Realistic costs of renovating in London

[Msnotmiss]

We are looking at buying a 1900 square foot house in a costly road in London. It’s a heritage area although the house is 1920s. It’s a semi and is near derelict. It is currently 1800 square foot but has the potential to extend to a 3000 square foot house. Four bedrooms - 3 huge doubles but one small one. Only one bathroom and one downstairs toilet. Two sitting rooms,
large kitchen, small garage (no use for cars) to the side. Kitchen has not been touched since the 1960s. Ceiling coming down, dry rot. I have not been able to get builders to return calls - probably as it’s still speculative and they’re too busy to deal with hypothetical quotes.
Everyone says to live in a property before deciding where and how to renovate but it’s nearly derelict and we would want a second bathroom pronto!
Would love to know: how much to renovate eg redecorate, put in kitchen, update electrics and heating and maybe plumbing?
How much for all the above plus a second bathroom somewhere eg extending over the garage?
How much to do all the above plus extending the living space into the garden?
How much to do all the above AND a loft extension to go from 1800 to 3000 square foot? It’s in a pricey area in London so fear this will add to costs. I will persevere with builders but in meantime would like to know how much we have to borrow and whether this is feasible. Ballpark figures would be great too.

It could be anything from 100k to 200k or even more depending on the fittings you go for.

With such a huge job like this you can look in phases.

Have an architect draw up the end goal with everything you want.

Work back from that. Perhaps start by making the house habitable, then consider doing the loft, then the downstairs extension etc.

I've done two renos in London. First was 150k, second was 250k ... it always costs way more than you think it will.

Thank you @Twizbe . Suspect most people would just move out but we couldn’t afford the extra 4K a month on top of what will be a mortgage! How would you do this in phases and wouldn’t it cost more ultimately as you would end up having to redo work eg you if we renovated all the bedrooms and bathroom now, what happens when we discover that we have to bust through the bathroom to add another one or to do access to the loft? Husband is anti loft extension whereas I think it is cheapest way of getting in second bathroom and adding value! How long ago did you do your latest project? That sounds good value to me. Suspect we would barely get a side return for that now!

If it’s full of dry rot have you checked if your mortgage company will actually lend on it

Not yet @Lastqueenofscotland2 as sellers know they have to sort before sale can proceed. But they’re reluctant to before they know if there are any solid offers on the table.

Our last one was 2020 / 2021. Just as prices started to rise. We stripped the whole house and added a double height extension.

To do it in phases you need the end goal. That way you can plan around works you'll need to do later. So for example, if you re wire now you might move electrics from a wall you plan to demolish later.

If you make the bathrooms functional and choose low end fittings, but get the final floor plan sorted. You can sell on the fittings to upgrade. It's the pipes that cost the money to move.

Depending on the condition you might also do very minimal works to a room ready for the next phase.

What do you mean by a "heritage area"?

Do you mean conservation area?

If so then when your renovate you will have restrictions on things like the type of front door, windows and rendering you can do. This will add pounds to your renovation.

You also will have to be careful about extensions as you may be able to extend at the back as long as your house looks the same from the road.

You also need to check if the garden has any trees and there are Tree Protection Orders as depending on the type of tree you may not be able to remove it, you can remove it but must replace it or the council doesn't care. Either way you have to ask permission.

Everything is costing way more than five years ago. It will be WAY more than £100k.

For context we bought a property that just needs cosmetic work throughout, not total reno, and we've already spent or committed more than £65k on painting and plastering, new carpets, wooden flooring, shutters and one bathroom Reno. We haven't done anything structural. No extension. No outside/garden work at all.

Budget twice what you thought you'd need. Materials and labour are extortionate right now.

Yes it’s a conservation area though the house is not listed. We are in a conservation area already but not one as expensive! That’s the other problem: architects and builders surely charge more for more expensive postcodes?

Really good advice @Twizbe about knowing the end goal and then doing it in steps. We could make the bedrooms
habitable just about. Oh how I will miss my chef’s ovens and heated stone floor!

We did a huge renovation of a house that was 3600sq ft last year. We haven't extended it (that's for later this year) but we replaced everything except the external brick walls.
Replumbing (inc new radiators throughout, new boiler, new hot water tank, new copper pipes etc) was just over £30k.
Rewiring was £13k with sockets/switches and light fitting on top of that.
New wooden flooring- £15k. Tiles for bathrooms and hallways were extra.
New bathrooms anywhere from £7/8k to the sky's the limit.
New plasterboard and skimming throughout the house was £25k. We pulled down all the uneven lath and plaster walls- there is no way you could live through that- it was filthy and dangerous. We rented while the work was being done.
New double glazed wooden sash windows £80k
Decorating around £17k
New kitchen- depends on size and quality but absolute minimum £20k and that's on a serious budget.
And the building costs to extend would of course be extra.
Best in kind you can't mortgage prospective building works on a house you don't yet own. You'd need to have cash for those works. Happy to chat more.

