Buying a "Fixer-upper" house - advice/opinions please?

I'd say all of that would cost way less than £40k. But that totally depends on how much you would be doing yourself?

We always tend to go for "doer-uper's" as I begrudge paying for someone elses decor tastes ?. I'd rather strip it all back and do it ourselves.

BUT... we have an electrician, plumber and carpenter in the family. If I had to pay for all that labour, I'm not sure we'd be able to afford it. Plus H is very handy with DIY and we don't have any children right now, not sure if that would be an additional issue time/money/stress wise?

But if you're just thinking materials and would be doing it yourself, you'd easily do all that (and then some) for £40k. Unless of course, you're planning a £20k bathroom....? ?

That's much less thank 40k of work. We had a full rewire last year, in a big 4-bed semi, and it was about £4000. It's a HIDEOUS thing to have done, though - best not to be living there when they do it, especially with children.

Would you be buying with a mortgage? Only because the last 'fixer-upper' we wanted to buy came back from the surveyor with a £0 valuation! So we couldn't get a mortgage on it until we got the vendor to either do some work, or gathered together a good selection of quotes to prove how much it cost to get to a liveable standard

I feel your pain. We had 2 chimneys removed in this house, while we were living in it. NEVER again! ?. Even with a trillion dust sheets up, the dust found it's way into places I didn't even know where there!

As long as you are cautious and get quotes for the work before you commit to buy then it sounds like a good prospect. With a surveyor in the family that is a very good start!

As Minx Sauce says, as long as there is nothing hidden (e.g structural problems) then the work you have listed should be able to be done for well under £40k.

If you can proceed mortgage wise it might still be worth offering under the current guide as people don't seem to be too keen to take on development projects at the moment unless they are "once in a lifetime" projects...

Sounds very exciting - good luck!

Lady Mx

Do you really mean fixer-upper, or derelict? How bad was the property to get a £0 valuation? ?

Ditto - we removed two lath and plaster ceilings whilst still living there - would not recommend that!

We live in the north so not sure what pricing is like for workmen compared to where you are, and we've only had some of the works done that you're talking about.

1) We paid £800 for a front door and around £700 for a back door fitted. We have since had our kitchen fitted and the guys that did that said they could do our patio door so we bought them from Wicks (online) for £300 and they fitted them for £200.

2) We haven't had a full rewire done, but had a new consumer unit fitted, the electrician also had to earth everything as it wasn't done. To bring our house up to the new part p regs I think it cost about £500. We bought all the parts and cable online and got a guy in to fit it.

3) We got a full bathroom suite for about £600 and then fitted it ourselves to save a bit of money, we have aqua loc laminate floor (B&Q) and that cost us about £60 to do the whole bathroom (again fitted ourselves).

Try looking at websites like safetrade.org where the tradesmen are rated so you know what you're getting.

I honestly mean fixer-uper, we were shocked too! In fact, we got so bored with all the too-ing and fro-ing that we gave up in the end and it's still up for sale...

/residential/

... ooh, they've dropped the price again (hmm)

Ooooh, lots of replies, ? Was off on the other side, so have just seen them!

baby buns - yes, we'll be buying with a mortgage. Not sure I understand what you're saying though. The mortgage co might not give us the extra money for the work, unless thay deem it necessary? Have I got that right? I wasn't aware that could be an isse, thanks.

Minx Sauce - we'd be doing all of the cosmetic stuff ourselves. My Dad laid all our flooring in the flat, and tiled our bathroom for us, and my family as a whole is very DIY friendly. We also have a plasterer and plumber in the family, both of whom would give us 'mate's rates', so we'd save a bit there. We're also prepared to live with cheap as chips laminate floor/lino/basic white tiles etc for 5 years, and replace them as and when we can afford to.

badgermonkey, thanks, taht's a lot less than I was expecting (I'd thought mabe £6-£7k). Would the cost be affected by location do you think? Not sure where in the country you are, we're in Essex. Re: living on a building site, my parents are localand have lots of space. We'd stay with them for a few weeks, we lived with them before, inbetween renting properties. I definitely wouldn't do it with a 3yr old and 1 yr old!!

