer (which fell through) was a young man who wanted to gut it. The couple who ended up buying it were older, loved the garden and were only planning some minor renovation and redecoration.

My dad did this with my grans house
And it made no difference because they literally gutted the whole house
So he wasted a lot of time and energy and I don't feel it actually made any difference to how much he sold it for

Someone looking at a house that needs a lot of work will be expecting to rip it out and start again so a new carpet will just be wasted on them!

No point doing a cheap tarting up job if it really needs a proper refurb.

As pp have said, clear and clean it so people can see the space. Lots of probate sales around me and they’re bought by people who want the project.

Depending on where you are, and what this house is like in comparison to its neighbours and its potential, it might be worth looking at whether it might get planning permission to extend. A local estate agent would advise whether or not it would be worth it to attract a sale.

The only thing worth doing to the house itself is to deal with anything that is actively causing damage, like water coming in or rodents. Other than that, just clean it, make sure it doesn’t smell unpleasant and keep it looking occupied (lawns cut, curtains up) so it doesn’t attract squatters, burglars or vandals.

Leave the kitchen and bathroom in so it will be mortgageable and can be lived in if the buyers can't or don't want to start the work straight away.

We sold my parent's house 3 years ago in a similar condition with a similar value. They had also been there 50+ years and done little to it apart from new windows and doors. The whole place needed bringing up to modern standards. We just emptied it out and put it on the market as it was. The only thing we did to it whilst it was on the market was to keep the lawns mown and the garden tidy but tbh that was more for the sake of the next door neighbours whom I'd known all my life. It took a while to sell and we had a couple of silly offers but eventually it was bought by someone who gutted it and make it unrecognisable (inside) from its former self. There will be buyers out there looking for this type of property to renovate and stamp their own mark on. I wouldn't waste time doing minor works to get an extra £10k on the price.

As others have said it's really doesn't sound like it would be worth the investment in painting, carpeting the house as new owners would definitely be doing it up, just keeping the garden in order more of a priority.
Have you considered using a property auction company? We sold a relatives house in a similar condition and were pleasantly surprised with the outcome and completely hassle free too.

My mother died in February leaving a bungalow which needs modernisation. I asked three estate agents for valuations in it's current state and advice about what to do to sell it.
They were all very helpful and were unanimous in saying do nothing. Any money invested would not be recouped and the buyer would want to do their own work.
I put it on the market on the day restrictions were lifted and got a buyer within days.

We have to dismantle the kitchen, take up the kitchen floor and living/dining room carpet anyway to have the joists replaced, I’m just worried that the kitchen might not go back together again properly.
We have a builder friend who will do the joists pretty much for cost of materials, he made them safe when we discovered the problem two days before FiL came out of hospital, we’d cleared out the dining room part to make room for a hospital bed and the floorboards were bouncing 4 inches!

Now the floor has been made safe, nobody would even know the joists are rotten but there is no way we would sell it knowing about the problem.

I will get an EA round to value for probate, if they say it will sell regardless then we won’t do much other than empty and .clean

We did up the first house we bought to make it useable for us, and half of what we did the next owners ripped out (3 year old kitchen...)

I'd much rather buy a wreck cheap and do it up to our own spec. But as others suggest, have a word with local agents first.

I wouldn't do anything unless you are going to do EVERYTHING. People either want a project or they don't and if you do something in between you'll be cancelling out a proportion of potential buyers who just don't have the same taste who may well have been interested if you'd just left it and not added your costs onto the purchase price.

It feels wasteful to rip out a brand new kitchen or bathroom, especially if you've paid a premium for that

I would just put it on the market as it is.

Apparently it can take 3 months to register a property and that is with the deeds 😱 If we can’t trace the deeds it means solicitors reconstructing them - thankfully I found all the paperwork relating to them buying the house in 1971 plus the mortgage redemption letters and have bills etc. going back to the 1980’s!
We really could do with selling before Xmas - DD has to be out of her rented house in March , she had saved a 5% deposit for a £250K house but now needs over 10% for any chance of a mortgage 🤬 So needs her £25k cut of the estate.

People are always looking for a project. I would leave it as it is and price it accordingly. We sold my FILs property last year after he moved into a home. It was needing loads done. A young family bought it and planned to do a total revamp to suit them. It was exactly what they wanted.

The estate agent may well know of people looking for exactly this type of property; consider their advice before you start to do anything major.