I hope nobody minds but as this is my blog I think I should be allowed to hijack it with an off topic post if I want to!
I am running the London Marathon in April. If you would like to sponsor me (all donations to Asthma UK) I could really do with the support. You can get to my donations page by clicking here or by using the widget on the right hand side of this blog.
Thank you.
Mark (aka APD)
There has been a last minute flurry of activity with some bills I had not anticipated (mainly for materials) but I believe everything is now accounted for. The house is finished and I am led to believe that all the snagging is done.
In the end the total expenditure on this project against budget is show below.
Budget | Actual | Variance (£) | Variance (%) |
£40,677 | £42,123 | £1,446 | 3.55% |
It is clearly disappointing to be over budget at the end of all of this but I am not sure there is much I could have done to have prevented this over spend. I have yet to see the final receipts for all the materials but there is not much I can do about it now. It is certainly the case that much of the variance was caused by legal and professional fees and materials.
So that's it. We move to the final phase of this project – selling it.
As mentioned before, Mrs APD was round at the house yesterday giving it a quick clean before the viewings started. She heard a knock at the door and went to investigate. It was a representative from a rival estate agent who clearly wanted to sell the house. I had assumed that this type of door stepping had long since stopped but it appears it is still alive and well in this part of the country. He appeared very keen to gain entry and has such phrases as:-
"We sold one over the road for more money recently"
We have loads of buyers that would want this"
Can I just take a look inside?"
Would you like us to sell it for you?" and so on .... you get the idea.
Anyway the line that re-enforced his credentials and reminds us all why estate agents are not universally popular was "Are you the cleaner?". Mrs APD is not one to take offence but enjoyed the retorting "No I'm the owner" before closing the door.
No victoria sponge for him.
When it can down to it there is very little snagging in the house and what there is I hope will be sorted out tomorrow (Sunday). To those that are interested here is the full list.
Upstairs
Downstairs
Outside
In addition there is a slight concern we may have a small leak in one of the pipes for the dishwasher but we need to monitor that as it may have already been resolved.
The agent has been in touch to say they have four viewings organised so far. One later today, one tomorrow and then a couple next week.
Mrs APD is dashing round to the house today to have a final whiz round with the hoover and polish the work surfaces etc.
There is still some snagging to attend to but I hope this won't put anyone off.
I have mentioned before in this blog how difficult I have found the process of keeping an eye on the costs. As we have just about reached the end of the refurbishment I now have to try and reconcile it all. This caused me to wake up far earlier than I intended to this morning to review all the figures again.
So how does it all look?
The revised estimate last discussed here was £40,677. I have sent the builder what I believe to be the final reconciliation and having received the final accounts from everybody else involved it now appears that the total expenditure on this project (excluding the cost of money) will be £41,389. An over spend of £712 or 1.75%. This is still subject to minor changes as there are some small additional invoices for materials that I have estimated. I cannot be too upset about this although there is a small part of me that wishes we could have nailed it to the penny.
The main variances were "Legal and Professional" mainly because of the additional cost of insurance and the HIP which I hadn't considered and "House and Garden Clearance" where I had under estimated the number of skips required by some margin! There were other items that turned out to be more expensive such as electrical works but that is because we increased the scope of the job from first estimate by including outside lights, wired smoke alarms and so on. There were some savings to be made as well with the decision not to re-point one of the flank walls, fitting carpets instead of laminate and the price of all of the bathroom furniture helping to keep the over spend down.
The cost of money has been higher than expected. Back in September I estimated this to be £2,959 based on three months @5.49%. It has been nearer four months since we completed so this figure is (which is of course going up every day) is currently £3,329 and has been calculated line by line on when money has actually been spent. This figure will rise by c. £31 per day now for every day the property remains unsold or unrented. This is a sobering though and one to keep focused on.
My daughters have now been round to the house and have announced that we are still the owners of a "Horrible House". Unfortunately they believe that this is the one we live in now rather than the one we are trying to sell.
I don't think they wanted to leave. Got to say, they have a point!
I am told, but I have not seen the evidence with my own eyes, that work has now finished on the house. The electrician and the plumber did their last stint today and all that is left now is for the main builder to move all of his things out and then give the place a thorough clean.
I am not going to be able to visit until late on Thursday at the earliest so I hope I will be able to take a complete and final set of pictures before too long.
The only stress left now is the biggest one of all ...... will it sell?
I am now in possession of two Energy Performance Certificates for the same house. I don't suppose this has happened that often as there cannot be that many houses that have been bought and sold since the introduction of HIPs. I have never really bothered to look at these things in too much detail before but when you have two of them it affords you the opportunity to compare them.
It is difficult to know why the Government (or more particularly the EU) have decided to make these things compulsory. I am not sure they tell you much that you wouldn't already know and they do not impose any type of obligation on the home owner to actually improve things. If they were designed to persuade people to improve efficiency I think they may have failed in their mission.
The certificate measures two things and gives a rating. Energy Efficiency and Environmental Impact. As far as I can work out it gives two measurements for each rating, what you are now and what you could get to or Current and Potential as they describe it. I assume that the Potential rating is what you could do at a reasonable cost. Otherwise you could get a maximum rating by knocking the house down and rebuilding it in an environmentally friendly way. This is clearly not practical.
