With a bit of luck this will be my penultimate post. I am told that failure to complete after exchange is almost unheard of (one agent I spoke to said it had never happened in her career) and so by this Friday I will have nothing left to blog about. If it does fall through I shall keep the 10% deposit so it won't be all bad news!
This gives me a good opportunity for reflection.
Lessons learned
- Buy for as little as possible and sell for as much as possible. Obvious really but had we not had the foresight to re-negotiate the purchase price early on we would have lost money or broken even at best.
- Ensure that the refurbishment is to a high standard. We did do this but even so surveyors, perhaps because of the current climate, are being incredibly fussy and are marking down valuations. This makes borrowing harder. We had to reduce the agreed price by £1500 over a tiny problem picked up by surveyors that would not have mattered in 2007.
- If your purchasers want a full structural survey be pleased provided you have nothing to hide. Our first abortive purchaser pulled out because his survey (a cheap one) had so many "may be" and "could be" type statements followed by the advice "we recommend a full survey" that the buyer got spooked. A full survey is a good thing.
- Takes loads of pictures all the way through the process and be prepared to show then if required. The photographic evidence of the steel straps proved useful as the purchaser's surveyor wanted to see evidence of what we had done to the wall. This would have been difficult if we had just plastered it over.
- Get guarantees, warranties and certificates for everything and keep them. The solicitors will want them and you will struggle to sell without them. In our case this included, gas, electricity, damp, timber, windows and building control.
- There are several ups and downs in the process. Don't let you highs be too high or your lows be too low. I suffered from both these extremes.
- Make sure you can afford to do it and you are comfortable with the level of borrowing you will have if you house is unsold / unlet for several months. I passed on the first criteria but I became (strictly have become as we haven't completed) uncomfortable about the level of debt.
- Try and ensure your property is of interest to as many possible purchasers as possible. Quirky is not necessarily good. We feel into this trap. It is beautiful house however the height of the stairs means that for many who viewed they could not buy however much they loved the refurbishment. Also make sure that the property is right for the area. In hindsight a detached cottage is not necessarily what people wanted as it is a unique property in the area. Unique isn't always good.
- Get proper insurance for a refurbishment project. It is more expensive but it is crazy to do it on the cheap.
I am sure there is much, much more I should be writing for posterity but that will do for now.
4 comments:
I would add one more thing: make sure that you account for all the costs when working out if something like this is for you. In particular, it has taken a lot of APD's time. Much of it he has enjoyed, but not all, and I am sure that there were evenings and weekends when Mrs APD and the kids would have rather seen more of him. To get a true investment return, you should add up those hours, multiply them by however much you value your time, and add that figure to your costs. 200 hours @ £50 is £10k, for example. You might have a low value of time the first time, because it is new and interesting, but my guess is that if you did it repeatedly most of the jobs would be a chore - getting quotes for skips, arranging insurance, that sort of thing.
Anyway, thanks for sharing it with us.
You are right but I didn't make a note of the time spent.
I think I'll ignore it!!
Nice to read about your experiences and what you have picked up from your endeavours - always nice to try and see things from another perspective in the same industry
Post a Comment