Mortgage or other loan?

[PracticalLady]

My DD has had an offer accepted on a property and, with my help, she can afford to buy it mortgage free. It does need some work though, although nothing needs immediate attention, as far as she is currently aware. My question is, should she take out a mortgage to help buy the house, so that she'll have money set aside to carry out the work later, or would it be better to borrow the money at a later date when it is actually needed? The second question is, how could she borrow it later on? Is a mortgage preferable to a home improvement loan? Any advice would be very welcome.

You haven’t mentioned her income or how much she’s able to save.

Does she need to take on debt to fund the work? Can she not save up gradually and do it bit by bit?

It depends...
What's her income, how much would she be looking at borrowing and what sort of work does she need to do? Is it major disruptive renovation such as a full rewire, moving walls type stuff which needs to be done in one go. Or is it stuff that could be saved up for and done gradually?

We had bought, then intended to take out a home improvement loan to get the house to the standard we wanted to move into (leaving some things to save up for later) but we found these had maximum limits and the higher end of those limits much higher interest rates. Under £20k would have been feasible but this was more than that! And because it was an unsecured loan the bank was reluctant to lend at the amount we needed. Those loans were for max 5 years.

So we took out a mortgage (think it was technically a remortgage although we previously owned outright) - very easy to do this after buying if needed. It's over 10 years but the payments are low so we're aiming to repay within 5. And the interest rate is lower than for a home improvement loan.