Affordable rural house FTB/ Adding renovation costs?

CreditCrunchie

Because Soot I want to be prepared. We shall be looking at least 12 months in advance, and I wouldn't want to waste time looking at things that would be un mortgageable or that those with more experience know wouldn't be a good idea. If it bothers you that I'd like to be prepared then I'm sorry.

kingstreet

If you want to buy with 5% or 10% deposit, buy something readily livable and leave your doer-upper project for second or third home when you have greater financial viability.

If you have 25% or more and can vary your deposit to use funds for essential repairs or bridge a retention, you may be able to proceed.

Buildstore/buildloan do a mortgage for renovation, but the strings are many and with a small deposit, your wiggle-room non-existent.

moneyistooshorttomention

That's a valid point.

I'm on that "final" doer-upper house now and money spent to date and what is about to be spent shortly is around £35,000 and that won't be enough to finish the place. I'll just be stopping temporarily at that point because of having run out of money and having to wait for some more.

Mind you...my starter house also needed quite a bit of money, but I could get away with only spending a proportion of that, precisely because it WAS my "starter house" and therefore not worth my while to spend out everything the house required, as I was going to be moving on in a few years (which turned into a lot more years than anticipated :mad:...but still...).

One thing I can see clearly, from my present house renovation project, is that it is proving noticeably more difficult to do all the work involved on house I am in because I've pretty much got all my possessions now and some of them are decent standard.

When I was younger...I had rather fewer possessions and cheaper possessions. With that, I didn't have to constantly shift all these possessions around from room to room as the house gets done and wouldn't have had to be concerned about some of them being dear (according to the income level I'm on anyway) and therefore worrying about them.

It must be so much easier to renovate a house when you're in your 20s or 30s and haven't got that many possessions and aren't busily striving to have your home together NOW (ie because it should have been years ago, so you're not prepared to wait for anything...it all has to be done yesterday iyswim, so you're not having to do without a Together Home any longer).

Davesnave

kingstreet wrote: »

If you want to buy with 5% or 10% deposit, buy something readily livable and leave your doer-upper project for second or third home when you have greater financial viability.

If you have 25% or more and can vary your deposit to use funds for essential repairs or bridge a retention, you may be able to proceed.

This would be appropriate advice for most people, but I think we need to distinguish between a doer-upper and something needing major refurbishment.

My first doer-upper house had 3 beds and as I was young(ish!) I'd no problem with roughing it a bit till the income stream improved. The 3 beds meant we didn't have to move after I married and started a family, so there were savings later on.

Although we did move after 10 years, many of our young neighbours stayed a long time in the same road,. A couple of them are still there, 35 years later. Getting it right first time has paid dividends for them.

Ironically, we only moved over the back fence in order to have more garden space; something I didn't consider important as a spotty youth!

kingstreet

Davesnave wrote: »

I think we need to distinguish between a doer-upper and something needing major refurbishment

Absolutely.

Repairs considered essential by a mortgage lender's surveyor probably set the demarcation line between the two, as these may impact the valuation and any retention considered necessary.