Would you max budget on a doer upper as a longterm project?

[ColdAsMice]

We've seen an amazing property, the type we could never in a million years afford if it was in good condition. It's huge, period so lots of character and in a great location too. But it's at the top end of our budget and it's in major need of modernisation.

It isn't derelict...it's currently lived in by an elderly couple and habitable. But there are degrees of habitable, aren't there. As in - it has water and electrics and some sort of heating system, but all ancient. The decor is vile, but that's the least of my concerns. Structurally it seems pretty sound except for some exterior plasterwork cracking. Windows etc are all in place although it's old single glazing. Massively dated bathroom and kitchen suites but usable.

We would have no money to do any work to it en masse so it would have to be dribs and drabs over time, as money came in. But its the only way we could ever possibly afford a house like this, and we'd never need to move from it once complete (if it ever was complete!)

Good investment or really stupid idea?

Just saw your update (should have RTFT!) about not having any spare money except bonuses per year, I think that changes the situation somewhat as a bonus isn't always guaranteed. I would think twice if you're not able to save something towards it month by month.

Hmmm. I was going to say yes. As we did this 8 years ago and it paid off, but, the fact you would only have up to £5k per year to spend on it puts me off. New windows alone will be tens of thousands.

I think you need to understand first what actually needs doing and at what cost. Go ahead with the survey and see what you uncover. Like previous poster we also negotiate down significantly but - that doesn't mean you have extra cash at the time to spend.

I wouldn’t if I was in your circumstances, if it is a financial stretch, it might really get you down not being able to fix things, you always find extra things that need doing when you move somewhere. Prices of materials have soared and tradesmen are harder to get hold of. Think carefully, whether you can cope with the upheaval for many years to come. Good luck with whatever you decide.

I love a good renovation - we've done two to our current property and it's now perfect for us. Each cost 6 figures!

Do you have a link?

I'd do it but only with a full structural survey first. I'd also try to negotiate the cost of a new boiler and new windows and a rewrite off the asking price. If you can get those done before moving in it will help in the long run.

Then you need a plan of action. As others have said

1. works to stop it deteriorating further so the windows, boiler, electrical and any updates to the render outside
2. cheap cheerful updates for the short term - new coat of paint, paint kitchen cupboards, stick on tiles, stick on worktops etc
3. chat to an architect and get some plans drawn up for any larger long term reconfiguration plans

The main downside I can see is if it takes too long to sort out, your kids will be grown up before you finish and you'll no longer need the big family house

Definitely look into it. They might accept a powis offer. We stretched ourselves to buy a large period house a few years ago and have never regretted it. It was in pretty good condition but still often feels like a money pit. The larger the house, the more there is to go wrong. Scaffolding costs so much more and I sometimes feel that people quote us more for work than they would for an identical job in a smaller property. You would possibly need any potential 5K bonuses just to keep on top of repairs as they arise, separate to renovation costs.
If you love the house it’s worth a try. You probably need to love entertaining too.

If you don't have money other than £5k in (unguaranteed?) bonuses to put towards the renovations then I wouldn't consider. OK you can cheaply slap a coat of paint on to cover the decor but kitchens, bathrooms, heating and windows etc are going to take you years to save up for. If they're already old then you don't always have a say in when you decide to replace them - I lived with an old boiler that had several near death encounters before I finally took the plunge to replace it because it took over a week to find the parts that it needed to be repaired.

How much would it annoy you to live somewhere which looked a bit rubbish/ was cold/ where things are all a bit old and broken? What would you do if the boiler broke in the second week you were there. Can you get a bit of money off the purchase price and keep it for an emergency? I wouldn’t say don’t do it but I do think you need some money (maybe 5k) for emergencies or be prepared to borrow it. Also have you really looked at your finances and worked out if you could save a bit more- if each of you can save £100-£200 a month it would make a difference. Is there any earning potential (rent out land/ a room/ parking?). Or could you extend your mortgage and just go interest only for a few years?

I wouldn't. Someone posted on here recently about her new house having some surprise problems and her own husband was a surveyor. It's really difficult to know what you'll uncover when work starts and materials aren't getting any cheaper. Could you try putting in a very cheeky offer?

I don't think I'd buy a doer-upper without knowing I had the plan and finances to renovate in the near term for heating/plumbing and medium term for kitchen/decor.

Life is short and we've all spent far too much time in our homes over the past 18 months. I'd look for somewhere comfortable and warm and that can soon be made into a sanctuary. Personally I wouldn't want to feel like I'm making do for a vision that may never be realised.

P.s. we bought a house that seemingly needed very little done. We're now a third of the way through an extensive refurbishment. Things were uncovered during preliminary work that I'd never expected to do...like all of the plumbing and a massive overhaul of the electrics. It's worked out to be incredibly expensive (three times as much as expected) to get the house into good shape.

