What would you expect to pay

[GettingStuffed]

This is for something planned in the near future to make our house saleable.

We're talking about a 4/5 medium sized house with a small kitchen

New kitchen as ours is literally falling apart
Upstairs floor board, we have some that need repairs
Carpet or wood flooring
Repainting
Electrics possibly rewiring .

How much would you budget for this?

I wouldn’t do the kitchen.
We’ve just had 3 EA round and they all said the same thing. Leave it. There are so many houses up with brand new (mostly grey!) kitchens and people don’t want that. They don’t want to pay full wack for a house with a brand new kitchen that they’ve then got to rip out and pay to re do. Same with carpeting and flooring.
If it needs refurbishing just price accordingly.

Far easier to price a bit lower for sale than to get in tons of people for a refurb.

Getting in trades is hard, expensive and you will have to live through the disruption. Let that be someone elses problem.

What you need to do is polish it. Get it clean. Look at things you can spend money on cheaply and do easily. For example consider redoing the kitchen floor and cabinet doors but not the whole kitchen. think about what stuff you can do that costs the least money but makes the most impact. The idea being not that someone buying it thinks its great, but that they can think "I can live in that until I can make it great".

i agree with pp. I'm a buyer. I especially hate those vendors who "did up their house" but didn't add internal insulation in or consider anything actually practical/useful. I don't care whatever kitchen or bathroom colours the vendors chooses or the "Style". it will likely not be to my taste and i won't be paying extra for it just because they got it into their heads that it "added value".

The vendors I hate the most are the ones that slap down £300 of laminate flooring, paint the place and expect that that adds £20k to the value.

A couple of years ago in a rising market the stupid money was willing to pay for that sort of stuff.

Now there is only smart money left in the market expecting that to pay over the odds for superficial and low cost improvements is unrealistic.

We need to do the kitchen as we don't know when we'll be selling and it's practically unusable. I won't have grey though. The reason we want to get it done up as we would be able to sell it at around £ 150k more than we sell it as a fixer upper. Hopefully we won't be living here when the works done.

If you can sell it for 150k over and above a fixer upper price presumably that would be because it costs the buyer nearly that exact amount to renovate...so does it make any sense for you to do the work unless it is genuinely what the buyer "wants"? You really don't know what the buyer wants. The buyer might pay more for a fixer upper than you might expect if they want to put a better quality kitchen in, do wiring themselves for peace of mind, reconfigure rooms etc.
You could also sell at auction to get precisely that type of open-minded buyer.
I was looking at a house recently online in an area I know, with brand-new laminate flooring throughout. What a waste of time if they were planning to sell. The next buyer might well have preferred existing (dated) ceramic floor tiles which most certainly were underneath or engineered wood flooring or deal floorboards but the fashion for quick fix laminate had convinced the sellers they were "improving" the house and justifying putting bigger price tag on. But surely buyers see through all that???

But if I was living in a house for two years and needed to make it usable, IKEA kitchen (you could easily price it) with laminate worktops, stained sealed deal/pine flooring for downstairs from big DIY outlet (ditto) rather than engineered wood, white paint throughout (ditto), pine flooring in bedrooms with rugs painted or unpainted. Rewire kitchen/boiler ring for safety.
Easy on eye and nothing that needs ripping out especially but not deceptive either; you could do most of yourselves apart from electrics.

Exactly, dont do anything to it, you wont re-coup the money in this market, get it on the market as is and use PropertyLog to see what other sellers are doing price wise.

You cant predict future sale price, thinking that certain amounts of money are "locked into" a property is a fools errand, if rates have to go up again you could get 150k less not more, market it now and price realistically for the work needing done.

Honestly I wouldn't bother. Just sell for a cheaper price. Nowadays, extensive renovations for the purpose of a higher sale price are just not worth it. And it's obvious if it's been done on the cheap. 'Done up' houses in our popular south east town don't sell for much more than ones in need of renovation.

I think the OP wants to live in it for a bit anyway hence thinking about her budget in light of the assumed resale differential.

