Renovation costs.

[Woolandwonder]

Currently trying to buy a house, I'm a first time buyer so pretty clueless
Have been looking at totally 'done' places but something has come on the market that obviously needs work doing to it. Obviously a lot of questions re bigger/structural type iasues when we get to a viewing but just looking at the ad it looks like overtime it would need at the very least:
New kitchen
Flooring throughout (probably a mix of carpet and hard flooring)
Plastering/painting
New bathroom

It looks generally liveable in, so we could hopefully do these things gradually over time but I just wanted a sense of what an average cost might be for some of these things, say mid range, I live in a fairly average cost area of the country I'd say. It's a fairly bog standard layout 3 bed semi.

Really, really expensive. There are pros and cons to buying a fixer-upper.

Currently it is hard to determine how the renovations/ building market will go. With most of the cost increase being driven by higher material costs and with a weak pound, it is hard to see renovation costs coming down. Prices will come down as builders get desperate for work but how much can they squeeze labour costs and margins? Not by a great deal to reverse the crazy prices we now see being quoted. Prices have doubled or tripled.

Someone more familiar with that market might have good advice.

Thanks. Yeah really really expensive is what I'm thinking, I know building costs are ridiculous right now. Such a crap time to be needing to buy, bit of a nightmare, I suspect we might have to try and put it on hold for a couple of years, but we are in are early 40s and need to get on with it.

As well as cost, availability can be an issue. We have had a nightmare sourcing builders, generally they only want to take on the big projects like extensions, so slower renovators who are doing a room at a time are of less interest and you might get ghosted :/ knowing what I do now, I'd be much more tempted to get a house which only needs a paint job Vs plastering, structural etc

Costs are hard to figure out right now, and are dependant on your area so it's difficult to give you accurate numbers. Structural work (knocking supporting walls, wrap around extensions) will be incredibly expensive (in the thousands or even tens of thousands depending on the size of the wall, long structural beams cost ££££).

Aesthetic works like plastering are more affordable but still more than you would think (we had a 3x4m room plastered for about £500). The flooring for the same room came in around 1k (fitting and supply) which was also much more than I thought. It's also stuff like electricians, radiators, boilers blah blah which will add up!

Some kitchens you can get a payment plan for, I have a tiny kitchen and was quoted about 12k from Magnet with mid level appliances, it's quite easy to find those quotes yourself though, and that will include fitting (not sure about removal of old appliances though)

We bought a derelict property 18mths ago. Relative who is a builder estimated it would cost £150,000 at the time. That cost has been doubled! However, we needed a complete new roof and almost everything in between. The cost of steels was locked in for 7days only- before going up again! We changed a small extension from wood construction to brick- as it was cheaper! Prices are crazy.

If the house is actually livable, thats great. You can do the work work as you go along. We are in a static caravan in the garden! We went to several kitchen retailers and settled on an independent guy, no shop and can source various kitchen cabinets and doors. See if there is someone similar around you. We went with personal recommendations from our builders. NEVER use check a trade or similar!

To add, availability can be an issue. Initially told lead time of our windows was 4 weeks, then 6- in the end, the last one took 7mths! Painters, we found someone available within the month- but most were booked up for the next 3mths.

Be wary of trades immediately available!!!

if it's liveable and ok structurally, then the question would be, is it a good location for you, the right amount of space, garden etc. does it tick most of your boxes and would you be able to save money up/borrow for when you want to renovate.

and current issue, how energy efficient is it now and in the future?

I wouldn't necessarily be put off if It is livable and doesn't need any structural work. A new kitchen and bathroom isn't that big a deal

We bought a cosmetic doer upper in Jan 2021. We have done it slowly and just have kitchen and hallway/landing to do. We are starting on the kitchen next week and it's costing 10,500 and that is for a kitchen with only some new appliances (this does include fitting). I am spending so many hours sourcing stuff online to cut costs but not cutting quality as much as possible. It can be done cheaply if you can fit yourselves (we can do basic DIY but a kitchen or bathroom is beyond us!).

We have probably spent 50k ish with the kitchen doing up our place that does included a hefty 8k on the garden but the garden is now perfect for us.

Do it bit by bit, slowly over time, we won't be able to afford the carpet for the stairs and landing after the kitchen for at least another 12 months but we had the old carpets professionally cleaned when we moved in to tide us over.

We bought this house earlier this year thinking it needed a new boiler and a lick of paint. It needs everything doing, nothing worked properly.
We're mid renovation at the moment, back to original plaster and no internal doors on at the moment. Luckily we have a number of reliable tradespeople and trade only suppliers we can use. Even so, they are silly money at the moment.
The new boiler, rads and pipes has cost us £12k which was way more than we'd hoped.
I've budgeted £7k for the bathroom and £15k for the kitchen, I'm not sure it'll be enough.

Don’t forget the rewire costs, or usually at least adding outlets and internet points, maybe also an alarm.

We!re in the process of renovating our 1960s build-we’ve opened up 2 structural walls, moving/replacing kitchen, 2 new bathrooms, skylight, new boiler, windows, doors, and I don’t think we’ll see change out of £100k.

Oops, we’ve fully rewired it too

How long is a piece of string?

