Buying property that requires updating etc

[CaptainJ]

Spotted a really nice house that needed a lot of work on it but going at a price I could afford.
I am not savvy but if I am viewing a house that required modernisation what things should I be looking for to avoid buying a disaster please?
Might attend a few auctions to get a feel for things but if anyone fancies imparting some knowledge on a complete novice that would be great.
With thanks

[redsturgeon]

As a novice then I'd suggest you take a good builder round with you, who will be able to point out what needs doing and what is sound and give you some idea of costs.

Structural things like settlement, dry and wet rot, damp and roof problems can be very expensive. Boilers, CH, plumbing and electrics can also eat up the cash. Rotten windows and doors can be fixed or replaced but again can eat up the cash. Kitchens and bathrooms are the expensive rooms to update.

John

[WandleHens]

Spotted a really nice house that needed a lot of work on it but going at a price I could afford.
I am not savvy but if I am viewing a house that required modernisation what things should I be looking for to avoid buying a disaster please?

When you say 'a price I can afford' are you talking about buying for cash or with a mortgage? Some unmodernised houses are unmortgageable. Having bought and done up a few unmodernised houses in the past, I always assume everything will need re-doing (plumbing/heating/electrics/windows, etc) and cost that in. Have at least 10% contingency & only work on today's figures, not what you think it might be worth next year!

[moorfield]

I am not savvy but if I am viewing a house that required modernisation what things should I be looking for to avoid buying a disaster please?

Based on my own experience renovating Moorfield Towers and learning the hard way, I would focus on all the non-cosmetic and mostly exterior stuff
that people don't normally look at first, and can be money sapping ....

Drains (and access to).
Gutters
Roof (and roof voids)
Trees close to the property
Bolier

Also find a good electrician, plumber and builder/plasterer/handyman who can be relied upon to be left alone and not micro managed. They area worth every penny.

[Wizard]

It can be done but buying at auction using a mortgage is not the easiest thing to do. When the hammer goes down you have exchanged contracts, if you do not have your finance absolutely locked down you can get in to trouble. By locked down I do not mean a mortgage offer based on your circumstances giving you an idea of budget, I mean an offer on the specific property you are buying. Getting that in place does not always fit in with an auction timetable.

If you do get it sorted and you want to bid at an auction consider getting somebody else to bid for you. Give them clear instructions on your top price. As they are not emotionally involved and it is not their money they shouldn't bid beyond the top price you give them. I have seen a lot of people bid way more than they went into the auction intending to.

Good luck,
Terry.

[88V8]

Are you practical? Can you do things fix things make things?
Is this supposed to be an investment, or for your home?

Buying a house and hoping to make a profit by letting builders loose on it, if you don't know how to evaluate what they tell you or what they propose or what they do, is a recipe for losing money.

If you plan to live in the house, you can over time become a competent DIYer who can cope with most things, at which point you may have enough knowledge to start using builders with some hope of avoiding cowboys and rip-offs.
There are an awful lot of botchers in the building trade.

I concur with those who say to avoid structural needs. That means one needs to take a ladder, climb up to the roof check the chimneys gutters tiles, check that all the taps work and the heating, look for subsidence check the drains look for mould & damp, check the electrics (doesn't matter if out of date), look for badly replaced windows, chimney breasts and stacks missing, load-bearing walls taken down, badly built extensions, blocked underfloor ventilation.
Quite a lot, really.

Also depends on the age of the house. Pre-Great War, another ball game.

V8

[goldstore]

It strikes me that you may need to qualify 'novice' before you'll get the sort of advice you might be after - novice at house buying or novice at modernising a semi-wreck?

If the former - eg. a first time buyer hoping for something on the cheap - you might want to start with something that perhaps isn't to your taste and 'update' that first, to learn what's actually involved in sorting a house out, let alone modernising one.

If the latter, probably the best place to start is buy running a cost estimate on the stuff you know needs done
(a) on day 0
(b) the first 3 months
(c) 3-12 months and
(d) eventually

Then compare with cash available on those same time-frames and redo the list with say the grotty kitchen pushed out a year because its so expensive and then ask if you can live with it for that long, assuming you are living in the house whilst doing it up.

