Cellar & Loft Conversion

onlyroz

Don't do it to make money. Do it if this is your "forever home" and you need some extra space.

N1AK

Newlyboughthouse wrote: »

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?

Yes & No. Additional living space is often valueable wherever the house, more so than for example swimming pools

Two factors that are relevant are:
> That people with choice tend to want to live in areas with people of the same, or higher, 'status'. Thus a 5 bed mansion surrounded by 2 bed council houses would have its prices !!!!!!.
> A house looks more expensive psychologically when it is surrounded by cheaper houses, even if it offers more for the money.

If it was a £500k house where an extra room would add tends of thousands then a major cellar conversion could well be financially worthwhile but I'd be very dubious about it on anything worth less than £250k.

Newlyboughthouse

Thanks - giving me the hit of realism I possibly need!

At the risk of sounding defensive, may I ask posters above e.g. can't polish a turd person, where your authority has come from?

I just think if I were a buyer I would definitely pay a lot more for more rooms/better laid out even if surrounding houses weren't worth as much, as I would know that this house has more to offer.

Guess I'm just wondering why my house is a turd that can't be polished and proper practical reasons why.

padington

I was considering it so looked into it and got some help from here. Best advice I had was - do your own research e.g what do houses with an extra bedroom get in your road. The other good advice was don't bodge it, make it comply with building regs etc so it is officially a new bedroom, don't make a half arsed unofficial roof room.

Good storage space these days is a premium requirement so a large empty loft can be quite attractive on its own, so bear that in mind.

Oh the best advice actually was simply sell it with planning permission to convert into a third bedroom.

People love options, even if they never take them.

the_flying_pig

Newlyboughthouse wrote: »

...At the risk of sounding defensive, may I ask posters above e.g. can't polish a turd person, where your authority has come from?...

it's fairly basic stuff really.

consider two hypothetical 'two up, two down' UK terraced houses:

a) one a couple of miles outside the centre of London, market value c. £800k; and
b) one a couple of miles outside the centre of Londonderry, market value c. £80k.

so the market value, per room, of the London house is about £200k.

the corresponding figure per room in Londonderry is about £20k.

the cost of adding an extra room, e.g. through a loft conversion, is broadly the same in each of the two towns. let's call it £25k.

in which town do you think that spending £25k on an extra room will add the most value?

Carl31

Newlyboughthouse wrote: »

Thanks - giving me the hit of realism I possibly need!

At the risk of sounding defensive, may I ask posters above e.g. can't polish a turd person, where your authority has come from?

I just think if I were a buyer I would definitely pay a lot more for more rooms/better laid out even if surrounding houses weren't worth as much, as I would know that this house has more to offer.

Guess I'm just wondering why my house is a turd that can't be polished and proper practical reasons why.

I didn't mean your house is a turd as such, im sure its a great place

What i meant was, if something is restricted by outside factors, no matter what you do to it, its probably not going to improve that much

a very extreme example, imagine you have a house next to a cliff. It probably wouldn't be worth much due to the risk of that cliff falling. Do you think adding a couple of bedrooms is suddenly going to make people buy it? or do you think that due to the fact the cliff still could fall, that the new bedrooms might be a waste of time?

dave4545454

Newlyboughthouse wrote: »

Guess I'm just wondering why my house is a turd that can't be polished and proper practical reasons why.

Practical reasons why? You can try polishing it but it's hard to get a turd to actually shine no matter how much you polish it, you just end up with faeces over your cloth and less turd left....hence why people say you can't polish a turd.

However you can put sparkles in it which may raise its value, though it will still stink of poo.

Good luck with your turd :money:

sammyjammy

I own a traditional 2 up 2 down house on a street with similar prices to yours. It has a converted attic ( it might well be original or at least done many many years ago), if i were to do the cellar as well I would have a four floor house but with only 7 rooms. I currently only have a kitchen and a lounge but wouldn't use a cellar as a third reception room as it would be too inconvenient, the stairs are also an accident waiting to happen and I wouldn't want to regularly use them.

Doozergirl

Newlyboughthouse wrote: »

Thanks - giving me the hit of realism I possibly need!

At the risk of sounding defensive, may I ask posters above e.g. can't polish a turd person, where your authority has come from?

I just think if I were a buyer I would definitely pay a lot more for more rooms/better laid out even if surrounding houses weren't worth as much, as I would know that this house has more to offer.

Guess I'm just wondering why my house is a turd that can't be polished and proper practical reasons why.

My authority? 15 years of developing property. 10 years specifically renovating and extending small properties on large plots (not easy to find) into large properties in large plots. Those are the ones that are desirable and make money, otherwise we'd have just bought any house in any street round here that cost £125k and made it a lot easier for ourselves.

It isn't rocket science to work it out without hat experience.

First, no one else has bothered to do it. Because there is no demand for skinny houses on four levels. Also, the value of your house is not far off the rebuild cost - never a good sign for carrying out profitable building work.
Second, you can do the maths by setting a realistic budget for work, adding it to the price you paid for the house, then comparing it houses that are a similar size locally. You'll find there is no room for profit.
Third, if you can't be bothered to do that (which should be your starting point anyway) then ask an estate agent what it would be worth.

Newlyboughthouse

Carl31 wrote: »

I didn't mean your house is a turd as such, im sure its a great place

What i meant was, if something is restricted by outside factors, no matter what you do to it, its probably not going to improve that much

a very extreme example, imagine you have a house next to a cliff. It probably wouldn't be worth much due to the risk of that cliff falling. Do you think adding a couple of bedrooms is suddenly going to make people buy it? or do you think that due to the fact the cliff still could fall, that the new bedrooms might be a waste of time?

No please - I was not offended :rotfl: you don't know my house it's not personal - it's great people telling me what they think, but just wanted to know where authority has come from for comments.

You guys have potentially saved me thousands so thank you very much