I think the main point is, if you're stretching yourselves to the point you are then you can't really afford to live in the house, never mind do a complete reno. Big houses come with big expenses even when in good condition, heating, keeping the gutters clean and clear, any minor repairs, general maintenance, even window- cleaning is much more expensive.

And that's before you take into consideration any other unexpected life-expenses or circumstances that may mean a drop in income.

Tempting though it is I'd give it a hard pass. Just watch The Money Pit if you start to waver!

@ColdAsMice

Yes we have children but they're both a bit older (10+) so not like having toddlers running about. They've seen the state of the place and don't seem too fussed about living in it "as is" as a compromise for the huge amount of space they'd get.

We'd have literally nothing to spend on it per month except when bonuses come in...so maybe 5k a year maximum. Which worries me. Things like painting, sanding etc we could do ourselves. But the bigger things literally would need to wait until our salaries increase further, which they will over time, or we inherit but it could be many years away. We'd be accepting that We'd be literally living in it as it is until a point we could afford to improve it purely on the vision that it could, one day, be incredible.

Unless you plan to learn a hell of a lot more than how do do a bit of decorating, no. If you are so close to the bone, how will you fare if anything goes wrong you don't anticipate (not just with the house- and believe me, w.r.t. the house alone, if you aren't experienced, there will be). You could get stuck with having to sell a property that looks worse than it is now, as doer-uppers get worse before they get better as you uncover more stuff. Then your house will be worth less than you paid for it, even though you have spent money on it, and you won't have the means to even superficially prepare it for sale. I know of people who got into sad trouble doing that, when he was made redundant part way through the renovations. If you're a gambler by nature, and have a temperament that can write off mistakes to experience and not beat yourself up for the rest of your life if things go wrong, it might be for you. Otherwise, if it would stretch you so much even without doing work to it, I don't think it is.

Yes sorry it does sound a stretch too far.
I can guarantee there will be some work which crops up that you absolutely will have do in the first year. Could be new boiler, could be rewire, could be leaky roof, could be rot treatment. Could be all of those. And it doesn’t sound like you could necessarily afford those really, never mind any bigger renovations. Especially if you’re paying through the nose to heat the place.

Sorry. Buying a wreck knowing you’ll have money coming in a year or three to do the refurb is one thing but doing it without that and just hoping the money comes from somewhere isn’t sensible.

You can't afford it. Harsh but true. You'll be living in a wreck and relying on potential bonuses to do very necessary work that might take years. Really bad idea. I think you'd regret it.

Gosh no. This sounds like a really bad plan if you have only a possible £5k bonus to spend a year.
You need to take into account the much higher heating costs, any emergency work, higher insurance and council tax costs, etc too. Have you considered those things?

Nope. I wouldn't touch it, OP.
Leave your good intentions to the property flippers. It'll be an endless money pit that will depress you and impact the children.
Buy yourselves a home. Seriously. A home you can make some memories in before the kids leave for uni in a few years... a home you can enjoy. Life's too short.

I think it depends how hardy you are and how handy.

Plenty of people (me included) live with large single glazed windows in old buildings. Invest in some wool jumpers and thermals and you'll be fine (though visitors might be cold).

You can pick up "like new" kitchens and bathrooms for a fraction of their new price and of you are reasonably handy you can fit them well so no one would ever know.

Assuming that the work needed is optional (ie it's not going to damage the fabric of the building to not do it eg fixing leaks etc) then I would go for it. BUT ive lived on project houses (our last one took 7 yes and we've barely started the current one). It isn't for everyone so be realistic about what you can put up with and what you're capable of

Yeah that just sounds really stressful tbh. Without a decent amount of surplus monthly income or ability to take on further loans etc, it will be really miserable for quite some time . Just a few windows will eat up your yearly budget in a heartbeat. The boiler and installing new rads could take two years to save for. We have been through this, though sounds like our place is smaller and no period details, and we had £12k ish at the start to do boiler and electrical rewire. We have then had to spent at least that again over 2 years on the bathroom , windows, garden, plastering etc etc and we have done 80% of the work ourselves.

We have a renovation project house, and very little money.

Most of the work done over the past couple of years we have done ourselves, but have also got friendly with a local plasterer and plumber who have done bits here and there for a reasonable price..it's regular work for them and they are very local.

It does get stressful..I hate mess and am a bit of a tidy freak, but have had to dig deep and embrace the mess! There is constant dust everywhere and the big project rooms - bathroom and kitchen/diner are pretty horrible at the moment..they're realistically going to be the last bits we can afford to do.

But...we have done the front two reception rooms, DD's bedroom and the spare room and the hallway is partially done.

We have had the roof repaired, a new boiler fitted, plug socket rewire throughout and new PVC piping in to replace the old lead.

We have had to do things in a certain order..mainly the bits needed to make the house watertight and warm initially which took most of the small amount of budget we had.