From a man who spent the day laying loft insulation in a house that 'didn't need too much work', only to find 0-50mm of disintegrating rubbish in the loft. But who at least backed away from the 'hasn't been touched since it was built 30 years ago' project when he realised it wasn't going to work for the family. One owner from new can have a different meaning for houses, believe me. Still, all that one needed was new carpets, bathroom, kitchen, boiler, downstairs loo, en-suite, decorating, wall knocked through and made good... and thinking about it, loft insulation too most likely. Assuming there were no nasties like subsidence, damp etc mention earlier in the thread.

[IsleofWightPete]

Spotted a really nice house that needed a lot of work on it but going at a price I could afford.
I am not savvy but if I am viewing a house that required modernisation what things should I be looking for to avoid buying a disaster please?

Having looked at a great many "do-er uppers" over the years, I have concluded that they usually represent very poor value for money. Lots of prospective buyers completely underestimate what the repairs and refurbishment will actually cost (and/or discount the labour element as they think they can do it all themselves and their time is worth nothing). As a result they usually over pay for the property. Best value are usually the ones that have been meticulously maintained by super house proud people who have done EVERYTHING. You may need to allow a bit to remove some of the chintz and bling, but you are still much better off buying those. They will have spent a huge amount of money that will never ever be reflected in the price.

If you really want to go ahead with a refurber, you need to make incredibly detailed works lists, (and factor in your time also) and make sure you budget for every little thing on very generous cost assumptions. And when you have done that, add it all up and DOUBLE it. I have refurbed a LOT of property, and the final budget always seems to come in at just about double what I had estimated based on very very detailed costings (including using decorators, sparkies, plumbers etc to help me get a full and fairly priced list). The simple fact is that during the works, you always discover as much again as you found in your inspections. Nothing ever comes out cheaper. Everything takes longer, and costs more. And frequently, one job exposes the need for another that you never predicted. You may have budgetted a generous provision for gutter painting, but when the wire brushes causes the gutter to disintegrate, and you realise it was only the old paint holding it together, and then you find the downpipes are gone as well..............

That's the reality of these things.

[casapinos]

Since i retired from paid work 20+years ago i have renovated several properties in the UK in France and in Spain.The crucial issues to watch out for are to recognise what problems are structural and what are cosmetic, for the former;


look at the outside, thoroughly, what is it constructed of is it brick , stone, is it rendered, any unusual features.
If brick are there any cracks, between bricks (no big deal )across bricks(more of an issue), is the pointing sound
if there are chimneys look closely (use/ borrow )binoculars , again examine pointing
while doing that look closely at the roof is it tile(better) or slate(possibly worse)are there any slipped tiles/ slates, take particular notice of ridges and gable ends - that's where the weather /wind effects are greater.
If there is land look for any obvious signs of subsidence, cracks in the earth , is it clay(bad) are there any large trees near the house(bad)
Inside ,bear in mind that it might be damp but that could be condensation from non- occupancy, peeling paint or paper is not necessarily an issue, but feel walls, or borrow a damp meter from someone, examine ceilings , is the plaster sound particularly on the top floor, any staining?maybe water ingress.
How do the electrics look, is there a modern consumer unit?(good), are the cables from it grey (good)how many circuits are there, less than 6 , bad, more suggests relatively recent rewire
get under the sink/bath , is it all dry, is there any evidence of leaks in the past?

look at floors , if there are carpets lift them , have a peek at the floor boards , poke them ,are they sound , any sawdust visible (bad)possible wood worm.poke skirting bords for soundness.

Get into the loft space, is there felting under tiles/ slates (good)any daylight visible between them (bad) , are roof timbers substantial and sound (good)look at the eaves , you may see daylight but don't worry that@s for ventilation , unless extreme.

most other matters are cosmetic and remediable
good luck
casa

[sg31]

I've been buying renovating and selling properties as a full time occupation for the last 30 years. I would like to second what IOWP has just posted but I feel he is too optimistic.

