Anyone recently bought a fixer upper, what’s your experience so far and any regrets?

[Orchid090]

I’ve seen a property in an area I really like. Houses hardly pop up in that area. It is mainly elderly folk that have lived there for a long time. This also means the house still looks like it is in the 1950s and many things being dated.

I am tempted but a lot of people are telling me to leave it because fixer upper tend to cost more than you budget for and the price of materials and labour costs have skyrocketed. I’m unsure what to do so I’d love to hear other people’s experiences.

Think of the amount of work that needs/ you’d like doing and halve it. The think of a number and double it. That’s the situation at the moment!

We’re 6 months into a complete renovation and extension that we waited 3 yrs to start (Covid, massive price rises, builder availability). Took us ages also to find a builder we liked who gave us a reasonable quote.

We’re doing far less than originally planned and it’s costing us a lot more. It is not for the faint hearted. We’re only doing it cos we don’t plan on ever moving from this house. Otherwise I don’t think the numbers add up. Unless it’s only minor work and you’re willing to roll your sleeves up and do some of it yourself.

Depends what you need doing.

I bought in august.

Basic building was fine, needed new heating system, roof fixing, other than that cosmetic stuff - no actual building. Redecorating every room, two new bathrooms planned for next month and kitchen will get done next summer.

Roof wasn't as bad as it could have been. Heating system and bathrooms are expensive but not too bad. I'm patching up plaster and redecorating myself which is saving a lot of money.

There's many types of fixer uppers ... does it just have a pink bathroom you don't like, and some swirly carpets and dodgy wallpaper; or is the roof falling in and damp everywhere?

If the building is reasonably solid and you like the area and plan to stay there a long time, it's worth it. Buying the worst house in the best area is often worth it. However, factor in whether the work that needs doing is something you can tackle bit by bit yourself or whether you'll have to get contractors for all of it, because that makes a big difference. We moved five years ago to a house in a neighbourhood we liked but the design and layout was crap. My husband is an architect and he redesigned it. We ended up spending about half as much again as we'd originally paid for it, but the house is lovely and we plan to stay there. We still have a few bits to finish, but the major expenses are out of the way.

It all depends. What is the asking price compared to a fully renovated, similar house? We are just coming to end of back to brick restoration, pretty much on time and budget. It's lovely having a house that's decorated exactly to our taste and configured to our needs.

I think it also depends on how much you love the house? We moved in to a house that had been left in a bad state and had to put in the end of a kitchen, some floors, had to insulate etc. cost obviously is your question but think about whether you think you’re cut out to wait for things to be done etc. that being said so satisfying when done!!

I understand the topic with it being either a cosmetic issue or structural/building issues. The house is outdated and has a back boiler so I’d definitely be looking to replacing it with a combi. I’m a first time buyer and don’t have anyone I know that is a tradesmen or builder. But I don’t know if I’ll need to replace the pipe work and radiators as the house is from 1950s and I am assuming pipe work is still same as then. So that will add to the cost. The home report is just a visual inspection and even if I get a tradesman to check they can’t exactly lift up the carpet or wallpaper to check for any deep rooted issues. It is difficult to know if a house has deeper issues or not with only being able to visually inspect it on surface level.

I really do like the area and it is the first house that’s popped up in 5 years! But what I’m on the fence about is the fear of the uncertainty.

We're buying a fixer upper, we've viewed it twice, taken a million photos and videos and made a list of everything that needs to be tackled immediately. There's a few jobs that need contractors like replacing the roof in the sunroom and landscaping the sloped gardens with retaining walls so we've gotten quotes for those things already. But there's other jobs that we're confident tackling ourselves (this is our second fixer upper) like knocking sub walls, replacing the outdated bathroom suites, refurbishing the kitchen cabinets and reflooring.

You should try making a list of things that you'll want done fairly urgently and things that you can live with for a few years and try to guesstimate costs from there as a starting point.

When you buy a fixer upper do you ever worry about hidden issues such as underneath the floors and walls e.g. for dry rot etc? I don’t know if I’m over worrying about things because usually when I think of fixer upper I expect a house to be in its absolute worst state.

We are six years into a complete refurbishment. Wiring, plumbing, bathrooms, kitchen, full decoration, the works. The only surprise was finding that the windows had no lintels.

Covid was difficult due to materials prices, and we have a complete lack of tradesmen here. We paid a lot of money for groundwork and a retaining wall that has not been done well. Battling to get that sorted.

We are on the home stretch, but it is getting draining now due to the length of time it's taking. I would do more of it myself but my back isn't up to it anymore. It's my third and I'll never do another.