We have a good friend who is a carpenter and he has replaced 4 of the rubbish, leaky and rotten old casement windows with new wood double glazed sash's for us..again at a good rate as he is a friend and works with a joiner in Brighton who was able to do us a good price. He also built us alcoves cupboards in the front room at a fraction of the cost (he used pictures of the work in his promotional material).

OH has taken walls down, ripped out an old bathroom and sanded and varnished floors. I have stripped endless old wallpaper and decorated rooms, and also renovated 2 Edwardian fireplaces.

Upsides - I love old houses and this one is proving to be a real treasure trove of period features that have been covered up and neglected for the past 50+ years. I feel a real sense of pride and achievement in what we are doing.

We are living in a house I would never have dreamed we could have, but only because we are prepared to live in a perpetual building site. It will be fabulous, but it's going to take time and effort.

Cons: The dirt/dust/noise/general mess. The grotty kitchen and bathroom, no shower and only one toilet.
Having 2 DC's in amongst all the madness can be very testing for everyone, but they've got used to the chaos!
We spend a lot of our time working on the house, when we could (and should) be doing other things. I often feel guilty that we should be out and about with the kids more.

Yes definitely as long as you can live in it/afford to do the work. Especially if you can muck in and do a s much of the work yourselves as you can.

I'm in the no camp I'm afraid. You would be making your lives unimaginably hard for no good reason.

Your kids will spend the second half of their childhoods in a cold, draughty house they won't want to bring friends back to and which devours their parents time and money.

If you could afford to complete the renovations in a couple of years, I might be swayed, with no end in sight? No way.

We relocated up north with my husband's job twenty years ago, and he fell in love with an old listed building that needed complete renovation.

I'd had to leave my teaching job in London so we had to live on his salary only, as well as paying for the extensive renovations and repairs. Boiler went kaput our first week, unexpected £5k gone from the savings. Our children were only two and four, we lived in a building site for what seemed forever, and had to spend every penny on the house. It didn't work out as we'd planned at all.

If I could have my time again, I'd not do it.

I wouldn't, tbh (and I understand the temptation as we've had a similar dilemma!). Renovation work is creeping up in price and who knows if it will ever some back down/when it will stabilise. What's the EPC? We viewed a house which was in good condition and top of the budget but it was an EPC of F, which means it would be a bastard to heat and with the cost of energy rising we didn't want to have to watch our savings drain away to stay warm.

But we have also decided our max budget with making sure it leaves us with £600 to put into savings a month after bills and all other spends (including 'fun money'). The economy is looking uncertain, I don't think it's the time to be taking chances like that.

For a bit of actual reality to chew on....
Our 1920s doer-upper isn't huge. And we're in the NW, which is cheaper than most areas to get work done in. But even before covid, which has put up prices, the things we couldn't do safely cost a lot, like rewiring cost us north of 6 grand (we had to move the consumer unit to another part of the house, granted, but that didn't make that much difference- and that did include patching the plaster, (badly, we had to redo it ourselves) but nothing for redecoration. In older houses you may need, as we did, to have every line of cable chased into the plasterwork, because there are no nice plasterboard walls to drop cables behind like in more modern houses, or conduit to pull through. The mess was indescribable- we had planned and budgeted for it, though, and had it done before we moved in.

Only a third of the roof plus all the gutters, soffits, and gable cladding on that third cost us about 5 to have redone, even using the existing slates- the scaff alone cost a grand. The rest of the roof will, hopefully, be next year. Won't need such high scaff, but will need some new slates, as they are 100 years old.

We found before the rewire that behind the kitchen cupboards and tiling there was no plaster, only chipboard, so the kitchen had to be stripped and replastered. We had a contingency fund, as we expected there would be some nasties lurking, so that was okay financially. But all the same, well over a grand for the plastering alone, even with us doing the battening out, plus paint and new covings and skirtings, which we also fitted ourselves. We're also fitting the kitchen ourselves, it will be our third. Had we had no contingency money, or not had the skills we do, we would have been stuffed. It still took 18 months, during which time we had to look at increasing amounts of bare brick shedding dust and grit on every surface. And I had to learn bricklaying to patch the walls due to previous idiotic DIY.

This isn't a scare story. It's what you have to expect with older doer-uppers. That's why they are cheaper than 'made' houses. You get nothing for nothing in this life. I'd say that if you plan do do a house 'properly' it will always cost more than buying one done up- it's just that you can do it your own way. You can only save money overall by doing an awful lot yourself.

if you spend all your money buying it, you can't afford to do it up.

you aren't a builder

what will your home life be like if you expect to spend four hours every night plumbing and plastering?

We did this and I have not coped brilliantly. It was good to have space during the lockdowns but we’ve been here 5 years now and have done a lot but still have the old bathroom, ancient carpets throughout, also it’s cold in winter. The cold is the biggest challenge