Also- depends on the area- which part of London are you in?

@ItsMeAnnie It would be in South London (think Clapham but not Clapham - don’t want to be too outing).
That sounds like a serious job that you did! I suspected this will be on a similar scale. I have just started separate post in MoneyMatters on how to finance this! Do you take out the mortgage for all renovation up front? In other words, we qualify for quite a large mortgage so should we take that despite crazy costs of borrowing and keep some of the cash deposit to one side?

Okay- a similar type area to ours (but we're in North London) so costs should be about the same.
We bought the house for what it was worth before being renovated and the mortgage was on the unrenovated amount. We paid a 25% deposit so mortgaged the other 75%.
We had cash in the bank for the renovations. We couldn't have added the cost of the works to the mortgage. You can only get a mortgage on the amount the house is worth now, even if you can afford repayments on a more expensive property. You might be able to get a separate bank loan if you don't have cash for the works. Does that make sense? If not I can try and give a numerical example!

Sounds like a house near me. If it is, you won't be allowed to build over the garage and the original garage structure couldn't take it anyway, so even if you were allowed you'd have to start from the ground & build up. A loft is much easier as there are so many cookie cutter loft companies and it 's a very straight forward job on a 20s house. The going price near me is 50-60k depending on the type of scaffold you have and how posh the interior is. Doing a basic refit on a kitchen could be quite cheap 10-15k Wickes etc, but if you want to do the modern knock-through, bifolds etc and a nicer kitchen expect about 150k upwards.
I lived in mine whilst the work was done but I'm really hardy. I cooked dinner for 4 on a BabyBelling balanced on the stairs whilst the back wall of the house was knocked out. 😂
Good building teams are booking up well in advance and paying deposits for materials too. I don't think you'll lose out in the long run if you're staying for a while. It's expensive initially but nice areas hold their value long term. Just make sure you can afford the inevitable interest rate hikes.

Whereabouts are you @plumopie? most people on that road have built over the garage, though that space is long and lean and not sure it adds more than a bit extra for the single room and maybe scope for an en-suite. Yes places on this road can reach £3m!

@ItsMeAnnie We own current house outright (circa £1.5m) but the new place is about 200 more plus stamp duty is about £130k. So we will have a lot of equity but just need to make sure we can get a mortgage so will hold back some of our cash. I just wonder if it is worth holding back more of our cash so we can be sure we have enough to complete the building ALL the work or if we remortgage later to do that?

Hard to hazard a guess at a price really. My friend in SE London has just had a kitchen single story extension. Smaller than a side return. They were also doing something in the garden but that came in at £150k.

It might be worth contacting an architect to see whether they might be able to give you an indication or contact info for builders. Another SE London friend is having an extension and loft extension done but their builder cannot to it until next year.

£2k - £2.5k per square metre

Can I ask for those living in, how did you protect yourselves and things from dust and possible lead paint or asbestos? If you put in some carpets etc before, did those get ruined, or did measures like taping up the doors suffice? We're debating whether to live in ours, but we can't really afford rent and the work

I doubt you will get that done properly for less than £350k net of VAT

We renovated a mid century house 8 years ago. 125 sq metres. Right back to the bare walls as we wanted insulated (hallelujah). We spent £200k. If you are going to do your house justice you will spend at least double that.

Have you considered hiring a project manager? Even having a chat with one might help you get a better idea of costs, timescales, restrictions, etc.

And if you extend to 3000sqft I would agree with @billysboy and it will be £2-2.5k per sqft

Great idea re project manager. Do architect firms that source their builders come in at more or is it worth it for lower levels of hassle?

Is the cost to renovate the existing shell the same or more per square foot than extending? Should I just budget that 200 per square foot for the entire space so realistically 600k to extend and renovate existing shell, which would make up 2/3 of future space?

All depends on what level you are renovating to

To do it properly , hack all plaster off floors up and ceilings down , complete rewire and replumb , ufh is going to be nearer £2500 sq m

Lots to affect price , access , parking , congestion charge etc

Luckily there is offstreet parking and a big front yard. It’s a semi but link detached so would need to take materials through garage. No congestion charge but it is in ULEZ zone

Is it Balham? I would say minimum 200k for everything you want to do.