Buying house: What would you do?

ChewyyBacca

cattie said:

That location is not a million miles away from me & once looked at a house on the Devon estate, so agree that the price it's up at is good. However, you will need a very healthy budget to get it brought into the 21st century. You mention you have a small budget to to pay for professionals & I wouldn't have thought you could have got the work done for much less than £50k if you're lucky, especially as you state you've no experience of diy. Believe me, when trying to work out renovation budgets, it's always wise to double it to get a clear idea of the final cost! When renovating, you never know what hidden problems will show their face & they can prove costly.

In the Welling area there are a lot of spacious chalet houses that have & were built, with downstairs bathrooms & the layout is fairly similar to this one. If the bathroom was brought upstairs, then the existing bathroom could become bedroom 4 or a study, so the options are there & with doing something like this, you'd maintain the value of the house. Losing a bedroom in the greater London area can knock £20-£25k off of the price easily, whereas for some people they have no objection to a downstairs bathroom & it doesn't seem to affect prices greatly. Period houses local to me with downstairs bathroom only are still going for around the £600-£650k mark, whereas for me I'd never consider a downstairs bathroom only.

Regarding council tax, I don't believe it will change at all as you'll still be occupying the same space, just rejigging things a bit.

Whatever you decide, do come back to update us.

Thanks @cattie
We do have a stretch budget of 20k for the refurbishment of the house. I agree with the unseen, unknown problems cropping up and the associated costs. Hopefully, the surveys should safeguard against structural big money guzzling problems.
Though arriving at twice the amount of expected works is tough since I have a very rough idea of ballpark costs associated with works to be done in a house. Is getting quotes from tradespeople good idea, at this very early stage of house hunting to get a better idea of what monetary dent the house going to make?
And the houses worth £600-650 mark we are increasingly finding ourselves priced out of decent areas

davidmcn

ChewyyBacca said:

AdrianC said:
Probate sales are common. Most are absolutely straightforward.

The only issue for you is the timescale not being in your hands - everything else is the vendor's problem.
You have three choices.
1. Learn...
2. Spend a fortune on labour every time you want anything done.
3. Buy a different property.

Obviously, there are jobs that are beyond all but the most dedicated and experienced DIYers - kitchen, bathroom, plastering, anything structural.
But you would be astonished how easy things like painting and decorating are, with just a little bit of application - and how expensive. Especially in London. And that's before we consider the ongoing maintenance jobs...
Hold on while I just find a tape measure for this piece of string.

The floorplan you've provided is not dimensioned. What size is that room? It looks tiny to the point of just about unusability as a bedroom.
Rebanding because of work done to the property triggering an Improvement Index flag (usually anything involving planning permission) would not happen until the next change of council tax payers - so when you sell.

Band D means a 1991 nominal value of between £68k and £88k. No more than that. "Number of bedrooms" does not factor directly into the banding.
Where in that band did it sit in 1991?
Would changing that bedroom for an upstairs bathroom have reduced or increased the 1991 value?
BTW, you don't need to do "a preliminary google search" to "indicate" anything - just put the address into https://www.gov.uk/council-tax-bands and find out the absolutely accurate authoritative answer.

Probate sale would mean there is an executor of the will, however multiple parties with interest in the sale proceeds. Making all these minds arrive at a decision, or resolve the discord between them, should one arise, would be a difficult and time-consuming process. So yes, as you said, more time will be an obvious given in such sales.

No, you seem misguided about this. The vast majority of executries are amazingly dull and straightforward - executors tend to be the beneficiaries (or beneficiary - there's not necessarily more than one residuary beneficiary with an interest in the property price), not people arbitrating among a crowd of bickering second cousins.

MFWannabe

ChewyyBacca said:

cattie said:

That location is not a million miles away from me & once looked at a house on the Devon estate, so agree that the price it's up at is good. However, you will need a very healthy budget to get it brought into the 21st century. You mention you have a small budget to to pay for professionals & I wouldn't have thought you could have got the work done for much less than £50k if you're lucky, especially as you state you've no experience of diy. Believe me, when trying to work out renovation budgets, it's always wise to double it to get a clear idea of the final cost! When renovating, you never know what hidden problems will show their face & they can prove costly.

In the Welling area there are a lot of spacious chalet houses that have & were built, with downstairs bathrooms & the layout is fairly similar to this one. If the bathroom was brought upstairs, then the existing bathroom could become bedroom 4 or a study, so the options are there & with doing something like this, you'd maintain the value of the house. Losing a bedroom in the greater London area can knock £20-£25k off of the price easily, whereas for some people they have no objection to a downstairs bathroom & it doesn't seem to affect prices greatly. Period houses local to me with downstairs bathroom only are still going for around the £600-£650k mark, whereas for me I'd never consider a downstairs bathroom only.

Regarding council tax, I don't believe it will change at all as you'll still be occupying the same space, just rejigging things a bit.

Whatever you decide, do come back to update us.

