How do i increase the value of my house?

ST1991

I'm not sure if this belongs in this forum or the house buying/selling section (so sorry if i've chosen wrong).

We've been in our home for almost a year now, and although i know you should take zoopla valuations with a pinch of salt, something is bugging me...

I live in Bristol where house prices have continued to go up, and it's an old solid stone terrace cottage.

It's a terrace of 4, with pretty much every house having an extension of some sort. None of them have particularly original features, but we do have the original cast-iron fireplace inserts. The other houses do not (we have been round for tea and cake).

Ours is the lowest valued out of the 4 (again according to Zoopla), so i was wondering if there is something i'm missing, or something i can do to boost it's value.

Just to state, we are not thinking about selling any time soon, but it's a 2 bedroom so i imagine we would think about moving in 5-10 years time to somewhere larger.

House 1 in terrace is 3 bedroom, and has a larger garden than ours. Valued on zoopla at ~£290
House 2 in terrace is ours - 2 bedroom with single story extension to front. Valued on zoopla at ~£180
House 3 in terrace is 2 bedroom with slightly wider single story extension to front. Valued on zoopla at ~£220
House 4 in terrace is 3 bedroom with a built in garage, which when opened up gives direct access to the back garden. Valued on zoopla at ~£330

House 2 and house 3 have an identical layout inside, with the exception of the front extension being the whole width of the house and ours only being half the width of the house (pokes out).
House 1 and 4 are obviously end-terrace.

Forgive me if i'm being stupid but there is a huge fluctuation there between the 4 houses. I know that 1&2 are end-terrace and have slightly larger gardens, but does this really add an extra £100K+ to the value...?


What are your thoughts?! Have i missed something obvious?
I can post a link but i worry about receiving criticism on our lovely first home...

Le_Kirk

Upon what is the value on Zoopla based? It normally gives the last known sale/buy price.

Grenage

Zoopla valuations are meaningless, extensions add value, as do larger gardens; end-terrace also have a slightly higher value.

Unless you're adding an extension, you're not really going to add value.

ST1991

Thanks for the quick replies!

The Zoopla valuation would i guess be based on the last purchase price, which was us last year.
The other properties haven't been sold for at least 10 years at the most recent, then more than 20 years ago.

We would struggle to enlarge the front extension across, as the soil pipe runs down the front of the house and we'd have nowhere to move this unless putting it inside the extension, which i understand is not not really an option with building over drains etc.

The back garden is not really large enough to warrant an extension at the back.

We thought about converting the loft but it's a double roof so they are not tall enough and you'd need to have a separate staircase up to each loft, removing room from each of the bedrooms

LEJC

A house is worth what someone will pay for it.

I have a house where the "valuation" is lower than it's neighbours....the reason is when we purchased it we did so as a doer upper....My understanding is that when property websites give things a value it tends to be based upon how much general house prices and types of property have increased or decreased in a particular period of time....

so if its a 2% increase thats whats going to be applied to the last sale figure...and if that was low then its never going to reflect the true value of your property.

If you are wanting a more up to the mark valuation get the estate agents round...but even then you'll probably be faced with 3 levels of valuation.

What's wrong with having the lowest value...you live there.presumably you like it and unless you are looking to move then potentially what its worth is just a paper exercise.

I suspect that if you were to look at rightmove for your area and see what's available then unless your house is of completely non standard specification you will be able to get a feel as to what price things like yours will go for.

ST1991

LEJC wrote: »

A house is worth what someone will pay for it.

I have a house where the "valuation" is lower than it's neighbours....the reason is when we purchased it we did so as a doer upper....My understanding is that when property websites give things a value it tends to be based upon how much general house prices and types of property have increased or decreased in a particular period of time....

so if its a 2% increase thats whats going to be applied to the last sale figure...and if that was low then its never going to reflect the true value of your property.

If you are wanting a more up to the mark valuation get the estate agents round...but even then you'll probably be faced with 3 levels of valuation.

What's wrong with having the lowest value...you live there.presumably you like it and unless you are looking to move then potentially what its worth is just a paper exercise.

I suspect that if you were to look at rightmove for your area and see what's available then unless your house is of completely non standard specification you will be able to get a feel as to what price things like yours will go for.

Thanks for your comments.

We did buy it at a low price as it was in a bit of disrepair when we bought it. However what had actually happened is that they had a 'damp expert' around and quote £10K to tank downstairs.
Since stripping the walls and letting the house breathe you'd be surprising how little 'damp' there is left. (There are various things that the tenant who lives here before we bought was doing that were grossly to blame: piling mud up against the exterior walls, non-condensing tumble drier under the stairs, fish tanks in every room, no extractor in the bathroom and never opened the windows for 'fear of spiders').

Perhaps the low purchase price is partly to blame for the now-low valuation.

There are similar properties in our area but nothing as old as ours so i struggle to get any kind of comparison. I only recently discovered it was 1700... not 1900's as per the f+f form from the seller

Again sorry, i knew this was a bit of a stupid question but i'm a worrier!

PasturesNew

Ignore Zoopla. I live in a house where there are four others identical to mine; they were all new builds at the same time, selling for the same price.

They are all priced differently on Zoopla because it works on "how the market moved" since the date of the last time one sold.

When I bought mine, too, I paid £30k over what Zoopla said it was worth that month. I'd now value it at about what Zoopla thinks.

The four like mine are showing as: £227k, £227k, £250k, £227k.
Mine is showing as £254k, which is probably about right... probably market at £260-265.

One of the above valued at £227k was on the market recently at £250k and I bet sold for £245k.

What you paid for it won't affect what it's worth when you sell it....

LEJC

To be perfectly honest...enjoy living in your house..when the time comes to sell thats when the valuation is important to you not now.

In a few years time lots of things can change that are even outside of your control...new road layouts nearby,better transport links...developments all can enhance the value and on the flip side there are things that can devalue.

The other thing to keep slightly mindful of is if property goes up in value then when you sell you will probably be looking to reinvest that into a second property that again has gone up in value from todays prices.

In terms of what you can do to yours...well planned kitchens and bathrooms are always nice to have if you don't want to go down the structural route....but then again do the renovation to what you need its never good to second guess what the next buyer of your house is wanting to buy.

EssexExile

ST1991 wrote: »

Perhaps the low purchase price is partly to blame for the now-low valuation.

Probably totally to blame, what else have they got to go on?

Davesnave

Zoopla was wrong about our property when we bought it, and it's even more wrong now, I suspect, now we've extended and improved it.

But do we care?

Most people add value by extending sensibly and not breaking the ceiling price for the road/type of property.

As LEJC says, property value is also affected by random external factors. So, although we've put plenty of money in, the value has probably risen just as much because of a lucky change in the law that we didn't anticipate.

Equally, there could be some other change that might work the other way next year.

Enjoy your house. People will know how much they want it when you decide to sell. If they quote Zoopla at you, laugh at them!

Apodemus

As far as I am aware, zoopla takes the last known sale price, then inflates that by the regionally appropriate house price index from the date of last sale. So if your purchase price was low, the zoopla price will always stay on the low side.

Edit: Ooh! For once I agree with autocorrect - it wants zoopla to be zooplankton, which more or less accurately describes the price-setting intelligence of the site!