Edwardian house - roof needs replacing soon (scared!)

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Hi all, I really need some help as we are exhausted from house hunting and can't think straight :( Thank you for reading:

We (DH and me) really like a house I viewed. It's Edwardian, so from the era 1901-1920. We really didn't think we'd' go for a house that's this old. The oldest house we thought we'd go for is 1930s. But It's in a really nice area of the town we like, close to high street and station to london too.

But this Edwardian house is really lovely - me and DH connected with straight away. It's about 1100 sq feet with potential loft conversion + kitchen extension to make it about 1500 sq feet in total later.

The issue is, there's a lot of work to do with about 90% whole house reno. It is currently empty.

It is habitable though because the vendor did do the kitchen and bathroom up which are fine and we won't touch for now.

My question is:
The loft is tiny, but the height of the highest point of the ridge is about 3metres. The roof is hipped - see photo attached. We would need to change the roof with a hip to gable conversion to make it comfortable for a loft with two bedrooms + small bathroom. A neighbour 4 doors down has done this already to their house that's practically the same.

(please note: the house is quite tall, so the angle the photo was taken makes the roof look smaller than it actually is).

Can anyone tell me how much a hip to gable roof conversion costs in the south of england? I mean only the roof shape (not a loft conversion). Our plan is: We only want to replace the roof to be a hip-to-gable shape, and intend to do the loft conversion later in life. If we do the roof now, we will have the space for the loft conversion later.

If we buy the property, we will have about £40k cash left between us. I really just wanted to save up for a couple of years before touching the roof/loft, but not sure this will happen.

For context of this problem:
There was a leak from the loft or roof into the front bedroom. We can see an obvious spot of a leak on the ceiling only (but no damage has gone down to the ground floor at all). But the bedroom ceiling has lots of plastering cracks with an obvious large spot from a leak. It's not caving in (which is good) but the Estate Agent said it's been "fixed" by patching up some of the roof. It sounded more like a quick patchy fix here and there, rather than a proper fix.

I think this means the roof probably needs to be replaced soon ish (I'm really nervous about this).

The vendor has also left the loft trap wide open, which to me means there must have been a lot of water to dry out. This part of the house is facing south, so the sun helps. But I am worried about potential wood rot in the attic and needing to replace the roof immediately.

We've had two viewings - it's never smelt bad. No signs of damp smell. It's slightly musty though, like a charity shop (but it is really faint) - the carpets are super old.

Other works we might need to do straight away:

• re-wiring
• changing half the windows from single to double-glazed.
• re-plastering + painting
• re-carpet bedrooms only
• re-flooring (wooden/laminate)
• gas fireplace may not be safe (we will probably get a gas engineer at survey stage)

The rest of the work we will do over the years, very slowly:

• kitchen extension to our taste
• downstairs bathroom
• upstairs second bathroom
• loft conversion (with potentially two bedrooms and small bathroom)

The house is up at £725k, but houses on this street that are done up can sell for £850-900k (2023 market). The EA said they've factored in what they think the house reno would cost already.

Should we buy this house? We do love it as a house, location is perfect, we don't mind doing a slow reno job, it's habitable, but the roof scares us a bit in terms of cost and finding somewhere else to live while the work is being done.

Thank you for your help!

I didn’t want to read and run. Never replaced a roof before, but always bought old houses. I’ve lived in an Edwardian, cottages and currently 1650 farmhouse.

What I will say is they are all a labour of love. We have loved every one of them but they take up a lot of cash. Saying this I just wouldn’t live in anything else. Our home has soul and and character. We love it. I think you’ve got to love it to do this. It sounds lovely btw.

Wow that's going to be expensive, but if you love it you love it.
With regards to the roof - get it surveyed by a proper roofing inspector. Not expensive and then you know where you are with it's current condition. Pricing the conversion is a much more complex question that can only be estimated accurately once you have the drawings done.
One word of caution on the price of the property - if houses done up were selling at £850k in 2023 they would be unlikely to make that price in 2024.