Wuzzle - thanks for your info. Again, the quote for the doors is less than I was expecting. The bathroom sounds about right, we paid £650 to replace the WC and sink and tile and install electric power shower in the flat....just wasn't sure how much I'd be looking at for 2 whole bathrooms. I'll have a look at that website, ?

Lady Muck. Thanks, it is exciting! I'm really trying hard not to get my hopes up, in case its not workable.....its just that its soooo perfect compared to everything else we've looked at. We'd be getting almost 1.5times the square footage, for potentially less money and 6-12 months of hard work!

Do you really think its worth going under the asking price, depite how low the price is? I have no idea about how you decide what to offer etc Its on at £165k......what would be a good starting point?

Here's the property, if anyone's interested: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-21714988.html/svr/1001;jsessionid=0BD9AC9AE2CA8FBAE23315C8807EC640?backToListURL=%2Fuser%2Fshortlist.html%3Ftype%3DBUYING

What's wrong with that house Baby Buns? Looks in better nick than the last two houses we've had ?

I think the main costs are always labour, if you can keep that down you'll get well in under £40k. My dad did our wiring for us which was handy, although we have one bit of problem wiring which is just annoying!

Sorry didn't explain myself very well! The surveyor didn't think it was worth what was being asked as it stood - so recommended a minimum list of jobs to achieve value - the bank therefore wouldn't give us money based on this. We had to start getting quotes to prove it wouldn't be all that costly to rectify (basically so they would have a return on their investment should we default).

Gryfon - the neighbour had a constantly running overflow which 'could' have caused rising damp. We got them to fix that and lots of quotes for 'possible' replastering, damp proofing etc. but there was so much messing about with the vendor we just got bored. There were a few other bits which meant it looked bad on paper, but when you costed it all out it really wasn't that bad (I'd have moved in before any work was done, but then I'm not that fussy!)

It's probably quite a good time to embark on something like that at the moment, as lots of electricians/plasterers etc are scrabbling around for work so you've got a bit of leverage on price AND you'll probably get it done when you want it, rather than someone fitting it in a bit at a time in between bigger jobs.

Depending on how practical you are, it's only really the rewire that you need someone else to do, all the other stuff is eminently DIY-able

I typed you a longggggg reply but lost it. If you mail me I can tell you what we did last year? Lots and lots of work, less than £40k ?

Cant help with any of the quotes or diy stuff as Ive no idea about stuff like that

But were going to be almost neighbours... Were moving to Writtle in 2 weeks and will be looking to buy in the area in the next 6 months...

Will have to arrange a Chelsmford meet!

Definitely worth it, especially in the current climate. Had this been 2 years ago, then for one it probably wouldn't be as cheap, but for two you would then offer the asking price to get it off the market. However now you can afford to offer under the asking price, afterall they can only turn it down....or say yes, and imagine all the extra money that would give you for the work. Remember that your first offer can be anything, as long as it's realistic so that the vendor takes you seriously in the negotiatins. Without having seen the house myself and knowing any of the above I'm liking £150,000 as a starting point but that depends very much on how much the work is going to cost and how long it's been on the market and whether the price has been reduced previously, all of which I don't know.

But for you to negotiate on the prince you need to first off get rough ideas of prices for the work that you know needs doing e.g. re-wiring, the roof on the conservatory, and possibly the front door for security, possibly the main bathroom....I can't remember the other stuff but basically you want to get the info for the stuff that needs doing to make it safely livable and closed to the eliments. And then factor in how long it's been on the market, whether the price has been reduced previously and use the fact you're not in a chain as your bargining chip as I would guess that most people buying in this price bracket would have a chain so your not having one is a bonus.

