Potential purchase

[Davey79]

Hi all, thanks for any support in advance. Happy with brutal honesty.

We're currently into our third viewing of a grade 2 listed home. Property has been reduced by £150k over the last couple of years. Offers on the table from other buyers, but other buyers all in chains (some not even started - they haven't sold their current property). We have no chain and mortgage in principle. To give a picture.

We are fortunate to have a brother in law who is an architect, with sound knowledge.

We are both creative, DIY lovers (although new) ready to make this place our home for us and our children. We are in love. However, the mortgage would leave us with £500 spare per month after everything paid for usual living and future car maintenance etc. We would potentially have £20k in the bank.

The property has slipped tiles (slate), usual damp in basement, some rotted windows, but salvageable, very old boiler, needs new wiring, and then a whole spruce up etc with boarded up fire places and slap dash approach to general repairs. We will have indemnity insurance.

Question. £20k in your back pocket enough? We won't be inheriting money in the near future.

 

[a twig]

Nope it is not, not sure where you are in the country but the way costs have gone in the last 10 years, the boiler replacement and the re-wire will likely account for the majority of your savings, if not then the windows will make sure of it. You will inevitably find other issues as you start works on an old property and being listed you will not be able to solve them in the cheapest way.

Personal opinion here but for me, a £500 a month discretionary budget to fund a period restoration when you have kids is cutting it a bit fine, all it takes is a big bill on something unexpected and you’re on the back foot, plus health impacts of living on a building site etc.

Taking a hard headed rational approach if you can’t sort out additional financing then I’d suggest this isn’t the one for you.

 

[a twig]

And as you asked for brutal honesty, I would grill the brother in law as to how much knowledge and experience he actually has on listed period properties

 

[Davey79]

Nope it is not, not sure where you are in the country but the way costs have gone in the last 10 years, the boiler replacement and the re-wire will likely account for the majority of your savings, if not then the windows will make sure of it. You will inevitably find other issues as you start works on an old property and being listed you will not be able to solve them in the cheapest way.

Personal opinion here but for me, a £500 a month discretionary budget to fund a period restoration when you have kids is cutting it a bit fine, all it takes is a big bill on something unexpected and you’re on the back foot, plus health impacts of living on a building site etc.

Taking a hard headed rational approach if you can’t sort out additional financing then I’d suggest this isn’t the one for you.

Thank you, this is what I need. What would you say you would need? We're not looking at doing anything immediately, but over time, and everything works fine now, but aware, this could change

 

[Davey79]

And as you asked for brutal honesty, I would grill the brother in law as to how much knowledge and experience he actually has on listed period properties

He specialises, with over 20 years in the industry, so we're good on that front

 

[Kearn]

Thank you, this is what I need. What would you say you would need? We're not looking at doing anything immediately, but over time, and everything works fine now, but aware, this could change

With close to zero info on the property, scale, issues, location - all any of us can give you in response is a piece of string. But it will ALWAYs be a multiple more than budgeted. When a few things are obviously wrong, there’s normally a ton of hidden surprises.

And once you start, you can’t often just leave it as is. Nor sell on for a sensible recoup.

If the architect specialises in old buildings, or any for that matter, they should certainly be able to give you the only steer anyone can right now on the likely costs. If they don’t understand old buildings, double their number at least.

 

[Davey79]

With close to zero info on the property, scale, issues, location - all any of us can give you in response is a piece of string. But it will ALWAYs be a multiple more than budgeted. When a few things are obviously wrong, there’s normally a ton of hidden surprises.

And once you start, you can’t often just leave it as is. Nor sell on for a sensible recoup.

If the architect specialises in old buildings, or any for that matter, they should certainly be able to give you the only steer anyone can right now on the likely costs. If they don’t understand old buildings, double their number at least.

Thank you. And appreciate what you're saying. They're viewing in person tomorrow with us, so hopefully we will know more. But also wanted to reach out to people unattached to our situation.

 

[a twig]

I can speak for my previous place - admittedly a decade ago so adjust the numbers accordingly - 4 bed detached 1840s property. We had a budget of £70k and a 2 year plan based on our survey to re-roof, re-wire, new boiler, address a couple of minor damp issues and then re-decorate (or so we thought).

We finished in 6 years having spent £105k despite doing the majority of the work ourselves to save money. We had to rectify high ground levels, remove modern renders, replace all the windows, repoint the un-rendered areas, take down and rebuild a wooden conservatory that turned out to be rotten, strip and re-plaster the ground floor and half the upstairs in lime, correct poor external drainage, reinstate the ground floor half of a chimney breast that had been removed and the rest left supported on a joist, take down and re-build a chimney, completely rip out and re-do two bathrooms etc

Getting the roof done and getting electrics / heating sorted got us to a holding position but blew through more of the budget than we expected, meaning everything else had to be an “as we can afford it” process, essentially living in a house with at least two rooms being building sites for nearly 4 of the 6 years.