That roof looks like it’s been well maintained, the ridge tiles have been reset, chimney pointed, flashings replaced, vent tiles fitted.
I would not convert that to a gable end now. Use the money on the essentials that bring instant benefit, like the electrics and windows. Also the render looks perished. Replacing that alone will use a huge amount of your budget.
If you spend on the roof ( obviously it needs to be repaired if it leaks, but not replaced ) then you are gambling on staying put and doing that conversion later down the line. When ‘life’ might well get in the way of future plans and that money is then squandered.

Thanks @OneForTheToad - this is really helpful.

so you think if there's leaks, then fix that area of the roof, not necessarily replace the whole roof?

Also the render looks perished.

I'm sorry but I don't know what render is? What is it and what's it for? If it's perished, is it costly to fix?

Thank you

Thanks @DrySherry - yes, you're right! We don't think the other done up houses would go for £900k now. That's the EAs logic - they sold one of those houses for £900k to a family. We will offer £700k and see if the survey can bring it down further (we think it will). But if the offer is accepted, we are going to get the roof specialist in first to assess those leaks - this seem to be the biggest expense from what we can see and help us decide what to negotiate or pull out because it'll cost us too much.

But we really love the house! :(

The roof looks fine to me. Good adcice from @OneForTheToad .If it isn't currently leaking you don't need to do it urgently. Reroofing doesn't cause mess to the inside of the house so it can be done as and when you have saved up.

Rewiring is very destructive. Often if you get the wiring checked and make sure that the switchboard etc is up to date you can just get it checked and won't need to do a full rewire.

A full rewire would probably need the kitchen to be damaged in order to access the current wiring.

The render is the white bobbly bit on the outside of the house. It is flaking away. That needs repairing more urgently because damp will get in behind the render and seep into the wall and cause internal damp issues.

Hi OP. The oldest house I've ever renovated was 1730, so Edwardian seems modern to me.

I grew up in an Edwardian house and to my mind those Edwardians really knew how to build. Good solid houses with spacious rooms, high ceilings (but not unhomely high), great materials and flooded with light.

That said, you've a long list of work there and £40k is not going to touch the sides. If you are seriously thinking of going ahead choose a surveyor and brief them on your concerns/plans and ask for advice and ball park figures for work. Get them in before you make your offer, then you can be very informed before you start thinking of an offer figure. Shop around for surveyors - prices vary and so do services. A good local surveyor who you can speak to in person will give you a better result than some chain of surveyors with a generic report.

They will probably have a drone up to look at the roof. From what you describe I reckon the roof will need repairs rather than replacement. The stains you see could be condensation in a shut up house, water ingress from blocked gutters, a leaky pipe in the loft or any number of small, easily repairable stuff. If there was a serious leak you would probably get ceilings down and very strong damp smells. The loft hatch is probably open because other viewers are have seen the stains and want to look in the loft.

Questions to ask yourself.

Can you live in the house while the work is done? The cracked ceiling is probably plaster and lathe and might need to come down. VERY messy work....rewiring, replastering etc will create havoc. I live in houses while the work is done. I also have camping holidays. Camping is cleaner,and more comfortable than living in a renovation project and doesn't go on for months.

Can you do any work yourself or are you willing to learn? Painting, flooring, woodwork etc? If not this will be a very expensive project. Do not underestimate the appalling hassle of trying to get tradespeople to even quote, let alone turn up and do the job. Can you live in the house whilst they are working there? Noise, mess, sharing the one loo, fag ends in cups, a poo in a paint tin behind the shed - yep, I've seen that and opened the tin. Then add in the inevitable booming Makita radio on the landing whilst you're trying to work from home or get the baby to sleep.

How old is the boiler? You don't mention it and a decent new boiler and fitting is about £3,500.

What about outbuilding and garden? All money if even if you can do it yourself.

