How can you know you can afford the work before offering on a fixer upper?

26 replies

Zooforhouse · 16/05/2022 11:57

Have found a house, would like to offer. It has active planning permission (although not sure we’d follow those plans).

How can you know you can afford the work before buying it? We’d have a (feels like) significant budget but concerned that it won’t stretch.

is there a way? Or is this always a massive gamble?

OP posts:

AwkwardPaws27 · 17/05/2022 18:57

Jmaho · 17/05/2022 10:39

These are the sorts of figures I was seeing when looking online. In reality we had 4 quotes for a 12m squared basic ground floor extension not top spec at all to plaster finish, no planning needed. Very straight forward job. The cheapest quote was £28k and that was very much back of a fag packet so I'd expect that to actually be much higher. This was pre covid too and not London or SE. £40k was the average sort of quote we had and I'd expect that to be much higher now. Then we'd need to pay for new kitchen etc. Doesn't seem worth it for the space we'd gain

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To add to this - I'm currently mid-extension on a small 7m² side return infill, single storey, outskirts of London. Including moving the boiler, removing a chimney breast, putting upna stud wall, slate pitched roof & using reclaimed stocks, it's coming in at around £40k to a plaster finish.
Even the cheapest options with a flat roof, non-matching brickwork, if we didn't have to move the boiler etc would be far more than £1k per m².

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