Vent! Double your house for half your money

bosseyed

Vent ahoy! I rarely watch property programmes, often because I get jealous of tasteless fools with too much money and little sense and start shouting at the telly, but chiefly because they’re idiotic, contrived and I start shouting at the telly.

The wife wanted to watch this one though, so I sat through it and goodness me. What a load of balls. I think it was the level of total and utter contrivance involved – I’ve been lead to believe that Sarah Beeny is a fairly canny business woman and pretty cunning at the old property game, so she must have been delivering her lines through gritted teeth on this one.

So, if you didn’t watch it, the basic premise of the show is that they have two families, both wanting more space. They don’t have the money to move apparently, so instead they look to build an extension. With the title of the programme being ‘Double your house for half the money’ we can expect a certain amount of contrivance to make it work, but honestly – in each case the families dream house was pricier than their current house by precisely double the amount they had for an extension. So for example family X, their house was worth £200,000, and surprise! their dream home is worth £400,000 and they have £100,000 deposit. Of course! Its always nice round figures isn’t it.

So they have the work done after some stunning advice from Sarah (“why not try and use similar materials in your extension so that it matches the existing property!” No s**t Sarah, thanks!) and then in the sit down in their new idyllic surroundings, holding hands and smiling, Sarah re-caps the figures and then claims a saving of the difference! So family X by spending £100,000 on their extension, rather than the £200,000 they didn’t have, have made a saving of £100,000! Wowsa, they must be pleased. That’s not a saving Sarah Beeny! If you don’t have the money in the first place you haven’t made a saving!

If my sandwich is worth £1 and I extend it by adding bacon at a cost of £1 rather than diamonds at a cost of £60,000 which isn’t an option as I don’t have the money, I haven’t made a saving of £59,999. Why not make their dream house worth a million pounds and then claim a saving to the family of £700,000! That’s more impressive for telly.

Truly, TV for idiots. As much of it is, but this was one of the finest, glossiest most dumbed down examples.

MothballsWallet

This is why I stick with YouTube, That Guy With The Glasses, Cinema Snob, SF Debris and Blip.tv websites for entertainment.

Ronaldo_Mconaldo

That's pretty funny. So by this TV logic if I want a house that costs a million pounds but then decide not to buy it because I don't have the money then I've just saved myself a million pounds. Look at that everyone, I'm a millionaire, I'm going to the bank to withdraw my found wealth.

Azari

Ronaldo_Mconaldo wrote: »

That's pretty funny. So by this TV logic if I want a house that costs a million pounds but then decide not to buy it because I don't have the money then I've just saved myself a million pounds. Look at that everyone, I'm a millionaire, I'm going to the bank to withdraw my found wealth.

That sounds like female* shopping logic:

I got this for £100 in the sale but it would have cost £300 beforehand and the other one I was going to get would have cost £150 so I've actually saved myself £350!





* Joke:

I've heard men use similar logic - they're just nowhere near as good at it.

Frogletina

Reminds me of a joke

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Abe's son arrived home from school puffing and panting, sweat rolling down his face.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Dad, you'll be so proud of me," he said, "I saved a pound by running behind the bus all the way home!"[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]"Oy Vey!" said Abe, "You could have run behind a taxi and saved £10."[/FONT]

hardpressed

The other programme that annoys me is 'The house that 50K built'. OK last week the house did cost 50K to build but you have to have the land first.

paddyrg

ALL TV is contrived, it's in its DNA. It runs deep. Even the news has an editorial voice, and I know ex-local TV reporters who would bring their own flowers to tie to a railing in order to do a piece to camera. TV lies pathologically, it can't help it.

tuvix

I watched it and thought it was great. Not! A couple with no children and no mention of ever wanting children in the future extending there all ready large house. They now have a lovely large house at a cost of £150,000. They will probably need another £1000 to install an intercom system so they can talk to each other in there extremely large house for two.

hgotsparkle

Ever watched that 100K House on BBC?

In one of them, the bloke said he didn't have walls plastered as his budget wouldn't stretched, yet on the interior view he clearly had plastered walls. Annoyed my OH greatly (a plasterer).

TheSaint_2

I like to watch it just to see how the new extension looks. They did show one couple that spent so much that the new value of their house was not improved by more than the cost of their extension. Whoops! You could tell Sarah wasn't impressed with their extension.

PILES

bosseyed wrote: »

Vent ahoy! I rarely watch property programmes, often because I get jealous of tasteless fools with too much money and little sense and start shouting at the telly, but chiefly because they’re idiotic, contrived and I start shouting at the telly.

The wife wanted to watch this one though, so I sat through it and goodness me. What a load of balls. I think it was the level of total and utter contrivance involved – I’ve been lead to believe that Sarah Beeny is a fairly canny business woman and pretty cunning at the old property game, so she must have been delivering her lines through gritted teeth on this one.

So, if you didn’t watch it, the basic premise of the show is that they have two families, both wanting more space. They don’t have the money to move apparently, so instead they look to build an extension. With the title of the programme being ‘Double your house for half the money’ we can expect a certain amount of contrivance to make it work, but honestly – in each case the families dream house was pricier than their current house by precisely double the amount they had for an extension. So for example family X, their house was worth £200,000, and surprise! their dream home is worth £400,000 and they have £100,000 deposit. Of course! Its always nice round figures isn’t it.

So they have the work done after some stunning advice from Sarah (“why not try and use similar materials in your extension so that it matches the existing property!” No s**t Sarah, thanks!) and then in the sit down in their new idyllic surroundings, holding hands and smiling, Sarah re-caps the figures and then claims a saving of the difference! So family X by spending £100,000 on their extension, rather than the £200,000 they didn’t have, have made a saving of £100,000! Wowsa, they must be pleased. That’s not a saving Sarah Beeny! If you don’t have the money in the first place you haven’t made a saving!

If my sandwich is worth £1 and I extend it by adding bacon at a cost of £1 rather than diamonds at a cost of £60,000 which isn’t an option as I don’t have the money, I haven’t made a saving of £59,999. Why not make their dream house worth a million pounds and then claim a saving to the family of £700,000! That’s more impressive for telly.

Truly, TV for idiots. As much of it is, but this was one of the finest, glossiest most dumbed down examples.

If they have the money as you suggest above then the idea is that they have an asset that has increased in value by at least the amount it has cost to build. The assumption is that they WILL move and so will save money by extending instead.