Most do-er uppers have already been given the once over by experienced people. if the property is still on the market they have generally decided there's not enough margin.

If you have skills yourself and you don't mind working for nothing you might be able to renovate the property into exactly what you want but you will be living on a building site and working evenings/weekends/holidays.

If you have no skills don't do it.

Programmes like 'Homes under the hammer' make it look so easy but it isn't. That is a TV programme, real life is a bit different.

[PrincessB]

Following the logic that the newer anything is, the less that should have gone wrong with it - The reverse becomes if it's really old it is going to take a lot of remedial work.

One of my concerns would be the construction of the walls - Something I've learned to my cost as I'm in a Victorian cottage with solid brick walls and even though I'm down South, it takes requires a huge amount of heating even when it is only moderately chilly.

Do you know U values? A number which shows how good or badly insulated the walls are - The lower the number the better.

From memory:

Solid brick walls have a U of about 2
Cavity walls without insulation about 1.2
Cavity walls with insulation about 0.3

As an example, I'll use my front room which has three external walls each one roughly 4 x 2.5m so I've got 30 square metres of wall exposed to the world - For the sake of clarity, I'll ignore the floor and ceiling.

The U value gives an indication of how quickly heat will flow from the warmer side to the cooler and how much heat you need to provide to keep the required temperature when it is cold outside.

With my U value of 2 and 30 square metres, I need 60watts of heating for every degree difference between indoors and outdoors.

If it is freezing outside and I want the room to remain at 20ºC I need to provide 1200watts of heat (from a fan heater, radiator or possibly a fire though the calculations work out more easily without a chimney)

If I've got a more recent build and live in an area dry enough to have cavity wall insulation, I need far less fuel.

30 metres x 0.3 U value - its still freezing outside and you can keep this part of the house warm and toasty using 180watts.

Terraced houses and semi detached present fewer walls to the outdoors and are easier to heat, the place I've got can get pretty miserable in Winter and if you're not used to cold houses, being permanently cold while doing battle with the structure might be bad for your health both physically and mentally.

Regards,

B.

[TahiPanas]

"Spotted a really nice house that needed a lot of work on it but going at a price I could afford.
I am not savvy but if I am viewing a house that required modernisation what things should I be looking for to avoid buying a disaster please?"

The range of potential problems is so huge it is nigh on impossible to give anything other than superficial advice over the internet.

You may feel that the posts above are unnecessarily pessimistic. Believe me, they aren't.

The chances of totally missing or underestimating the seriousness of a defect, being at the mercy of contractors, etc. is very high. It will take much longer and cost you significantly more than you planned. The best way to minimize problems, and it is far from foolproof, is to hire someone as a supervisor of the entire project who is totally independent and knows what they are doing. However, that will eat up some or all of your profit.

I have been trying to find a property for myself, not a doer upper, on the internet as I live overseas. Even from the Home Reports, which traditionally gloss over defects and are usually very superficial, I have spotted potentially big problems. I imagine few buyers would get the significance. After all, the surveyors who prepare the reports are adept at minimising observable defects while at the same time covering their posteriors.

Whilst as an architect, I am confident that I can spot and reasonably estimate the potential cost of repairs, be assured that nobody can be really certain what the true extent is until work starts. By definition, that's too late.

It is unlikely that you will have written estimates for some or all of the work from the outset. Therefore, as you do not have the experience to know either what work is appropriate or what is reasonable value, you will be at the mercy of your builders. They know you know almost nothing. As someone has already said, TV home building programmes tend to gloss over both the stress and additional costs.

If you must proceed despite all the above good advice, I suggest you limit your activities to cosmetic improvement but that is unlikely to make you much money. I understand that in the States it is/was possible to undertake quick cosmetic changes in the period between purchase and closing so minimising your transaction costs but you can't do that in the UK.

As someone implied above, if it looks too good to be true, it is. The professionals have always been there before you.