We managed, but I wouldn’t do it again nor recommend it to anyone

 

[Davey79]

Thank you all so much, honestly this sanity check is exactly what we needed. Why do they have to be so utterly beautiful! And then fall into such a state of disrepair. Hopefully some big cash comes along and saves it. We'll be calling the agents to let them know that we're withdrawing I'm the morning

 

[CarolineTheChemist]

I want to echo what Kearn said about once you’ve started you have to continue. I honestly don’t think £500 is enough each month to make a dent in a lot of the things you’ve mentioned.
It could be okay if the house was fine and you just needed to actively maintain it. We’ve been in our house 6 years and stuff that was fine when we moved in is now perishing around us.
We’ve a few thousand pounds “spare” each month and still find it difficult to afford everything.

 

[Lacan07]

Hi all, thanks for any support in advance. Happy with brutal honesty.

We're currently into our third viewing of a grade 2 listed home. Property has been reduced by £150k over the last couple of years. Offers on the table from other buyers, but other buyers all in chains (some not even started - they haven't sold their current property). We have no chain and mortgage in principle. To give a picture.

We are fortunate to have a brother in law who is an architect, with sound knowledge.

We are both creative, DIY lovers (although new) ready to make this place our home for us and our children. We are in love. However, the mortgage would leave us with £500 spare per month after everything paid for usual living and future car maintenance etc. We would potentially have £20k in the bank.

The property has slipped tiles (slate), usual damp in basement, some rotted windows, but salvageable, very old boiler, needs new wiring, and then a whole spruce up etc with boarded up fire places and slap dash approach to general repairs. We will have indemnity insurance.

Question. £20k in your back pocket enough? We won't be inheriting money in the near future.

20K a month with £500 coming in each month doesn't sound like nearly enough to me. I'm in a similar position but my property is small (2 bed) and isn't listed. I've had to take on most of the work myself and its been a steep learning curve, but only when you get to the top of that curve does the potential to really save money start to kick in. For me its been about 3 -4 years to start to reap the benefit of everything I've learnt. Its often the silly awkward things that can potentially blow your budget (beyond the obvious, roofs, etc), the hidden stuff usually borne out of lazy builders / renovators. Having the ability to address these issues saves you employing a professional to fix something that has no visual impact on the house but just bugs the hell out of you.

 

[Itchinfilth]

Factor in how much spare time you have also. Working on the house during holidays, before work, after work, at weekends etc is a commitment.
With all the above being said, it can be a rewarding experience and in my view living in a period property is a joy and priveledge.
Despite the pressures it puts on domestic life and the stress I wouldn't change a thing.

 

[Davey79]

Factor in how much spare time you have also. Working on the house during holidays, before work, after work, at weekends etc is a commitment.
With all the above being said, it can be a rewarding experience and in my view living in a period property is a joy and priveledge.
Despite the pressures it puts on domestic life and the stress I wouldn't change a thing.

This is something I've been thinking hard about, we both work extremely long weeks, in high pressured roles, with 5.5 year old twins... They'd be game for getting involved, but I'm not how much the CO would be

 

[Stevers]

I was also working long hours (on contracts that quite reasonably induced anxiety) with a nasty commute, but my wife was (and still is) a full time homemaker. You have to enjoy and look forward to the DIY, and expect any job to take at least twice as long as you estimated. We stuck to our initial budget using trades to move in, but have made hardly any use of professionals since then, and after 28 years I'm only now decorating the last (somewhat problematic) room. It's a life style choice giving a solid link to a property and place, and you need to work out if being tied to somewhere like that is what you'd want for twenty plus years. I live in an area that is interesting and lovely enough for people to come on holiday to, and to me the resulting lifestyle trumps fancy holidays and other time (and money) consuming pastimes, especially as we're tied to our productive veg. and fruit gardens all through the summer.

The alternative is to build relationships with tradesmen that you can trust and will want to work for you when you need them - and that's perfectly reasonable for those who are prepared to work hard enough at their own jobs to afford it!

Eventually, you will need to be able to look back and think to yourselves, I'd do all that again!

 

[Flyfisher]

Eventually, you will need to be able to look back and think to yourselves, I'd do all that again!

I'd certainly do it all again if I could go back in time, ie no regrets at all, but I don't think I'd want to do it all again for a second time !