White kitchen, as plain as possible with white worktops. Needs to look clean.

I wouldn't rewire unless it's actually dangerous (electrical survey can be done and shown to potential buyers). Many people would reqwire the house with sophisticated effects, dimmers, timers for burglaries all controlled by Apps. .

You are using it for a year it needs a safe kitchen "ring".
And you never know the person buying it might want to live there whilst renovating themselves and also need kitchen to be usable bearable.

Yes, really not worth the financial outlay now, just price sensibly and be open to realistic offers.

We're selling and buying another property so the more we can sell for the better house we can buy. The house is falling to bits in places, new kitchen is vital as it's getting to an unusable state.

Also floor boards are lifted mainly due to DS walking from his room into the bathroom as you can follow a trail.

We've got an estate agent coming to value it as it is and if it's done up.

How did it get into that state @GettingStuffed ?

Confused about how you think you can increase the price by 150k just by putting in a cheap kitchen and replacing a few floorboards, updating electrics etc to a standard buyers would expect anyway 🫤

We're selling and buying another property so the more we can sell for the better house we can buy.

But what people are trying to tell you is that if you don't spend money on the house, then you will have that much extra to put to your new house.

I am another who finds your figure of "£150K extra" for replacing your kitchen, some floorboards and flooring highly unlikely ambitious.

Like everyone else, I'd shy away from paying over the odds for a house with a new kitchen, which is very unlikely to be to my taste. I'd be paying for something I don't want. Why would I do that ? Give me the house for a price that means I can afford to put in the kitchen I want.

Yep, I agree with the last few posts, new kitchen doesn`t mean much to someone looking at size, price and location as most probably are now, especially if they need a lender"s valuation (which probably won"t add anything for the new kitchen?) Look forward to the update on the valuation though, good luck OP!

OP. I’ve had two neighbours try to sell their house recently. Property one didn’t do any work for the sale, priced realistically, sold within two weeks.Property converted their single garage into a garden room with underfloor heating and bifold doors d they also installed a new bathroom. It’s been on and off the market for 18 months as they’re trying to sell it for more than it’s worth.

As others have said, be cautious about doing work in the hope it would add significant value to the property.

Realistically priced is the only way to sell now.

People always say kitchens and bathrooms sell houses but to be honest I DESPISE the mark up the wack on these awful grey cheap shaker kitchens people whack that are not what we want. I would rather pay less for a house with an old kitchen I can do to my own tastes. Regardeless of how 'new' the kitchen is if its something I dont want I will offer based on the cost to rip it out and re-do it.

Since covid the biggest seller of houses has been upgraded to outdoor space, if you have a garden/patio etc... then as little few hundred sprucing it up to a nice usable space can add 50% to a houses value.

This also adds curb appeal which is the biggest factor in attracting buyers.

"Since covid the biggest seller of houses has been upgraded to outdoor space, if you have a garden/patio etc... then as little few hundred sprucing it up to a nice usable space can add 50% to a houses value"

Unfortunately not true, spending a few hundred (that any potential buyer could spend for themselves if they decided to buy) won"t add 50% to the value of your house, LOL, I am assuming that was a typo?

Nope no type... a quick google will bring back many results on this.

In fact according to Post Office its up to 77% https://www.postoffice.co.uk/mortgages/how-to-add-value-to-your-property

It obviously depends on the limits of what the garden is so a north facing 3m squared alley is not going to add anywhere near as much as beautiful large manicured south facing garden with outdoor oven and entertaining space overlooking unspoiled hills etc... but its a well know fact since 2020 the quickest way to add value on most houses is curb appeal and usable outdoor space.

I'm not sure where you got the £150k additional value from but buyers are not daft and will easily see through a "cheap" kitchen popped in. If you want a new kitchen for you then by all means do it but be prepared that this may not equal the increase in value that you seem to be expecting. As others have advised, you would be better putting that additional money into your new house so you can get it the way you want and get to enjoy it.