Cellar & Loft Conversion

Newlyboughthouse

Hi guys

I bought my terraced house for £124,500 in August 2013. That is the average house price on my street according to Zoopla.

None of the other houses, to my knowledge, have had their cellars or lofts converted. I wish to do both eventually, and then rent the house out.

My Dad has kind of scared me away from this idea, saying the street probably has a ceiling price on it, and I would be screwing myself out of loads of money.

Surely someone would be willing to pay significantly more for a house with a lot more floor space/bedrooms etc than the rest of the houses on the street?

Any thought/experience here?

CLAPTON

Newlyboughthouse wrote: »

Hi guys

I bought my terraced house for £124,500 in August 2013. That is the average house price on my street according to Zoopla.

None of the other houses, to my knowledge, have had their cellars or lofts converted. I wish to do both eventually, and then rent the house out.

My Dad has kind of scared me away from this idea, saying the street probably has a ceiling price on it, and I would be screwing myself out of loads of money.

Surely someone would be willing to pay significantly more for a house with a lot more floor space/bedrooms etc than the rest of the houses on the street?

Any thought/experience here?

he's probably right
what do other similar houses with a loft conversion go for?


I doubt if a cellar would make up improvement unless maybe you live on a hill

Newlyboughthouse

You don't think a cellar providing an extra bedroom would add value?

No idea re: other similar houses, all I know is my house would have much more floor space and much more room than the surrounding houses.

CLAPTON

Newlyboughthouse wrote: »

You don't think a cellar providing an extra bedroom would add value?

No idea re: other similar houses, all I know is my house would have much more floor space and much more room than the surrounding houses.

would the cellar have natural light
what about access
room height


and of cause cost?


but in the end it will depend upon what else you can by for comparable prices

PasturesNew

Spending money doesn't make a house worth more.
A ceiling price on a road means that for more money people vote with their feet and prefer another road/area.

Newlyboughthouse

CLAPTON wrote: »

would the cellar have natural light

Yep

CLAPTON wrote: »

what about access

down staircase (not from street)

CLAPTON wrote: »

room height

will be digging down to make it a proper full sized room.

CLAPTON wrote: »

and of cause cost?

yet to get costs - probably around £10k

CLAPTON wrote: »

but in the end it will depend upon what else you can by for comparable prices

True - it's the possible ceiling price of the street I'm concerned about. Wondering if anyone else has taken the risk in a street where houses are pretty much same value?

Carl31

You can't polish a turd


etc...

(although you can apparently)

Doozergirl

Your dad is right. Particularly at that price point.

How many bedrooms does your house have? 2? How many will it have when you have carried out the work - 4? (But one in the basement effectively making it a reception room.

Have a look at rightmove now for a 3/4 bed house in your area. How much are they? What does it have extra? A more conventional upstairs/downstairs arrangement? Is it wider? It probably is wider and has more garden land, it might even be a semi or simply have a greater floorspace still.

Firstly, a habitable cellar conversion will cost more than £10k, especially if it involves digging. It will need large amounts of work to bring it up to building standards with the correct head heights, alterations to upstairs, the correct size window for escape, tanking against inevitable dampness.

Where I am, a terraced house costs around £150k. Convert the loft it would be worth £170k. Cost around the same as the return. A cellar room would be worth zero. No one wants a cellar room if land is not in huge demand, like it is in London.

padington

The whole spare bedroom dynamic might change slightly for London property when the right to short term let rules come in spring 2015.

However right now, do it of you want to rent it out / spare room, not for capital return on a place in that price bracket.

Unless for some random reason you can get it done well for peanuts.

The BTL guru's may well say otherwise though.

the_flying_pig

In a relatively cheap area like the one you seem to be describing, any expensive work, e.g. dormer or mansard loft conversion or cellar work involving digging down (almost unheard of doing outside London) would absolutely not deliver a financial return, not a chance.

the_flying_pig

i'm currently partway through getting some improvements made to my cellar. when finished i'll have spent a little less than £2k in total, for basically plastering [it was all exposed, fairly rough, brick before], floor tiles, cupboards making, sink plumbed, and painting.

the height down there was already pretty good, maybe 5'11" or so [not tall enough for me to stand in but ok for my wife, even though i lost maybe about an inch getting the flooring improved] so i decided not to spend the added £5k it'd have apparently cost to deepen it by a few more inches.

a couple of comments on my cellar:

1 - it's still only about 5'10" in height, accessible only via a narrow, low-ceilinged, staircase. it's also a very narrow room. i chose not to dig down or sideways because, well, it's so damned expensive to do so,
2 - it remains without natural light or ventilation,
3 - at least some level of dampness is endemic in rough & ready conversions of this sort, even with damproofing... the peeling paint you can see in one photo is only because the nitwit [more accurately, one of his lackeys] who was doing it started to paint before the plaster was dry, he'll be starting that again soon but, even so... something like the dehumidifier you can see is standard

what i'm going to use it for is basically storage & a handy out-of-the way place to keep a washing machine & chest freezer.

more ambitious schemes and uses are certainly possible, but would the space ever be as good as the main space in the house, & usable in the same way [e.g. as a bedroom]? only if i paid really top dollar.

i reckon i'd probably get my £2k back if i sold now but noticably more than that, nah.

http://imgur.com/a/Reflh