Sarah Beeny program...A con?

CambridgeAngel

5 Bedrooms
2 En-Suites
Shower/Steam Room
Family Bathroom
Cloakroom
Office
Office reception
Lounge
Dining room
Kitchen
Breakfast Room (They included this with the kitchen)
Laundry Room
Hallways (they didnt include this but we do as its another room we have to decorate!)

So we say 18 rooms that we have to refurb!!!!

We only finished 5 for the filming and are still doing the rest of the house..........

Kate78

Poppycat wrote: »

I cant believe many of these people are imbeciles and many of the faults dont just happen over night

Watching this programme has brought the word "numpty" back into common usage in my world.

Seriously, don't people have a survey done before they buy a property?

I nearly bought an old house but it came back with so many issues (chimney stack unstable, roof needed replacing, dry rot, damp....) I decided not to buy. £600 for the survey was nothing compared to the money pit of a house it saved me from! :T

hippyadam

I didn't watch it, for that woman makes my urge to kill almost unbearable... :mad:

Her holier than thou attitude in her last show really wound me up, she would spend ages telling people they were doing it all wrong. Then when they sold the property at a profit she always blamed the bouyant market and never that she might have been wrong...

Ugh, urge to kill rising even as i type this!!

keystone

All progs like this are a bit of a con one way or another really. Its called dramatic licence isn't it? This is one of the better ones IMHO.

Cheers

Orpheo

The building was listed. This will have inflated repair costs. I imagine that if they had opted to replace the roof entirely that they would have had to source, perhaps have manufactured, identical tiles.

horseykitty

Kate78 wrote: »

Watching this programme has brought the word "numpty" back into common usage in my world.

Seriously, don't people have a survey done before they buy a property?

I nearly bought an old house but it came back with so many issues (chimney stack unstable, roof needed replacing, dry rot, damp....) I decided not to buy. £600 for the survey was nothing compared to the money pit of a house it saved me from! :T

I watched this programme with very little sympathy for the owners - if you can afford 250K to buy a property, with 130K for restorations/repairs then you can afford to have a building survey done by a chartered surveyor. I can't understand why people don't do this, especially with old properties.

If you get the survey done and there are underlying issues you can make an informed decision as to whether to proceed with the purchase or walk away. Yes, if you walk away you've lost the survey fee but if you decide to go ahead, the surveyors recommendations can allow you to negotiate a lower offer, or failing that, give you a clear idea of the full cost implications of the necessary work(60k for a new roof would have had my running shoes on)

Throughout the series there has been a constant theme of the stress, worry and sleepless nights that these properties cause their 'numpty' owners - all of which could have been avoided if they had had a survey done.

Potential house buyers - get a survey done - it will save you money in the end!

PasturesNew

What would have worried me, apart from the work, is how feasible it was to get a Change of Use Planning Permission to residential. I know some areas wouldn't want bedspace being taken from the tourist industry.

And PP takes a couple of months and you can't tell what'll happen (unless you have some brown envelopes).

Mum_of_3_3

What makes my oh builder mad (apart from the fact they don't seem to get full structural surveys) is that people like the owners last night decide that they can't afford £50k for a roof so decide to patch it up, even though you can see that the trusses and rafters are absolutely knackered!

Then in almost the same breath they show off their new master suite and en-suite which must have cost quite a bit.

I'd tell last night's owners that they should have got a few more quotes and done the roof, after all if the roof fails again, your nice shiny new bedroom and bathroom will be ruined. Also, it's only put off something which will need doing in the future and if it costs that much now, how much will it cost in the future?

We didn't notice the commercial signs or fire alarms, but we did notice the fact that although they had a luxurious bedroom their kids rooms looked shoddy and cheap.

M_o_3

dander

What puzzled me most with that one was the big crack that Sarah Beeny said had "appeared" after they moved in. There were several things last night that she kind of presented as thought they had happened since the house was purchased, I'd be intrigued to know if this was true, and if so, why would such serious things only become apparent at a late stage. I also wondered about the drains - surely anything like that, you start by getting Dynorod or some such in - I wondered if they'd been told by the TV company not to do that, so they could add the drains to the "house of horrors" vibe.

And most of the way through she said "16 rooms" but at one point she clearly said "16 bedrooms" which was a bit odd.

This lot, though, seemed fairly comfortable with what was going on, suspect they were playing dumb a bit for TV because that was a hefty budget to have put aside if they really didn't know some major work would be needed. I did enjoy the couple in Brighton a few weeks back, who bought a real wreck and really seemed to think all it needed was a coat of paint.

Be very interested how much the production company stump up as a fee for being on these shows. I'm sure it must come in very handy...

theGrinch

I can understand cracks being covered up and a drain problem only surfacing some time later, but those floors were seriously bowed; historic or not, the surveyor should have recommended a timber survey. I had one recommend on a springy floor, which turned out to be nothign and that was recommend on a homebuyer report at the time. Also, no mention of the windows, they looked in need of repair at the front at least and windows are pretty expensive.