How much deposit do you have? Can you afford the repairs yourself? I think I would try and get a mortgage quote first as you might struggle to get a mortgage at the moment - most company's still require 20-40% deposit

That house looks alright as well ? However the first house we bought had to be completely gutted from top to bottom, we bascially bought a plot of land and 4 walls (which were rubbish as well), and out second house needed gutting as well!

Having a renovation project is stressful but so much fun ?

When you say the work needs to cost less than 40k to meet the difference in prices, do you mean you would be wanting to borrow the 40k on your mortgage? Because I think it's highly unlikely you'll be able to do that - we had tried that route when we were first time buyers and no company would consider it, and that was when mortgages were MUCH easier to come by. Sorry if I've misunderstood though.

In terms of offers, definitely go in lower. I think WifeyLind's £150,000 doesn't sound unreasonable - they worst they can do is say no and you can always go back with a revised one.

H is an electrician and thinks from looking at the pics it might not need a rewire (although its obviously impossible to tell for sure from pics) A few people he has done work for has insisted it be done in trunking so they dont have to redecorate every room, So there is a chance it has been rewired and only needs it sinking into the wall.

hth

Well.................we're back from our second, much more thorough viewing. And in short, we've pretty much ruled it out I think.

It needs ALOT more work doing than we'd first envisaged.

-The extension (its main selling point, as its alot of extra space) may need to come down as its highly unlikely it complies with any building regs. Its essentially been built around an existing lean-to extension. The lean -to's original roof is still there, they've just put 6 inches of insulating material and some hardboard on top, then felted it over!!! MY FIL (a sureyor) said he's never seen anything like it!). It also doesn't have insulated walls.

-There is no drainage in the garden, it appears to have been concreted over

-The hole garden needs doing - its a weird mix of concrete and paving slabs.

-There is a lean-to attached to the extension, and a dilapidated outbuilding at the bottom of the garden that would need demolishing.

-There is some very odd timber support work in the loft that may need repairing.

-Roof Insulation needs replaced

-The roof of the extension (if it were staying) and over the kitchen appear to have had odd patches of felt, random tiles, even briezeblocks(!) used to repair holes/damage so the whole back part of the house would need re-roofing

- Some of the window frames are rotting and some don't open, so most if not all, would need replacing.

-Lots more little jobs - bad skirting, some floorboards need replacing in upstairs landing, bathroom floor upstairs looks dodgy, mix of tiles and lino with random wooden floorboards over half of it, plus they've had dogs/cats that have pee'd everywhere (it stinks) and there's no way to tell if its ssped into the floorboards as well as the carpets (the carpet isn't fitted nor wall-to-wall).

I think that where we stand now, its just going to be too much work, time and money. My parents are happy for us to stay for 6 months if necessary; but all the cosmetic work that we'd be doing ourselves would mean working evenings and weekends for months potentially. Given we already bemoan the lack of family time we have, H is a teacher and does loads of work in the evenings, plus we'd need to rely on our parents to look after the kids while we did the work (not fair if we'll be living there too); I think its all a bit much.

We're going to keep looking I think; but if its still on the market in 6-8 weeks and we haven't found anywhere, I'd be tempted to put in a stupidly low offer - if we could get it for around £120k, then £40-£50k of work would still be a great saving overall, and we could hire professionals to do everything, taking most of the stress out of it.

Thanks for all your input - I hope those of you embarking on similar projects have more success!

Hello Sunshine - we wouldn't need the mortgage to cover all of it, no.

Gryfon, I thought it sounded quite fun too, but having had a bad night with the kids and coming back after the viewing to scrub my kitchen floor and walls, and clean the bathroom; I'm bloody knackered ? Maybe extensive DIY isn't for me!

i love shoes ? hi, I really like living in Chelmsford, I only left briefly for Uni and came home. Writtle is really nice, My PIL live there and my H said it was a fantastic place to grow up. Its one of the few remaining villages close to town taht has lots of green space. ill definitely have to meet up and show you the "sights" such as they are!

? again all. Advice and opinions really appreciated.