Its a big ask, but do you know a builder, who you can trust and rely on? Your first doer upper can be quite traumatic, but your next is easier when you contacts has a couple of trusted professionals.
Are you ready to take the plunge?
It can be worth it, but maybe also uncomfortable.

We’ve not long finished it and have an amazing house in an area where I’m very happy. BUT the cost has been horrific, and that has definitely taken the shine off it. If we sold it tomorrow we’d hopefully get our money back (it’s in a very buoyant microcosm property-wise), and we may have to sell it in a few years to fund our retirement, which wouldn’t have been an issue had building prices not gone sky high over the last few years

After 20 years we were still fixing the upper so we sold it and moved out of area. If I’d have known beforehand I would have run a mile but I guess it depends what state the property is in and how much you can do yourself.

We very nearly ran out of money, which gave us sleepless nights, and having babies in a building site isn’t a barrel of laughs either.

Worth keeping in mind it's a bloody nightmare finding any decent tradesman at the moment; even going through locally recommended, we've had some dodgy ones that have really set our work backward. I think especially if you are in London, beware!

We are a year into renovating, we’ve not extended, but still well into 50k and that’s, new drive, landscaping garden, moving downstairs WC, kitchen, new radiators, re wiring, over-boarding and skimming old ceilings new flooring throughout. I’m a decorator so I’ve done all of that myself, we have done everything ourselves that we can, just paid for plastering, electrics and some plumbing but still way more then we expected to spend! My advise is the house always needs more work then you expect and it always costs more! It’s very satisfying though and people tell me will be worth it In the end - not sure when that will be!

Mine needs updating, new radiators, fully decorated, new kitchen, new bathrooms etc.

So no building work.

It's still stressful, a million decisions, house a mess, and DH and I are doing all the work ourselves so it'll take us years.

I've had so many bad experiences with tradesmen and I hate them being in the house so I'm happier this way.

The end result will be amazing though.

In our experience it can feel rewarding once you've got it done, but until that time it can be stressful, tiring and frustrating.

We got the keys for our property in early August and have been living with my parents whilst we (and my parents) have been doing it up; hoping we can finally move in this Thursday as we all need our own spaces back.

We knew the house needed a lot of TLC as it had been neglected by the prior owners but I remember walking into the empty building the day we got the keys and realising it was a much bigger project than we had imagined.

My DH works full time, I work full time and am pregnant (so not allowed to do much in terms of exertion for health reasons) and we have a DD so finding time to do work is interesting and it feels like DH never sees me or DD at the moment. We are incredibly fortunate that my DPs are retired and able enough to have helped us with the multitude of jobs that have needed doing in terms of time and cost savings.

In the past few months we have replaced windows, overboarded ceilings, rewired the electrics, replaced heating. We've had a few of the rooms completely plastered and carpeted. We're now painting and putting furniture together.

Whilst doing the place up we have tended to find that even doing (what should be) a simple job this reveals terrible workmanship or other work that needs correcting so there are several that's that actually need to happen before the simple job could be finished.

We are also lucky that DH is an electrician and DB is a heating engineer so we have saved costs there. We have also had good recommendations of other tradies from friends and families. Some have given us great value deals, others have been on the more expensive side, but their workmanship is very good quality so value for money.

Before moving I thought a budget of £30k would comfortably cover the works we needed and we have quickly rinsed through this with some works now being delayed until next year so that we can save up to cover the remaining costs of the more urgent jobs. I'm sure for many years to come we will have a long list of things to tackle; kitchen and bathrooms were all in working order so they will have to wait for a facelift.

I think realistically we could have done with £70k minimum to get the house completely up together, and as we'd like it. We wouldn't necessarily get that investment back in terms of an increased house price but we see this house as our family home, and wouldn't hope to move until we have an empty nest so don't mind spending money on this one. Our last house we didn't plough money into as we were always going to outgrow it.

That's why we bought a house where it was clear it had dry rot - you could see the mushrooms grow and the ceiling and wall had collapsed, and all other kind of rot, woodboring insects etc. were everywhere. So we budgeted for replacing most loadbearing beams, joists and floorboards, and rebuilding the lath and plaster ceilings. In a case like this, it's often the case that people will walk away from a house even if it was prices at £1, as the workload seems overwhelming, but in a way it makes budgeting easy as you assume from the outset that it needs everything doing, and gutting the whole place in one go is probably the most economical and overall quickest way to refurbish a house. You could get a more detailed survey done. When you visit the house, sniff and look around for signs of mould and rot and feel whether the floor fees spongy. Switch on the lights - do they have modern switches or toggles? Is there a delay and a funny crackling sound? Look how many sockets there are. An old house might only have 1 socket per room, that might mean you need to rewire for all those modern gadgets.

