Anyone watching "Great House Giveaway"

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Just that really, new series recently started. I'm sure the "Numbers" are a work of fiction especially the renovation costs and "other fees".

2nd prog in series was a massive job, complete new roof, scaffolding, remove and make good upstairs ceiling and loftspace, plus kitchen, bathrooms, flooring, full redecoration, staging with furniture, etc.

The 3rd in the series was a lot simpler, no roof replacement, no staging, smaller/simpler kitchen & bathroom, just skimming and decorating throughout, and they were getting all sorts "free" from friends and colleagues. Yet somehow the renovation cost £26k.

Same with "other" costs, i.e. legal, stamp duty, loan interest, EA fees. Despite buying and selling at similar pricing, and the presenter estimating £24k for the 3rd episode, the actual costs were £36k, despite the costs for 2nd episode being around £25k.

I think their number crunchers need a new calculator!

I love this. When's it on ?

It's on now! I've just had to turn it off as the squabbling about the colour of the sills is doing my head in! They are clearly going to massively overspend.
I'm not sure the concept works - one seems to think it's their house and gets very uptight about what they want and fuck the budget. Which obviously affects the other person!

I've just watched the most recent one. So frustrating as they should have made 20k.
I don't see how this show will work anymore with the house prices and cost if work now

No, the first one this week was so good, with Steph the interior designer. She was great with her charts etc and her partner (John?) just got on with it!
The rest I've seen seem to argue about everything and want to do pointless, expensive jobs. They really can't afford to get trades in in the current climate

Especially the latest one where they paid a con merchant £2k to do a shockingly bad job of the external rendering who then went AWOL and they had to get friend/family to rectify it!! (At least it shows some of the reality of tradesmen these days!!)

I watched 2 this week.
The first couple made a profit and I was delighted for them.
The second one I watched was the eco house refurb.
They worked really hard but made a loss.
I was disappointed for them. Particularly for the roofer with 3 children who lived with his parents and so wanted a home (of their own) for his family.

Though I couldn't understand why they put up the wooden cladding. I think it would put buyers off.

I had watched a few of them in the last series but gave up because the participants were constantly let down, putting loads of hard work and time in only to be disappointed at the end and go away empty handed.

It's too depressing and so I won't be watching any more of this series.

It's a testament to all the participants in this series that have kept going knowing a decent profit was going to be difficult to achieve. Today's episode, the single dad, worked incredibly hard to completely renovate what was basically a shell to barely scrape a profit.

The only winners are the buyers who end up with a bargain, essentially if the houses end up back in auction.

I wonder if they'll make another series as it's not exactly entertaining tv.

Essentially = especially

I think there's just too few properties left that just need a quick churn, and they're being snapped up by investors. The properties remaining are mostly in need of major work. The "pool" of doer-uppers is getting smaller and smaller after 20 years or more of property investors buying and churning them. I don't think the presenters are doing a good job of choosing properties either - they seem to sometimes grossly over-pay clearly without doing a proper look/survey of what they're bidding on.

The one I watched today was the eco house one. Broke my heart how cheap it went for after they put so much into it. I can't believe how cheap she got everything for too! Our solar panels alone were like £10k and we're saving for an air source heat pump!

I thought what Simon said about people needing to be brought into the 21 at century was bang on.

Do you think they always fall out halfway through or they think it makes better telly? I find it hard to believe Marc didn't speak to Nia for two weeks because of the stud wall? But he was hardly in it at all, so who knows!

Yesterday's episode's finances didn't add up before they even started.

The house was bought for 60k and was worth 80k flipped. Budget 8k. With the fees etc how could they profit?

It was a no brainer for the joiner to give up due to work. I felt incredibly sorry for the lady and her husband and friends/family who worked on it. Weeks and weeks of back-breaking plasterboarding for nothing.

Once again the buyer got a bargain.

Glad i missed it. I hate seeing the participants not getting anything for their hard grafting.
The last two I have seen they actually made a profit.

Today's was another that was never going to make a profit. The purchase price, fees and renovation budget were more than the selling price, even before the "market conditions" excuse. Must have been one of the biggest losses seen in the program. No wonder the two guys didn't waste their time to meet the presenter at the end.

@Badbadbunny Yes I think the two guys from yesterdays shows must have just said no to appearing at end of the show due to huge loss.
The figures never add up due to fees
It needs to be buying a house at say 100k that could be worth 200 k etc
They keep buying houses where the profit is going to be tiny plus split between 2 is no way worth the effort and Graft the contestants put in.

I do watch it, I like seeing what they do, but the presenter/program aren't reasonable or fair.

they're buying properties without checking the structure of them, buying houses that just don't have any potential of making them a profit.

mostly the 'renovators' work hard & pisses me off a lot when they're set up to fail.

I fully agree.

Yep, right at the beginning, we both said it was going to be a huge loss. Surprised really that the two contestants didn't walk away before they even started it. (Perhaps others had???). It was a strange one to buy in the first place.

You'd have thought the program has researchers to actually do a bit of checking and due diligence on the condition and local property market. It does come across as if they just do a quick google search of sold house prices and just take a look at a few picture of the property, and then take a punt without looking at the detail.

A lot of the time, the costings don't make any sense either. Just think of a number!

What I can't understand is that the two contestants had something like a week or two to get it ready for market when the estate agents turned up, but it was still a complete wreck, needing full decoration, lots of other work, etc. Then suddenly, it was all done up! There's no way the two blokes did that - they probably walked away when they got the valuations as they'd have known it was going to make a huge loss. So, the producers must have put, at least, decorators in and probably other trades to, to get it to that standard, so why didn't they finish it properly, i.e. sort the loose floorboards, put carpets down, etc - it would have been cheaper than it being on the market for months and having to accept an even lower price!

It's starting to annoy me as there's obviously a lot going on behind the scene that isn't shown which makes a mockery of the program really.

Let’s see how this goes today … ceiling price of 160,000 …
Maybe they will reconfigure it Alessio is an architect
Notice lots of the properties have double yellows in front.
Yesterdays was the same , double yellow main road.
That Obvs knocks thousands off any sale price.

Also I don’t know how the fees are so expensive each time it’s always about 40-50k or some crazy figure added on , I n top of the Reno costs.
So if I bought a house here for 150,000 my mortgage payments may be say 700 a month , council tax 170 a month.
So over 6 months that’s 4200 mortgage and 1020 council tax = £5220
Then say gas and electric bills for 6 months approx £1200.
So that’s £6420 for 6 months
What on earth are the mega fees that are always added into this show …

Simon keeps blaming the down turn but it was just as hard to make profit in the last 2 series with the loan fees. I'm surprised they actually made another series to be honest.

It's hard to make money flipping without buying in cash, being in the trade with good contacts and having enough time to market effectively.

It's bit of an embarrassing show for channel 4 really. Homes under the hammer is far superior.

@TastyLikeARaindrop Yeah I’m surprised they made another series too.
Must cost the production company a fortune.

30k fees on that wee tiny house !

Legal fees for buying and selling, estate agents fees, auction fees, stamp duty, surveyor's fees, etc.

Interest won't be as cheap as a mortgage because it will be a short term commercial bridging loan, and there'll be fees/costs on that too, i.e. valuation fee to support the loan.

It’s still so much though isn’t it , seems so unrealistic.

I don't know why but I love this show so much! Managed to get my DSis hooked too.