wrote in message
oups.com...
Ian_m wrote:

Speaking to an estate agent friend, the only things that add
recoverable
value to houses (and also attract more buyers) are central heating
and
double glazing. Anything else you will not recover your costs in
increased
value of the house.

Your estate agent friend must have been pretty careless when saying
that. The work I'm doing now has been estimated to add 6-8x cost price
onto the house value.

The point that sellers often misunderstand what adds value to a buyer
is true, but the claim that nothing excpt CH and DG add more value than
cost is vapourtruth.

He was basing this on his experience of what people do to try and sell their
houses. Sellers seem to think that anything they add to the house can be
recovered (and more) in the sale price. He has seen people add £25k kitchens
and then try adding £35k to price (and failing, getting only 5k) as not
everybody wants a £25k£35k kitchen. Be careful there are two things working
here, things that increase sale value and things that increase the number of
potential buyers who will look at a property.