We bought a 60s built house at the start of the summer. It's structurally sound enough but needs pretty much everything doing... The kitchen/bathroom/hall/utility space all needs completely moved round and because we'll be moving doors and windows we need planning permission.

So far we've rewired the bit of the house that doesn't fall within the planning permission and had two rooms replastered. We've also replaced the boiler because it broke, despite getting a clean bill of health a couple of months earlier when we serviced it

We've done a TON of work in the very large overgrown garden and are likely to have to spend thousands in the spring getting drainage works done.

At the moment I regret it. Probably less than I did the first couple of months where I ended up crying most weeks but there's just SO MUCH to do and that's one of the things that becomes overwhelming - decision after decision after decision.

Given your circumstances I'd only take on if you really love the area/can imagine being in the house longer term. We're not particularly handy but this is now our 4th house so we have learned stuff over the years and have also found a few tradesmen that we like/trust.

Never again will I get a doer upper. Bought our bungalow 2 and half years ago - budgeted 90k to do the works. Partly due to our naivety and listening to what turned out to be duff information and mainly due to the horrors we've uncovered we'll be lucky to come in under 200k if we ever finish.
Finding builders is a nightmare. At the mo we're living in a house thats barely useable and definitely unsellable unless we wanted to take a huge lose.
We're going to have to take the relatively safe gamble that house prices rise enough over the next 10-15 years to get our money back as we know we're not actually adding anywhere near what we're spending.

I obviously needed to get that rant off my chest😅

I think it looks a bit risky for a FTB without contacts with trades- do you have experience doing DIY yourself? And I mean at a minimum things like decorating, filling plaster, basic carpentry skills so you could replace a joist and and some floorboards, that sort of thing, not just putting up a shelf and assembling furniture. And you also need to have, or budget for, some decent power tools as well.

I'd say, get in quotes, then double it. If the heating is that old, you'll probably need a complete new system, radiators, the lot. You may need a complete rewire. And I'd not take on a house as outdated as that without a top-level survey. Unless it's small, I'd expect to spend about 100K in the long run, but not necessarily all at once. Ours is going to come in at about that, but on one hand it wasn't quite so outdated (the heating was gas and the boiler is okay, just needed a few new rads), but on the other it's a 3 and a half bed detached and needed a complex rewire, and re-slating.

An awful lot depends on your character, and only you know that. You need a lot of self-control so you can keep a grip on costs, for example. The sort of person who always goes for the fashionable so-called 'high end' stuff will always struggle to keep to a budget. And you do have to be able to live in a tip and just stop noticing how bad it is. A natural scruff like me copes better than a house-proud type.

@Orchid090 something else that occurs to me. Go for function over form. We have a load of nice looking stuff, but it's completely useless. Really nice bathroom that's a nightmare to clean, and expensive sink units that splash water over you when you turn the tap on, and are already showing signs of wear.

Also, if you have tradesmen in, be really specific about what you want, and stand over them to make them do it the way you want. I let some stuff slip, and I bitterly regret it now. Then again, we were desperate, so had to put up with what we could get.

My husband and I bought a fixer-upper as our first home. Never again. The survey didn't highlight any major issues, so we thought all the renovations would be purely cosmetic. This wasn't the case, and even the redecorating cost more than we'd budgeted for (although we thought we were being very generous in our estimate of cost). It also took much longer than we'd thought and we lost heart halfway through. What started as an exciting project was a boring pain in the neck by the end.

Now we're moving to be closer to my new job, so it feels as if all that effort will be wasted anyway - a potential buyer came to view our house the other week and the first thing she said when she looked at our bedroom was that she'd rip out the built-in wardrobes that we only had put in a year ago. In a nutshell: only get a fixer-upper if you're prepared for it to cost more and take longer than you'd expect, and you're confident you'll be living in that area long enough to actually enjoy your finished house!

Since Covid it doesn't usually make financial sense any more.

I come from a building family and have almost all the trades in house. This last house still cost me almost more than the value added, which is practically blasphemy in my family.

I did fully replumb inc heating and boiler, rewire, roofing, insulation, replaster (knock back), new floors (inc joists) on two levels, new staircases, two new bathrooms and a new kitchen, remodelled 4 rooms (moving walls etc). Took 2 years at a casual pace and cost me £60k. That's cost prices - materials, barely any labour.

The price of copper and wood!! OMG 😫