Idea of how much value it would add

phoebe1989seb

Definitely agree that those type of changes would increase future interest in your house, make it nicer for you to live in and make it more saleable.......but speaking as someone who bought a gorgeous period house in an area that turned out to be not-so-nice, then spent money (think £40k +) restoring it in the hope that we would eventually settle there and accept the area for what it was, we didn't recoup a penny of that expenditure when we sold last year.

However, we did make it more appealing/saleable as three years later when we decided we couldn't bear to stay there any longer, the EA predicted we would sell quickly because of the work we had carried out - and he was right as we accepted an offer we were happy with in two weeks......and that in an area where anything over £150k (and ours was waaay over) just wasn't moving.

Some of the work we did should, in theory, have added value - and I guess you could say it did as we may well have sold for even less had we not done the work.......but rising/falling/stagnating markets play such a huge part - the guys we bought it from didn't do a single thing to it during their four years of ownership (2003 - 2007), yet they made £40k when they sold to us

Fire_Fox

Sounds interesting, are you willing to post your Rightmove link? What does your estate agent think would add value? Cellar conversions are fine if you can dig out and get natural light or the space is huge after tanking. Don't just compare to what you would get back, but take into consideration what it would cost you to move which would be £10-£15K presumably?

I am a massive fan of being mortgage free, it is heaven. You can both work part time, buy a second property, retire very early ....

Slinky

cwcw wrote: »

Magnolia walls, oatmeal carpets and beech kitchen per chance? :rotfl:

Didn't see all of it, but the one thing that they did which I do remember which made a huge improvement was cleaning out the cellar which previously looked as black as a coal hole and painting it white. There had been talk of tanking it and moving the kitchen in it, but they decided not be because of the cost, but cleaning it up gave a good impression for somebody else wanting to take up that idea.

Brallaqueen

I'm sorry, I'm probably not reading your description right, but if you made the loft into the master bedroom would you end up with a four bed? 25 by 15 sounds a good generous size (depending on height etc) and adding a bedroom is normally a good way of adding value.

In your first post it sounds like a lot of work for ending up with the same number of rooms (granted, one very big one) but I think that by knocking through the two doubles you'd be spending money without adding value.

Charitymanager

Brallaqueen wrote: »

I'm sorry, I'm probably not reading your description right, but if you made the loft into the master bedroom would you end up with a four bed? 25 by 15 sounds a good generous size (depending on height etc) and adding a bedroom is normally a good way of adding value.

In your first post it sounds like a lot of work for ending up with the same number of rooms (granted, one very big one) but I think that by knocking through the two doubles you'd be spending money without adding value.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts. Three bedrooms work for us, so we would be knocking down a stud wall to create 3 big bedrooms. So that would be just based on what we want rather than what would sell. We could easily convert it back into a decent 4 bed by rebuilding the wall when we sell.

The cellar has plenty of space for daylight.

Mmmmm food for thought!