Property advice (groan) - renovate or move??

leftieM

Thanks Old Git.
Wow. I lived in a house close to there when I was a student and they were worth a fair whack then. I would have thought they'd be 160k at least. Mind you, in terms of rental yield, 120k is a fair reflection.
Have the issues in the Holylands affected the prices there? Are things more expensive on the other side of the bridge? The lower ormeau used to be pretty rough but it seems to have improved.

Old_Git

leftieM wrote: »

Thanks Old Git.
Wow. I lived in a house close to there when I was a student and they were worth a fair whack then. I would have thought they'd be 160k at least. Mind you, in terms of rental yield, 120k is a fair reflection.
Have the issues in the Holylands affected the prices there? Are things more expensive on the other side of the bridge? The lower ormeau used to be pretty rough but it seems to have improved.

I think more students are living at home .so more propertys are available to rent and prices are falling .

wanchai_2

I would agree with the advice to improve IF you would stay there for at least ten years. But it's a very tricky situation.

leftieM wrote: »

Far be it from me to question your figures :cool: but I have yet to see anything with that RV selling for half it, unless it was a really unique house where the RV is a number pulled from a hat. Is your RV a mistake? My last house had an RV of 85k, as did all of the houses on the road (give or take 5k), except for one which had an RV of 140k. I just thought it was an error that hadn't been spotted. There was nothing different about the house.

leftieM, did you buy a house? Because you've been getting slightly bullish lately...

saverbuyer

I hate to make broad sweeping generalisations but 155K for a 2 up 2 down in BT7 sounds crazy to me. I would be relived it's only dropped 20k - it could be a lot worse when you actually try to sell.

Bear in mind that some developments in BT7 are easily down 50% since 2007.

polpoo

Back to the OP query
Check this out
https://www.improvedontmove.org.
It's a scheme set up by Action Cancer and some local architects. For a £40 donation to Action Cancer an architect will call out to see you in your house to discuss your ideas and give advice.
Might be useful to get a professional appraisal of what can and can't be done with your own house before going to far

leftieM

wanchai wrote: »

leftieM, did you buy a house? Because you've been getting slightly bullish lately...

I must be as tranparent as the net curtains in my new house!
I have, indeed, crossed to the dark side......

da77enj

Maevey76, We're not in a dissimilar position to yourselves. Here's my tuppence worth. Rather than moving to a larger property, or getting some work done to your own, another option would be to pay a little extra each month off your mortgage. To illustrate with some made up figures, if you were paying, say £800 a month, on your mortgage and, say £300 of this, pays off capital on your loan, and say you were to pay an extra £200 a month off. After a year you would owe approx £6K less on your house and therefore have £6k less to find for your new house. Assuming the gap between the value of your "old" and your "new" house hasn't gone up by £6k during the year you would surely be in a better position? The chances of house prices rising enough for you to be financially worse off are, in my opinion, very highly unlikely (all of the main house price reports say that house prices are still falling in NI).

Maybe not a very exciting option, but in my opinion, financially the best one is to sit tight and pay as much as possible off your mortgage.