Estate agents lingo - modernisation = part needing rebuild

fairytinkerbell

To me modernisation means new kitchen, bathroom, windows, heating etc but now seems to include subsidence and complete building work

I know they want people to view but I had to drive an hour and 20 mins to find out there's and inch gap between the walls because of subsidence which a child could spot so no excuse for not disclosing

Rant over

googler

fairytinkerbell wrote: »

To me modernisation means new kitchen, bathroom, windows, heating etc but now seems to include subsidence and complete building work

I know they want people to view but I had to drive an hour and 20 mins to find out there's and inch gap between the walls because of subsidence which a child could spot so no excuse for not disclosing

Rant over

Just think, if the govt had retained, for E&W, the HIP system, with a survey being done before the house goes to market, and available to viewers/buyers in advance, similar to the Home Report system in Scotland, you would have been spared this.

moneyistooshorttomention

fairytinkerbell wrote: »

To me modernisation means new kitchen, bathroom, windows, heating etc but now seems to include subsidence and complete building work

I know they want people to view but I had to drive an hour and 20 mins to find out there's and inch gap between the walls because of subsidence which a child could spot so no excuse for not disclosing

Rant over

I'd agree.

Considering that many houses that need modernising don't even say "modernising" in the details though, I guess we shouldn't be surprised that structural work doesn't get mentioned at all.

Yep..."I'm looking at you" looking at the house I moved to recently. There was no indication whatsoever in the text that it needed virtual gutting to modernise it. Instead it was described as "low maintenance" as I recall:rotfl::eek::rotfl::eek:. Yeh...right....'course it was (not!).

I think possibly the nearest EA's come to describing a house that is clearly in need of modernisation is to describe it as "well-maintained". That seems to mean = well I suppose they did the maintenance work on it...but it aint modernised, because the owner has been there since the 1970s/80s and thought it was fine for them, ie possibly genuinely didn't realise it needs modernisation.

PasturesNew

I wanted to buy an "almost new" house to minimise the number of past bodger-DIY types that'd fiddled with it over decades.

fairytinkerbell

http://m.fennwright.co.uk/homes-for-sale/search-homes-for-sale/100989024463/old-london-road-copdock-ipswich/

This is the one

Doozergirl

fairytinkerbell wrote: »

http://m.fennwright.co.uk/homes-for-sale/search-homes-for-sale/100989024463/old-london-road-copdock-ipswich/

This is the one

To me, modernising means it needs things to bring it up to a standard of living.

Replacing a kitchen and bathrooms isn't really modernising, because it has one. Modernising to me means it needs making safe in some respect like the roof is leaking and the electrics are old and therefore potentially dangerous.

To me, even without pointing out subsidence I can see that the house is clearly screwed and needs absolutely everything doing to it. It has been neglected. It is a back-to-brickwork job.

It just doesn't look like a superficial fixer and looks like a borderline mortgage refusal before finding subsidence. Maybe that takes experience though.

You look for some evidence of when the house was last loved. There's no evidence of genuine love for what looks like over 40 years. How many problems spring up in a time period like that and what would regular homeowners have done in that time?

Clear evidence of damp in the lean-to and a problem with ground level being higher outside than in, I think.

Shame you went such length to find out. Try and learn what to look for. First rule, any house that looks like that in pictures is going to cost several £10,000s to rectify

Old_Git

My nephew and his wife where going to bu a new build in Ireland .
It failed the survey . They bought a secondhand house .

AdrianC

Slightly more useful link :- http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-49817360.html

Obviously being sold because the elderly occupant has died or gone into care after years of gently failing to do any maintenance. Ignoring that, that conservatory is clearly a dreadful lash-up and has to be removed before it falls down, and the garage doesn't look a lot healthier.

Even in those photos, it's clear that there's going to be more than a bit of light decorating needed.
The most obvious clue is that photo 5 shows a suspicious looking crack down the coving that continues into the wallpaper towards the window. Photo 11 should have got warning bells going, too.

But why DO estate agents insist on using such abysmal photos as that pair of utterly out-of-focus ones? Didn't anybody actually look at the photos? Or does nobody actually care?

jacko74

And the icing on the cake is the vendor wants 15% of any future increase in value if planning permission is obtained to develop the plot within the next 15 years...

AdrianC

jacko74 wrote: »

And the icing on the cake is the vendor wants 15% of any future increase in value if planning permission is obtained to develop the plot within the next 15 years...

Develop to build additional properties. And current planning policies say "no additional properties". Not a problem if you're extending that property.

It's not even as if the plot's THAT big - 90 foot x 90 foot (at least, I assume that's what they mean by "90' square" - 90ft2 would be tiny). Except the agent's brochure says 125'x80'...