House renovation costs… am I being unrealistic?

[pumpkinspiceforbreakfast]

I’ve seen a property that is on the market for around 100-150k below market value, in a location that is really lovely and doesn’t come up very often. It’s a probate property (4 bed chalet bungalow) and pretty much everything will need doing. I was feeling pretty positive about it and was planning to make an offer tomorrow, but had a look on MN and scared myself with the costs some people are quoting for a full reno (250k!) I’m thinking £25k for 2 x mid range bathrooms, 15k for kitchen (would be IKEA cos I’m basic), £10k for flooring (just had a quote for our current place which I’m extrapolating from). No walls would need moving, and estate agent says a previous survey says roof is OK. Survey also said that the consumer unit needs replacing but no full rewiring needed, but I’m going to say £8k in case it is needed. Replastering another £8k. Nothing needed in garden except mowing and weeding! That brings me to 70k ish, what am I missing that could take it up to the 200k mark?! I had a lovely 2 story extension with bifold etc done for under 60k just before Covid and I know costs have gone up a lot since then but equally I can’t quite wrap my head around the astronomical prices people are throwing around, and I’m wondering if this is a stupid project to take on…..

As long as you have a healthy contingency I reckon your sums are ok! No £200k renovations round here either although we're not in the SE where things do cost a bit more.

£200k absolutely way off the mark. £75k tops for what you want to do, could probably get it cheaper especially flooring. Bathrooms you could do for £15k at a push and still have a quality finish.

We’re just starting a big renovation and I was a bit freaked out by some of these threads.

So far we have had a rewire of two rooms (both currently plastered on two walls only), the electric/fuse box is in one of the rooms. A complete new wet room that has included wooden floor being ripped out and drainage dug out in concrete below., including loo, sink, shower and fully tiled, plus plastic ceiling with spotlights. And a sink and washing machine being plumbed into the adjacent room (future laundry room). Then the two non bathroom rooms will be plastered (and ceilings boarded). We’ve also had window units in two rooms. This has come to £10k.

We had a wren kitchen designed for a medium sized kitchen and it came in at £8k with 3 appliances. Shaker style with white surfaces (like granite, can’t remember its name!). We didn’t go with them as we found them hard to deal with.

So I’ve been pretty relieved at the costs so far…. (NW region and a very old house)

In my experience people wildly overestimate on some of these threads and they assume EVERYTHING needs doing in every slightly old or run down house and that if you think something like the boiler or roof is fine then it means you’re just naive.

extensions need contingency funds because you don’t know what you’ll get when you start digging foundations. Likewise dodgy roofs or lots of damp etc costs can spiral. But if you have a survey and the property is sound then often a lot of stuff is cosmetic and the more important stuff can be sorted relatively cheaply if you’re sensible.

Our last place was a probate sale and hadn’t been touched for 50 years and broadly speaking we did

New boiler 3k
all new windows and doors 8k
full internal decoration only around £300 on paint etc as we did it all ourselves
New carpet and flooring throughout 5k
New kitchen in new location plus new utility 15k total
new bathroom 5k
other internal alterations to layout etc approx 5k
some serious landscaping work in garden due to needing supporting garden wall etc 5k
New consumer unit and a fair bit of electric works 8k

large 3 bed in the SE

Total around 55k and we added over 100k to the value.

thanks for the v helpful replies, really good to hear figures that bear more relation to reality than those “one story extension will cost 400k” threads! I guess when some people say “full renovation” they mean gutting the place completely and rebuilding literally everything, but I really love mid century houses so aesthetically (as well as financially) I will be looking to do as little as possible… but already there are a few things in this thread that I hadn’t budgeted for, like new internal doors… and possibly some new windows too. I definitely see how it can add up but hopefully not extending or doing heavy structural stuff will make it manageable!
There’s no visible mould or big leaks but there are some patches on the ceilings that look like historic pipe leaks, and the paper is coming off the wall in the front bedroom so I’m slightly nervous about damp but I guess that would be picked up on a survey, and if it looks like a big and/or unpredictable issue I might have to rethink…

Extensions have rocketed in price but renovations inside along the lines you suggest are much easier to budget for accurately.

I’d suggest having a look at DIY Kitchens for an affordable but good quality kitchen - better than IMEA imo (they’re not a DIY installation so just ignore the name 😂)

We’re still mid-Reno and have had all of what you describe (and more) and I think your costings are fine, even generous (we’re in the south-west/Midlands type region).

Extensions are extremely expensive now. My DP is an electrician and often works with an architect. She’s having a side return and the shell has cost her £200k

But if you aren’t doing anything structural you’ll not be looking at those sorts of figures.

Have you actually had sight of the previous survey?

I personally would get a level 3 survey as this would tell you if there were any major problems and you can factor in the cost.

I guess you could ask some builders for quotes to get a rough idea and see if you can afford to farm out some of the work.

It sounds like you know prices charged for work in your area. That's the most important thing. I always get better value when I break down a renovation into separate jobs like plumbing and plastering rather than getting one builder to quote for it all.

When was this though? I spent 5k on a boiler 10 years ago, the downstairs WC redo was 8k 1yr ago, a basic small kitchen redo including rewiring was 10k 3 years ago. Neighbour has had a partial kitchen redo for 12k last month new carpet for staircase and upstairs landing was 800 4 years ago. Tapi gives online quotes you can check

It was 3 years ago. We made a few choices to keep costs down, for example I bought basic tiles in a straight square shape because the tiler was going to charge double to lay the hexagonal tiles I originally wanted. I can’t work out how you would spend £8k on a downstairs toilet? Our entire bathroom suite was less than £1500 so we were nowhere near this.

In general we buy things like bathroom suite direct and then get a plumber to charge a their day rate for labour, same with tiler etc. And anything we can do ourselves we do, to keep costs down. We also just don’t buy expensive options for things, our kitchen was the second cheapest range at Howdens.