Help please! Purchase of Single Skin property?

lisetta1981

Morning! We have made an offer on a 1930s house which we have just found out is single skin walls throughout. The seller says he has recently put a double rendering on the outside walls to help with insulation. However I'm still concerned, first with potential heating and insulation issues and secondly about ease of selling on in a few years. I have read that some mortgage lenders are reluctant to lend on these type of properties. We are lucky enough not to need a mortgage but we want the option to easily sell it in 3-5 years. The EPC suggests up to £14000 to improve the insulation...does this sound accurate and is it worth asking the seller to reduce the price by this much? Thanks for your help

AnotherJoe

Is £14k 1% of the purchase price or 20% ? On its own it's a figure that means little.

Amd would £7k (let's say you split the difference) increase the value of the property by say ££20k (because it would be more mortageable as well as energy efficient). Perhaps you should pay for a professional valuers opnion.

csgohan4

you can always ask, worse case they reject it

lisetta1981

Sorry should have said, the purchase price is £225,000 for a 2 bed house. So £14,000 off is about 6% off. The EPC at the moment is D with potential of C with this work done.

davidmcn

Any figures for improvements in the EPC are extremely rough ballpark figures (I've just picked up another EPC which also says £14k, so maybe a standard figure for everyone!), if you want to rely on them best to get proper quotes. Also bear in mind other complications (unless the property is detached or you get neighbours to join in then external insulation is going to look silly, you might need planning consent, etc).

AnotherJoe

Rather than rely on the EPC I'd get some quotes for the work. Whether the vendor will agree or split the difference depends on numerous factors.
Spending £14 k to move from D to C doesn't sound like a good payback though.how long would it take to pay that off in cheaper gas bills?

lisetta1981

I guess my main concern is how easily we can sell on this type of property. We may only be there 3 or 4 years and I don't want to be stuck with potential buyers unable to get mortgages because of the single skin?

AnotherJoe

Probably better to look elsewhere then. You don't have to spend money or put up with the hassle of works, and you aren't at the mercy of lenders changing their criteria.

[Deleted User]

Depending on house price rises in your area, you might want to look at whether its worth moving now to move again in 3-4 years financially. Moving costs, legal fees etc might make this unworthwhile. Might be better to wait and save more money for a more permanent move.

Doozergirl

Hold up.

It would be highly unlikely for a 1930s house to be what you are referring to as single skin.

It could be that it is solid wall construction. It doesn't have a cavity but it does have a double skin and this is perfectly normal and very, very common. While insulation is expensive, it isn't necessary and I would only add it when internal walls need plastering anyway. Loft insulation and decent windows are far more important for lower bills.

Please check the construction. I'd be very surprised to see a house of that period being built in such a rudimentary fashion. You can often find converted outbuildings are single skin as they weren't built for the purpose of habitation, but not the actual house.

The difference is in the thickness of the wall, visible around door and window openings. Rendering etc will make a difference, but a single skin of brick is 102mm wide, a double skin 215mm. A modern cavity wall is 300mm thick.

Also, I had an EPC assessor say that my 1930s house has no cavity and I've seen inside the cavity!

SailorSam

lisetta1981 wrote: »

I guess my main concern is how easily we can sell on this type of property. We may only be there 3 or 4 years and I don't want to be stuck with potential buyers unable to get mortgages because of the single skin?

It wasn't until about the middle 1920s that builders started doing cavity wall houses. So there are still millions of terraced houses in every city that are still single skinned, and people buy and sell every day without a second thought.
True they're not as easy to insulate but it doesn't stop them selling.