This will all either be an intense and expensive project or a drawn out and expensive project. All of this is worth it if you will stay and love the house for a while. I'm not trying to put you off and have bought much worse and loved the projects - honestly. I do a lot of the work myself but am still shocked how expensive materials and essential trades people are these days.

If you have a survey and still fancy putting in an offer start VERY low. You can always go up but it's much harder to come down.

The house is up at £725k, but houses on this street that are done up can sell for £850-900k (2023 market). The EA said they've factored in what they think the house reno would cost already.

We will offer £700k and see if the survey can bring it down further (we think it will).

An empty do-er upper in this market they will be eager to shift it I should think. Has it been on the market long? The longer it's been on the less I would offer. Even if it came on last week I would be offering much less than £25k under asking price on this type of house.

The render is the white painted cement type plastering on the wall. Even in that one picture it looks to have been badly repaired already. A proper job will require scaffolding the rendered walls, hacking it all off, re-render with a modern material/stucco. You need to take a walk around the neighborhood and see how many have already been redone.

We have agonised over buying two houses of the sort of age you are considering and they are often money pits. £40,000 isn't actually that much once you get going. It's quite a while (before now) since we lived in a house that needed substantial work and it does feel as though loads has changed, both the cost of materials and builder's rates. In our current house, every job has cost twice as much as our guesstimate.

We did once live in a 3 bedroom semi with about the same roof pitch. We put in a loft extension with velux windows. If you did that you would save yourself the cost of the roof/gable work though you would be more pinched for space, of course.

Looking at the roof photo, the tiles and general condition look OK but the pebble dash under the roof edge looks discoloured? Is this from damp which might well be because the soffits and fascias need replacing? Current rainfall is much, much heavier than it used to be and roofers are advising wider gutters and downpipes to deal with this. On our current house, we had a massive leak when there was a big storm. We found an excellent, relatively newly trained roofer. He found lots of rotting roof battens and soffits. He recommended replacing the whole roof but in the end, we reached a good compromise which was still a load of money we hadn't anticipated spending. We went back to the surveyor about this and he shuffled about and said well he couldn't get close enough to really see. Grr.

That's enough, sorry to be gloomy. It's great that you love the house. It might be fine. Can you manage to find someone experienced to look at the roof? Good luck.

Just wanted to add that when I had my roof replaced, I did not need to move out. I live in a bungalow with a much larger roof that a semi detached house and is also has gable ends and other “ features’ that added to the cost. It took the roofer just over two weeks to complete the work in the middle of winter with a couple of snowy days when he could not work. At no time was my roof left open to the elements, luckily the under felting did not need replacing so he was able to use plastic sheeting for any exposed areas.

I found other work I had done inside the house caused more disruption, like having some retiring done, new boiler fitted and the worst of all, a new kitchen!

Given the amount works to bring it up to modern standards, £725k is overpriced. I'd be offering something closer to £675k as an opening bid.

Currently doing a similar renovation on an early Edwardian property with up and out extension potential around the same valuation for fully done houses in the area and we've bought at low £600s. From what I've read and heard recently out and up extensions are probably going to cost £100-200k+ in SE/London so if I were you I'd be looking at driving the price down even by estate agent logic if you factor in all the other repair/modernisation work. It's very rewarding but also quite exhausting - best of luck!

If your purchase decision is in any way tied to the ability to do the loft conversion you need to have clarity on that figure too. Prices have increased so much in such a short time you may find the maths will never stack up, even if they did a couple of years ago.

£40k isn't going to touch your wish list and that's excluding the roof. But if you can add another £100k over a year or two you could probably get most of it done - can't comment on the cost of loft conversations in your area I afraid as it varies a lot across the country.

You need the highest level survey from an experienced local surveyor.

You would tell them specifically to look at the roof and whatever else you want and to give a rough estimate of costs.

You will then have professional ammunition to negotiate with on the price.

Good luck!

