How hard is it to sell-on a prefab house?

Merroney

We're thinking about buying a prefabricated house. It's very cheap, on a great plot with potential to extend, and needs quite a lot of work doing to it. On the face of things, it has great potential. We would buy it to renovate and improve, live in it for three years and then sell on. We're cash buyers.

The only thing I am concerned about is it's been on the market for a long while. The estate agent said they have had trouble shifting it because it's a prefabricated house and difficult to get a mortgage. I have no experience of this. Does anyone know anything about prefab houses? If done to a high standard, can they sell easily? Is it even possible to extend a prefab house with bricks and mortar?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

LisaLou1982

We never had any difficulty selling them if they were the right price. Its not overly difficult to get a mortgage on a prefab - just that some lenders wont lend on them. The majority will.

I have also know of people who have rebuilt the house with brick but this would be expensive and maybe you wouldnt want to spend this much.

I wouldnt have thought it would be a problem to extend it provided that you got the relevant permissions.

Hope that helps

Welsh_Totster

There are a few prefab semis at the end of my street, some have been rebuilt with brick others havent, one that has been rebuilt also has a rather lovely 2 storey extension added to it too, so it is possible.

GDB2222

Does it depend on precisely which prefab construction it is? I'd have thought that the fact it has remained unsold for so long should be telling you something about saleability. You're a cash buyer buying a property that is probably unmortgageable (or else it would have sold by now), so make a very very low offer.

Owain_Moneysaver

Depends on the prefab construction. Some have been declared officially deficient because of poor insulation, some may be structurally unsound and unmortgageable because they aren't expected to last the life of the mortgage.

If it's a precast reinforced concrete house see here and here Brick or structtherm cladding can make the properties mortgageable but they are still prefabs with disadvantaged like concrete internal wall surfaces which will always seem cold.

If it's detached and you are considering a major extension it would probably be better to demolish and build new. You may find, comparing similar plot values, that the house itself is only 'worth' about £20k-30k if that.