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.

pre VAT

Although I can't see how you can live there with some of the work needed so I would budget to move out for a bit.

We've just done a loft conversion (further SW than Balham but not as nice part of town) and it was around 65k including renovating the main bathroom that got ripped out to access the plumbing to run up to the loft bathroom.

£150k for a smaller-than-a-side-return extension wow! Was it worth it do you think?

@YorkshireTeaCup would you recommend the loft company you used?

Sadly not! They are great guys and eventually did a good job but it was supposed to be a 10week project and in the end has been a 22week project. So very frustrating and it's been a bit of a nightmare having the house upside down for so long.

Ah! Name change fail above. This is still me!

Literally everyone I spoke to recently has been unhappy with their builders! No one has any recommendations 😆

@restisall it isn't my house but I definitely wouldn't have spent the money they've spent on that house because I don't think they will ever get that money back.

It does look nice though!

I was going to say something like this. Surprised at people’s cheaper figures. I was thinking it could even reach the £500k mark (including vat), as everything is so much more expensive right now.

200k sounds low. We paid that for an extension, kitchen and bathroom. FOr all the rest you're looking at 300k minimum,

I'd be extremely surprised if you get change from 500k. By the time you've done the garden, all the finishes etc. build cost probably 250-300k and the ffe on top. I did a build last year and took a house in a similar area from 1000-2000sqft and we came in at just shy of £500k. And that's with no architect fees, no project manager, buying many fittings on eBay etc.

We've spent over 150k on renovations. Turned 3 bed detached into 4 bed. Large 2 storey extension. And my other half is the builder. Costs of materials is crazy. Plus other trades. We've probably got to spend another 50k to get it finished.

@kirinm That's what we are trying to weigh up. There is definitely a ceiling price where we are. And that was with cheap borrowing costs so who knows going forward!

Sounds like a big job! We’re demolishing double garage and putting kitchen/utility and master/en suite in its place. £180k + tax + kitchen.

I've NC for this.
We are currently renovating in South London. Since we did our previous house just over 10 years ago, I'd say prices (materials and labour) have doubled. We are spending about £100k per 1000sq ft and are not extending(!) Quotes went up 10% between May and Dec. Neighbours were quoted 3/4 of a million to do a basement 1/2 the footprint of the house.
Your most difficult thing will be to get someone reliable (with references) to commit to the job. If they commit it will be pricey as hell but if they are good they should stick to their quoted labour prices. Material prices are in the lap of the Gods. Lead time can be v.long, esp on glass/external doors/windows and furniture. (16 weeks).

I’m on a local WhatsApp group and people were saying it was costing £100k for a side return only. This is north London and this year.

Some of these prices are insane. Are people sure they will recoup the costs?

We renovated just before covid. 3 storeys, new plastering, woodwork, wiring. 2.5 new bathrooms. Knocking through rooms downstairs, getting rid of conservatory, building a garage, renovating the garden. £250k.
Met the builder in the pub recently and he said it'd be another 109k now!

🤣 i know. I can recommend a brilliant decorator who is currently painting the whole lot for me though if that helps!

After we already had our disaster i did speak to some friends who recommended Absolute Lofts. I didnt know they had had theirs done when we booked our work in. But i havent used them myself so honestly don't know if they would have been any better.

Hi architect here, not in London though
It's really hard to budget jobs at the moment due to the steep rises in material costs which are still rising.
I don't 'charge more' for expensive postcodes and don't know anyone who would however some architects cost more than others. I usually price for a job (so the amount of work it takes) as a fixed fee and break down the costs so clients can see what they are getting with extras or big changes charged at my hourly rate or if the job changes a lot we will reassess the fixed fee at an agreed point.
I don't use a particular set of builders and wouldn't have the final say in which builders a client uses however there are builders I have worked with before and would recommend and who that would be would depend on the job.
I would say the builders I recommend are middle to higher end of costs but that's mainly because they are good at what they do, are of a certain quality/qualifications, are reliable, use proper contracts, are insured, don't cut corners, are safe, pay tax properly etc and because of this are in demand. We've used cheaper builders before because the client wanted us to and they nearly always end up costing more in delays/rectifications/communication problems/longer build periods/mistakes etc so it's worth making sure savings are real.

Similar (second hand) experiences to PP. I’m in SE London and friends have done just the side return extension (+ some additional bits and bobs) for £130k (this was a year ago).
Another friend is doing a bigger project that sounds similar in scale to yours and are hoping for 400k in total. Honestly it’s likely they’ll overspend so realistically it could be closer to 500k.

Its a big reason why we’ll had to kill or dreams of a Reno project as the difference in ‘done’ and ‘needs work’ houses is smaller than current building costs!

From current experience I could easily believe that

@CityKity ”Its a big reason why we’ll had to kill or dreams of a Reno project as the difference in ‘done’ and ‘needs work’ houses is smaller than current building costs!”

I’m sure there have been thousands of ‘run down’ properties changing hands for nearly top money over the last couple of years where the new owners are just realising just what a money pit they have bought.
I nearly 90% of properties for sale, you can see they need a rewire, usually a kitchen, and often bathrooms. That can easily be 100k of work.

Depends on the level of work you want.

I know people who have done full renovations very recently with all the trimmings - architect, interior designer, loads of new furniture, bespoke joinery etc and ended up with a gorgeous Pinterest worthy house. But this cost best part of £1m

With a bit less complex structural work and a lot less on joinery and decor I’d still say north of £500k for the bigger end of your range of projects. If you stick to just repairs, replumbing re wiring and cosmetic stuff, ie no structural changes/extensions then maybe £200k. However dry rot could be hugely expensive if it means you need new joists everywhere - depends how bad it is.

I am amazed at some of these lower figures and think people may be going off a few years back.