Thanks @cattie
We do have a stretch budget of 20k for the refurbishment of the house. I agree with the unseen, unknown problems cropping up and the associated costs. Hopefully, the surveys should safeguard against structural big money guzzling problems.
Though arriving at twice the amount of expected works is tough since I have a very rough idea of ballpark costs associated with works to be done in a house. Is getting quotes from tradespeople good idea, at this very early stage of house hunting to get a better idea of what monetary dent the house going to make?
And the houses worth £600-650 mark we are increasingly finding ourselves priced out of decent areas

To be perfectly honest I don’t think 20k would go far 
Did you look at the one FTB posted?

ChewyyBacca

FTB_Help said:
What about this one https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/73607826#/

4 bed and a bathroom upstairs, 0.2 miles away from the one you're looking at

This is a good find. Thanks @FTB_Help
Nice little cul de sac, will contact them.

hazyjo

ChewyyBacca said:

hazyjo said:

Would you consider these?

Much better long term value.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/96845882#/

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/98187770#/

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/100155434#/ (lost out on a house in that street myself once).

Thanks for the links @hazyjo
How do you arrive at long term value? (genuinely asking)
No intention to offend anyone, I am not looking at Eltham though. Eltham has a very high concentration of council and social housing. There are a lot of great houses there, but I fear resale value will not be high. You can change everything in a house you own, except for the location. I genuinely liked this house https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/80380126#/
though worried what value will it fetch when we are ready to sell it off in 7-10 years.

When I lived in Eltham, it was generally considered nicer than Welling. If you include the block of housing to the left of the A205, and above Rochester Way, yes it's quite council (although some of that is actually SE3 rather than SE9).  Houses around Eltham Park and on the Progress Estate have always been popular. Prices usually reflect that. I would personally rather like there than Welling. Although perhaps its desirability has changed over the years.

hazyjo

PS re the one you linked to, I'd not choose to live on that side of the Progress Estate. Would buy to the east of the A205.

barbiedoll

I know Welling really well, I grew up there. The postal address may be in Kent, but you'll be paying London prices for tradesmen. Your 20k will probably just about cover the cost of moving the bathroom, with possibly a bit left over. It's a messy job, and always ends up costing more than you planned, especially if you're paying someone else to do the tiling etc.

I think you're paying a premium for this house due to the proximity to the station, and the corner plot with the extra land. The drive and garage is handy, as I think there may be parking restrictions there because of the station? It's liveable, and you can decorate each room as you go, you can tart up a room for a few hundred quid, IF you don't need plastering or other major works. Having said that, there's a lot of stuff to get rid of, the brick fireplace, the fitted wardrobes etc.

And as Adrian pointed out....where are the radiators? I can't see a boiler anywhere either (although it may be in the loft or garage), but buying radiators alone for those curved bay windows is going to be expensive.

Unless you can get the price down, and you are confident that you can do some of the refurbishment yourself, you should be wary. This has "money pit" written all over it!

cattie

ChewyyBacca said:
hazyjo said:(

Would you consider these?

Much better long term value.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/96845882#/

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/98187770#/

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/100155434#/ (lost out on a house in that street myself once).

Thanks for the links @hazyjo
How do you arrive at long term value? (genuinely asking)
No intention to offend anyone, I am not looking at Eltham though. Eltham has a very high concentration of council and social housing. There are a lot of great houses there, but I fear resale value will not be high. You can change everything in a house you own, except for the location. I genuinely liked this house https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/80380126#/
though worried what value will it fetch when we are ready to sell it off in 7-10 years.

The comment about Eltham having lots of council housing isn't strictly true. There is the Middle Park Estate yes, which covers what I'd call the bottom of Eltham going into Mottingham & can understand nobody being keen on buying there, although a big proportion of the properties are now privately owned & it probably attracts a lot of ftb's  

However, the Progress Estate cottages, which are in a conservation area (some of which hazyjo gave links to) is more like living in the country than on the outskirts of London. It really is lovely around there & the cottages tend to be pretty spacious. I once owned a house there & had a bedroom of approx 18' long & the other 2 bedrooms were doubles. This part of Eltham & the area it connects to, known as Eltham Park really is a great place to live (yes owned a house there too). The Eltham Park area is just private housing & quite a desireable & sought after place to live as it has a village community feel & schools are excellent.  My house there sold on the day it was listed with ea & at a higher price than ea originally suggested I list at. Properties in that area do usually go quickly.

The Poets estate in Welling was built as council housing, though a lot of those are now privately owned. Wherever you live in greater London you're unlikely to be far from what once was a council estate. 

davidmcn

barbiedoll said:

And as Adrian pointed out....where are the radiators? I can't see a boiler anywhere either (although it may be in the loft or garage), but buying radiators alone for those curved bay windows is going to be expensive.

There's obviously got to be a boiler if there's at least one radiator...looks like a flue on the first floor gable wall.

And I agree it looks liveable, it's not as if the kitchen/bathroom are non-existent or broken - in fact the kitchen doesn't look that bad to me.

ChewyyBacca

lincroft1710 said:

Converting a small 4th bedroom to a bathroom would probably make the house most valuable. Council Tax band though would probably not increase.

I was naively hoping that it would decrease since 1 bedroom is lost. Thanks to AdrianC & others, I now know it wont happen, since it is the same living space.