If you're serious, I'd see if I could get a recommended roofer to go up and check the roof out and video the bits that he thinks may be causing the leak. I had a rood leak 12 months ago - the lead flashing was cracked and needed replacing for £600. From your photo the roof looks pretty good.

It'd be good to have a full survey on the roof just to make sure there's nothing more than files, battons, lead, valleys, and lining to replace, ie a standard new roof. A property that age has done well not to need a new roof and the positive thing is that when it's done you don't need to worry and it'll be a good selling point if you need to move in the next 20-30 years.

Our house was built in 1964, weather permitting we're having a new roof, builders coming in tomorrow. We've had a few patch ups over the years and now leaks in three rooms and I can see staining down the central upper wall and side dormer - enough is enough. We had three people out to quote and they all took photos to show us what they'd found, we didn't ask them.

Hi all, thanks so much for your help! You've all given amazing advice and its seems you all feel the same way... £700k is way too much for a big project. Me and DH talked a lot about your points today and we think we can only really commit to this reno project if this price is right for sure. @Starseeking we are definitely reconsidering our offer now!

@Geneticsbunny thank you for explaining what rendering is! Just to let you and others know, the photo attached is a screenshot from 2021 (google maps), but it pretty much looks the same except the vendor has gone over the flaked off bit and painted over it, but the rest looks all bobbly and unchanged.

I'm attaching a photo of the neighbours rendering. It looks textured but it's consistent and no random bit bubbling areas. Tbf the other houses have similar rendering to the neighbour, but they don't have the bubbling th house we are interested in does. Is the rendering texture in the photo normal? It reminds me artex.

@IthinkIamAnAlien thank you! where you say the fascia and soffits might need replacing is actually where there was water ingress (according to the EA) i.e. above that bedroom window. On the inside, they have done some sort of plastering over it to "fix" it, but it doesn't feel like a fix, just covers the damage because the actual cause of the water ingress does not seem to be fixed.

It's a bit of a shame your surveyor didn't spot it. How did your excellent roofer get onto roof btw? If we get a specialist roofer to look at the roof, we have no idea how they'll even get up there. It's quite high.

@Churchview sounds like you have had your fair share of builders from hell. Thanks for sharing so we can figure out what we can tolerate.

@Snugbug123 I broke down some costs today based on Which? and CheckaTrade for rough costs of jobs. The full reno (without loft and kitchen extension) seems like it would cost about £200k alone (this would be over a few years for us), but my biggest worry was forking out a big amount of a roof straight away. I was hoping we can just do the house slowly.

@Toomuch44 thanks for your comment. How much is your roof replacement costing? I hope it goes well and smoothly for you!

The good thing about the house is that they kitchen is useable and bathroom has been modernised. The rest needs work. We planned to do a roof at a time. I just wish there wasn't any water ingress problems and now the bubbling rendering which i did even know was a thing until today

Pic of the neighbour's rendering - is this normal textured rendering?

@Geneticsbunny sorry, forgot to attach it.

@Geneticsbunny this is the house we are interested in - but the rendering from 2015 (google maps is so helpful!). It looks the same as when we viewed but less flaky patch. Just don't know what to think

Our roof will cost £10,750 - we had three quotes in roughly the same within £1,000.

I don't know how much difference it makes to price, but we're in the south so that could add to price, but in a converted bungalow with extension so don't need scaffolding around the whole building and too high, so that could lower. Roof lining, battens, new tiles, new ridge system, valleys, and filling in under the chimney where cement is breaking down.

@Toomuch44 wow, that's really good! What type of roof are you getting done?

Btw, are roof replacements usually about £10,000? Even with scaffolding, i imagine it wouldn't be an additional £5k ?? I thought a new roof replacement with scaffolding would cost me about £70,000 (with no loft conversion).

Am I massively over estimating ????

This is the front, so valleys needed and roofer wants to reroof dormer and reclad it as he wants to ensure all layers properly overlap. So it's a different style.