Love it or list it dilemma....WWYD?

[RonSwan]

We bought our home 5 years ago...cost £450k, spent about £20k tidying up (new kitchen, redecorated throughout etc) knowing that we’d be looking to do some significant works in a few years time. Rather than repair/change bit by bit thought we would renovate and extend in one fell swoop. House value now £550-£600k pre significant renovation.
We love our house...lovely area, neighbours, amenities. Layout and space etc is ok but it could be phenomenal...but at a big cost. To do all the works we want, I think would cost £250-£300k, which we can afford (with a partial loan) but clearly it would take us way over the price ceiling for our area.
We plan to stay there forever so ceiling price shouldn’t really matter and my heart says do it. My head of course is saying that is crazy.
To buy a house to the standard we are seeking, in an area that we love as much, we are talking well over a million so that is really our comparator. Alternatively we could get a fabulous house but in an area we don’t love as much. On the whole I’d rather stay in our current location. We could also do renovation work in drips and drabs but I just can’t be bothered with stretching it out and never quite being finished.
So...love it or list it? What would you do?

We are in a similar position, from about five or six years time it should be clear if our careers will stay here in which case we will plough money into the house, whilst there is a reasonable chance we will have to move on for career progression we will live with the house as is.

Do the work and love it. Without a doubt

I'd do the renovation. It is hard to find an area you love and the perfect house, so make the house perfect.

Our last house we ploughed money in that we never saw back due to the housing market. Didn't bother us, we paid out money to make into the home we wanted. Only £20k though.

The ceiling price could change drastically by the time you come to sell in the future. Make it your dream home now. We have renovated this house, my kitchen extension was done 8 years ago and every morning when I walk into my kitchen I still feel joy.

Do the work, live in it and love it! As long as you’re sure you are there for the long term.

Location wins every time.

We are in the same position. We’ve decided to love it, but have scaled back our plans because it was over budget for us and we can’t go over it. M

What we would have had would have been stunning but I am very happy with what we’ve decided to go with. We start soon - woo!

Definitely Love It in your shoes. It's hard going during the build but it will end one day and you'll say 'never again' but it will be worth it.

We are in a kind of similar situation except I'm not sure even with the work I would actually love it.... Can't decide what to do. Stamp duty on a new place would be about £75k. Could spend that on renovations instead and add the other bedroom we need and an outdoor room/fancy shed, plus replace windows etc. But the plot is still smaller than we'd like. Still mulling it over!

Do the work- you’re paying to make the house perfect not to increase it’s value. Think of it like paying for holidays etc. where you don’t expect anything back.

Ah I was hoping that would be the consensus.

On a side note...I admittedly live in quite a pricy part of the UK but whenever I watch LIOLI, I am just always aghast at how much people able to do an a budget of say, £30k including extensions! Is it just me or is some of this totally unrealistic? (I do like watching it for the ideas though)

£250-300k is huge, are you sure you can't do it for less?

Our house is similar in value to yours and the wok we're planning should be significantly less, our budget is around £100k.

I would love it, location is important for me.

We did the extension. And I am so glad we did. We couldn't afford the price of the equivalent we would get if we moved in comparison to what we'd get with the extension.

Price wise we have broken even as we still have a semi and there is a ceiling to the price of houses in the area. But we intend to stay and the difference it's made to our lives is well worth it.

I think in your position I would love it.

However I agree with @AnotherEmma - that's a whopping budget even for eg: London, surely you must be able to do it for a bit less than £300k?

We need to see plans, obvs

OP, we are having the exact same conversation in our house! Provisionally have the builders booked in for summer but I'm having a wobble. My main worries are around making the wrong design and decor decisions meaning we will end up with a bigger and better house but not to the full potential. I'm also dreading the actual process and keep looking at properties that are pretty much done. I rarely see anything I would even consider and they are always well above the cost of any building work if I do though. Especially when you take SD into account.