If you are fairly hands on then the main expense is plastering (I recently paid £380 for a mid sized room)

A bathroom costs from £1500 plus fitting - I found a guy who charges £200 a day.

I paint myself, I tile myself

Flooring varies too much so go to a mass market flooring shop for an idea, carpet is cheaper usually unless you self install the wooden laminate (I did).

Kitchens are the biggest expense, I only paid for the electric reroute and gas because my father installed (he charged £220 a day to others for context) mine cost units wise £10k (solid wood) but you can buy for far less (look at wickes contract kitchen range for cheaper ideas).

It's a labour of love, has to be otherwise just buy a new house!

Out of interest, if you don’t mind saying, how much was the rewire?

It was done about 18 months ago, 5 bed, 3 bath 1.5 storey bungalow was about £2.5k.
You could probably quadruple that with the way things have gone since (only half joking!)

We have bought a similar property, although it's already extended. Just badly and a long time ago! We had a builder lined up to quote the day after completion. He's from a bigger company and so had availability within 3-4 months. We completed in June and work should start next week. He came very recommended so we didn't get any other quotes (this is risky!) but it's been quite a lot of work just with one company - he then came back with plumber and electrician to get the details worked out.

Depending on the vendor, you can get a builder in before completion to start the quote process. We decided against that as buying family home from elderly widower. There are no guarantees re access though and we've found having time to just mooch around in the space after completing has changed some of our ideas.

It's worth being aware that things not in good condition inside the house eg bathroom and kitchen can indicate that other, less obvious, things haven't been done. So you may need to rewire. There may be work needed to the roof - we have some repairs needed to the chimney stack and some slipped tiles to sort out. And a total rewire!

The bathroom is about £4k
Kitchen (Howdens) is about £6k (this is just units, worktop, taps, sink. Not appliances or fitting).
Flooring you can go VERY expensive but we've got ballpark figures of:
Carpet is looking like £20-30 PSM plus fitting and underlay.
Tiles £35 PSM
Vinyl tiles is a fun one at the moment after we got an £11k quote . It looks like cheaper versions start at about £60 PSM (that's including fitting).

We bought a neglected but livable 3 bed semi 5 years ago. We've nearly finished doing it up - just one bedroom & the front garden to go!

It need a new roof immediately, we then did a couple of rooms ourselves very slowly over many weekends (lining papered walls, laid laminate flooring ourselves).

We gradually replaced the boiler, windows, repointed & then stole part of a bedroom to create an upstairs bathroom (mix of savings & extra borrowing).

We bit the bullet last year & decided to do a small side return extension to add a dining space to the kitchen; we've just finished that & replacing the downstairs bathroom.

Rough costs this year (outskirts of east London);
Kitchen - £15.5k (Howdens units £7.5k, fitting £2.5k, quartz worktop £2k, appliances £3.2k, tiling splashback £300)

Bathroom - about £10k (roughly £3.5k for suite, decent extractor fan, tiles, grout, mirror etc, & £6.5k for fitting - including moving toilet & new door - electrics & tiling)

Flooring - Karndean laid throughout kitchen diner, small reception room/study & hallway, including prep & screed - £3.5k

Plastering was included in building work so hard to separate out.

We've got a painter/decorator currently as I have a very young baby so can't DIY it this time - kitchen, bathroom, study (all bare plaster Inc ceilings), hallway (needing lots of prep as old paper etc) stairs, bannisters, all the doors - will be about £3k labour + £500 on paint.

Haven't had a quote for new stair & landing carpet yet - might have to be our Xmas present to each other 😂

I’d guess at £25k ish for what you’ve outlined based on recent work we’ve had done

It's worth being aware that things not in good condition inside the house eg bathroom and kitchen can indicate that other, less obvious, things haven't been done. So you may need to rewire. There may be work needed to the roof - we have some repairs needed to the chimney stack and some slipped tiles to sort out. And a total rewire!

@RidingMyBike makes an excellent point. We spent the first few years just working through the survey.
None of the rooms were a case of just laying down a dust sheet & cracking open a can of paint, there was a lot of making more of a mess first or just living with stuff until other things were done first.
There was no point decorating some rooms until we repointed, for example (learnt that the hard way when water came through the newly painted living room wall!).

That said I love our home & I've enjoyed a lot of the process.

Thanks all. That's really helpful, costs were around what I was thinking, I think the issue might be it might be that it's too much of a risk with the things that we don't know about, as we wouldn't have much spare money after buying. If we could buy it for asking price we could afford to have the kitchen done and do some basic redecoration etc but not much else, but then if it turned out it needed a new roof, rewiring or something ridiculously costly we would be in trouble.

Cost us about £100k all in. Inclusive of a bit of new roofing and the garden

This is yet another reason the house buying system in England needs total reform. In Scotland the seller pays for the survey, known as the home report, which you can access before you even think about viewing a house. We knew before we bought our house that the bones of it were absolutely solid, and it was just really needing updated inside

I would never recommend buying a fixer upper without a contingency.

Sounds like good advice.

This is so true, it's such a ridiculous system, particularly if you are buying a the lower end of the market, a couple of surveys that means you can't proceed can make a massive tend in your finances.