Selling a 'do-er upper'

[KeeepWalking]

Are people buying 'do-er uppers' these days? Both the houses we've bought in our married life have needed work doing on them and we were happy to get more house for our money and do the work gradually. We are now selling our first house that has had tenants in for 10 years. It is liveable in but needs alot of cosmetic work, but there's been minimal interest. Location is good...London commuter belt, good schools, green spaces.
Is it the instability caused by the middle East conflict? Or are people so used to seeing shiny new builds with carpets and modern kitchens etc that a do-er upper is off-putting?

Would it be a FTB property? That’s mainly where the demand is atm but even still they will be struggling with mortgage products being removed and interest rates hiked. We listed last Monday and zero interest, unfortunately ours isn’t really suitable for a FTB due to the size & value. Contemplating telling our agent to take it down

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/23/uk-mortgage-interest-rates-markets-bank-of-england-iran-war

doer uppers are less economically attractive now materials & labour are so much more expensive. We spent £80k on our last doer upper (7 years ago) I reckon it would be at least 1/3 more now.
it’s much better value for money to let someone else pay for it then buy their “done up” house than be the one who takes on the cost.

A 3 bed needing new flooring, painting, bathroom and kitchen etc is probably going to cost best part of 100k in the London vicinity. The cost of building work and materials has skyrocketed. So unless you have priced significantly below finished houses, it won't make sense for anyone to consider

Agreed now with the cost of materials labour it’s not really worth considering doing it especially in the current mortgage climate.

Unless usual disclaimer your in an area where it would add value and properties are sought after.
Our area properties sell within weeks of going on market.
We’ve just finished doing it. Bought 4 farm cottages side by side 4 years ago in a thriving village, which we made into a 5 bed 4 bathroom mix of showers and baths and a cloakroom 2 lounges large kitchen dinner and separate dinning room.
Love our large garden with plenty of parking.
Had it valued for insurance purposes recently and according to the valuer it’s a third more than purchase and renovation costs.

Costs of renovation
Price
The fact that the market is static and dropping.
Insecurity about all the uncertainty in the world.

We avoided a doer upper because the ones we saw were not priced to consider the cost of renovations. It was more cost effective to buy a house that was already renovated.

You need to price it accordingly. If it’s cheaper to buy a renovated house then it won’t be attractive. Get an estimate for the works and then advertise it with that costs in mind.

We've only ever bought doer-uppers (nine over the years), our most recent being purchased in late 2024. We buy to live in, doing them up gradually and usually make a profit when we sell.....

But that's mainly because we save money on trades by doing most stuff (except gas/electrics) ourselves - our budget for our current place is 80k. Were we to sell it now, finished (it isn't yet) I'd expect it to have increased by 150k over our purchase price, so an ok profit.

If someone without our skill set, reliant on trades to do everything had bought it when we did (probate property, untouched for 50+ years), I imagine they'd have to spend closer to 150k on the work. I know that at least one person viewed in 2024 but didn't offer due to the amount of work required/cost - she bought a newer house requiring less work nearby.

On our last house (purchased 2018, sold 2024) we made a profit of 170k over and above what it cost to renovate - but much of the work was done pre covid building materials price increases.

In our area (south coast) some doer-uppers are still selling, but usually the quirkier ones with loads of original features and the cheaper FTB houses.

Buyers are paying a premium for houses that have been renovated due to the cost and aggravation of work

A 3 bed needing new flooring, painting, bathroom and kitchen etc is probably going to cost best part of 100k in the London vicinity. The cost of building work and materials has skyrocketed. So unless you have priced significantly below finished houses, it won't make sense for anyone to consider

Yes - there definitely is a market for them!
People buy the worst house on a good street and make it into their dream home!

The house I’m in now was a doer-upper - we spent in the region of £175k to renovate it completely.

In your case, I’d probably just paint and new carpets just to freshen it up! I’m a landlord and when I’ve come to sell properties that needed a refresh I’ve always done the basic!

I am married to a builder and we are just in the process of moving. We looked as several do-er-uppers, but they are all just priced too high in comparison to 'done' houses to justify the time and hassle of doing them up, even with us being able to do a lot of the work ourselves. Materials are just so expensive now and the vendors' expectations on selling prices are just unrealistic. So we have ended up going for a new house. I think you would need to be extremely competitive in your pricing to generate any interest in my opinion.

As someone currently looking to buy a house I have no interest in buying a doer-upper because I can’t afford the renovation costs. People like me are (indirectly) why the property market is flat at this present time.

Have you priced the house in comparison with other houses in your area and taking into consideration what the buyer needs to spend? Some sellers aren’t.

We are buying a dooer upper but not intentionally, it’s just a unique property that suits our needs. The vendors haven’t priced it accordingly so it sat on the market for eighteen months before we offered on it. Not many people want to take on the work. We can do a lot ourselves due to some of our skill sets (I’m in the landscape industry) and the location is our dream location, so we are willing even though it’s unlikely to return any real profit.

The market is flat because we went from decades of loose lending and low rates to interest rates returning to more normal levels very quickly, if the BOE start hiking base rate again that will have a big negative effect on sentiment, during the cheap debt era people were spending (borrowing) like drunken sailors and borrowing big for anything with a roof.

Considering what the buyer needs to spend is good advice, as is running the price through a mortgage calculator to get monthly mortgage costs, can your target buyer actually afford it?

Lending criteria has been tight / conservative since 2008- it’s been loosed in recent years, it hasn’t tightened recently

https://www.propertyinvestmentproject.co.uk/property-statistics/uk-interest-rate-history-graph/

Why have you posted this?

Agreed, properties in my neck of the woods which haven’t seen a paintbrush since 1980 are priced exactly the same as one fully renovated, they just are not a financially viable buy anymore, a basic renovation can be a minimum of £100k on a small family house.

Yep, was coming to say the same thing!

I’d always wanted a doer upper because I love old characterful houses and I really wanted to renovate and make somewhere my own. I’d always browsed the market even when we weren’t in a position to buy so knew the kind of prices we’d be looking at. My partner and I initially began house hunting around covid times (just as that happened to be when we were finally in a position to buy) and the market went CRAZY, we got outbid a number of times and after a while doer uppers were going for the same price as move in ready houses!!! It was absolutely nuts! I swear people had a taste of DIY in lockdown and so decided to take on reno projects, pushing the prices right up! So now with the skyrocketing materials and labour costs along with doer uppers not even being particularly cheaper to buy in the first place - they’re not attractive to most.

We ended up with somewhere that we didn’t class as a doer upper - until we moved in and saw it totally empty 😅 and are now slowly working our way through renovating every room but doing as much as we can ourself and are doing it for us not necessarily to achieve a huge profit (we’d just want to make sure we don’t exceed any ceiling price if we did want to sell in the future).