Your project does sound pricey but it's making me feel better about ours, similar sort of house price but our build is around £160, that includes sorting the outside as well.

Location and good neighbours would win it for me.

We live in a theoretically 'cheap' part of the UK (Scotland, not in a city) and our next house will be in the region of £800-1m.

A loft extension for one bedroom with ensuite has been quoted at £40k unfinished (no carpet or decor etc) not including architect fees etc, a sunroom extension on the kitchen was £50k (to match the stonework).

So I agree - no idea how they manage some of the stuff they do on LIOLI and Ugly House. But £300k must be something quite special!

I would definitely love it!!! I bet if you look at houses online they would all need significant work doing to get them how you would want them so you may as well do it to the place you already love.
Have you had the work quoted for? I would get an architect to draw up plans as they could suggest layouts / ideas you haven't thought of and then I would get three or four builders to quote for the job. A £300k budget suggests you nearly want to knock it down and rebuild territory so you might be pleasantly surprised at what you could get done for less than you think. Doing all of the work in one big project is cheaper than lots of little projects. Roughly where I live (just outside London) most big house renovations come in at the 100-150k range. For example a loft conversion is 40-50k, a single extension is 30-40k and a double extension is 50-80k. Opening up sight lines and creating an open plan space is anywhere from 5-25k. A lot will depend on finish etc.
One other note- every good builder I know has work booked in for the next year as they are all so crazy busy; this might be specific to where I live but the lead time to starting might be longer than you hope for.

Do you suffer from itchy feet? Some people are satisfied with what they have, some always want more (not a criticism, good to have plans and achieve them).

If you are an itchy footer who will always hanker after the dream location, do a smaller refurb that works for now and will at least be recouped in a sale (even if you only just get the money back but it makes it easier to sell so when the right thing comes up you can be ready).

Do you risk 'unbalancing' the house? You've not said what your plans are, but would it mean losing garden or having more bedrooms than living area in ratio?
I'd compare the £1m+ houses and be sure you're comparing apples and apples. Is stamp duty still on hold?

You have just said "significant works" but haven't said what they are. We don't know if you are spending wisely or foolishly.

Yes agree the budget is generous but it is to cover effectively three extensions including a somewhat ambitious (not sure if feasible) taking out of the back wall of the house to extend into garden, which I should imagine will require a hefty amount of steel reinforcement. Also demolishing existing rotten garage and rebuilding with a linked upper floor into upstairs of house. creation of utility room and also entrance porch as well as all new windows needed throughout, pipe work needing replaced, exteriors and interiors refreshed, Bathrooms replaced etc. Basically starting again. I haven’t engaged architect yet but I can picture what I would like

Almost exactly the same figures here. Desirable house in a desirable location but it's going to take us over the ceiling price.

On the other hand, we love the location, it'll be fab when it's done and the work will greatly improve our living in it.

I'm trying to do the work for us rather than thinking about resale value too much. Obviously not doing anything totally stupid...like putting in a turret or a moat or losing a bedroom.

We only moved in a year ago, costs to move would be a factor as would the fact that anything "done" that's in a good location would be about £50K to £100K+ more.

Ours is coming out at £200K - including an extension to make a kitchen diner where there's currently a tiny kitchen and shonky conservatory.

It includes some internal work to make the attic rooms more useable by putting in decent stairs which will also give us much more light in the front of the house.

It also includes all the flooring, some new furnishing, the kitchen and appliances, some new radiators, a megaflow, 2 new bathrooms, some paving and landscaping outside, a couple of new windows, 2 new velux, new blinds and curtains, woodburner installation, sorting out another fireplace with a new hearth and surround, new front door and new front gate.

Oh, and we are somewhere expensive for builders, there's a massive steel needs to go in and an amount of underpinning...a large amount of underpinning.

It's an old stone built house with stupidly thick walls.

Just do it. We are nearly at the end of a big £100k extension but would never find a house like ours in as good a location again.