Anyway to get to the point when the house was first assessed (before we did anything). We achieved the following results.
And after all the work has been done we got this.
I am pleased we have improved (we certainly should have done with the amount spent) but why is there such a discrepancy in the potential figures. Surely a properties potential is it's potential and that should remain the same. The only recommendation we had was "to install low energy efficient light bulbs" which we didn't do as we had some old ones to use up. It rather makes a mockery of the system if the potential figures aren't the same.
The kitchen floor was being installed today and Mrs APD has been told that she failed to order sufficient tiles. This has come as a surprise as we were told what quantity was required but there is little we can do about that now.
Tomorrow morning, Mrs APD is off to order another 4m2 of floor tiles (luckily Topps tiles has then in stock) so the kitchen and cloakroom can be finished off.
We just may be done by the weekend .... but there again.
I confess to some nerves at the moment. Tomorrow is that day the carpets are being fitted. As of 4PM today there was still plenty of painting to be done. Everyone has assured me it will be fine and the carpets can be installed as planned as "there is no further work required that will have any impact on the carpets".
We shall see.
There still seems a lot to do before the carpets go in on Tuesday morning.
Here is an update of inside work still required before then.
Upstairs
Downstairs
Everyone is working flat out today, tomorrow and Monday so I am sure all the areas where the carpets are going will be done but there will be work left in the tiled rooms (hopefully not the bathroom). There is a little more to do outside but the weather has been so poor that there has been no opportunity to paint yet. I am hopeful that we will be finished completely by the end of next week which is still behind schedule.
The good news is that it looks fantastic. I won't publish any more pictures until the carpets are in.
The order for the HIP (Home Information Pack) for those who are not in the know has been ordered.
You can get an estate agent or a solicitor to get one made up for you but one of the best ways is just to organise it yourself. A quick search on-line to find the cheapest offering (they all do the same thing so there is no need to pay more) and you just order it on the website. We have used www.hips4u.com and the turnaround time is quite impressive. They send regular emails keeping you up to date and a login to see how the pack is coming along. Ours should be completed by 16/02/2008 and will cost £174.80 including VAT. I think that is quite good. I was not a fan of HIPs when they first came out but if spending this sort of money assists in speeding up the sale, it is worth every penny.
We shall see what transpires.
One of the constituent parts of a HIP is the efficient report. The survey for this is happening next week. The results of this should be interesting as the house was about the most inefficient building it could possibly have been before we started. We have spent a lot of time, effort and money in insulation so we should get a really good report. I will have a go at publishing both on this blog side by side when we get the new one.
The estate agent who you will know (if you follow this blog) has a daughter in my daughter's class at school went to review the unfinished house today.
We had a chat afterwards about prices and markets and so on and as a result ……… the house is now on the market.
It appears that the trick to marketing a house that isn't quite finished is to put "Awaiting Photograph" then you can get some interest and get people round by which time the work will be done (10 days or so). If you want to see the official details they are here. If you want to see everything else they have to sell you can go to their website here. The website opens with a bit of cheesy talking so if you have your speakers on loud or are in an office you may want to turn mute on first.
It is a big day for this project. I am pleased that the agent feels that the price we are after is realistic and thinks we could get a little more. I am comfortable with the idea of selling below market value (yes I know there is no such thing before you all start) and I am sure that "Meat on the Bone" who has commented earlier on this blog will appreciate the sentiment behind that.
I am sure that the agents website will attract potential buyers but for the benefit of Google and others who might get there though this blog………..
Detached houses for sale Surbiton
Detached houses for Sale Tolworth
I know that search engine optimisation is more complicated than that but it will help!
The snow today brought mixed blessings for the house – most of them causing further delays.
The local schools were closed which means that the plumber and kitchen fitter (both of whom have children at my daughter's school) were pressed into child minding duties and not house building duties. As the school is going to be closed again tomorrow I think we will have the same problem again.
Painting is being delayed because the plaster refused to dry out over the weekend so that has caused some further problems. I hope that painting will resume tomorrow.
The good news is that the electrician was supposed to be at a job some distance away that he couldn't get to because of the snow. As a result he went round to the house (unannounced but as he has keys that was fine) and finished off the electrical work bar connecting the fans and the oven. As a result the new fuse board is in and we have proper lighting in the house for the first time.
I spoke to the builder this evening and while he remains positive I cannot help but think I may have to delay the carpet fitting. I really don't want to but I will have to make a call on that by Thursday or I will be liable to pay for the fitters time anyway.
The deeper the green the more visitors. It is all quite exciting but in truth none of these visitors hung around very long. In total in January I had 406 visits from 108 individuals in 24 countries.
I am sure I have mentioned it before but I also know what words people key into Google (and other search engines) that get them to the blog. Most of them are as you would expect but I imagine that the person who searched for 'Amateur "Shower Head" Insertion' wasn't that interested in property development.
Also – this is my 100th post. There are many (me included) who didn't think I would keep it up. We have all been proved wrong.
