N. Thornton wrote:

The Natural Philosopher wrote in message ...


It's about as one finds. Making money out of property development is a
big gamble and a fine balance between being a paste over it cowboy, and
a proper stucturally aware builder.

You have to be autely aware of what adds a perceived premum value to
aproperty, and what is expensive, nice, but doesn't get a potential
purchaser reaching for the cheque book.



Lets make this another thread: just what are the good and bad things
to spend on, in terms of affecting sale price?



Well, here are some bad things:

(i) structural work that the buyers surveyor would never have found the
need for. I.e. encase that dry rot in a steel beam and forget about it :-)

(ii) Style. The trouble with Style is its indvidual taste. Now *unless*
you can find TWO buyers who absolutely LURV the style and are prepared
to bid each other up, most people are going to look at your hand crafted
rough cast concrete kitchen and start calculating how much it is going
to cost to take it out, and get the MFI units in...

(iii) Inappropiate development for the target market. "There was an old
woman who lived in a shoe, she had so many children (because?) she
didn't know what to do...Is she looking for a bijoux purple open plan
dining area, or something more akin to a large prison she can lock the
little buggers away in...likewise a big family washroom and play-room
over garage conversion is stupid on a 1 bedroom house firmly aimed at a
young professional couple with a ferarri and porsche between them..

(iv) Just about anything the buyer thinks they could do better
themselves, and will. The aim is not to spend money doing it for them
and trying to second guess their taste, the aim is spend enough to hint
at how easily they could do it themselves, at their own expense.

(v) Conversely, to do nothing 'Look at that wonderful empty space' is
also a nono. You want to at least put ina resoanble bathroom suite so
that they can, at least, take a bath right aay, even as teh Estate agent
murmurs seductively 'but of cpourse a little money spent here wold
transform this into the sort of bathroom that would have youyr firends
suiciding over, out of sheer jealousy'.

(vi) Being a purist about such things as insulation. Very few buyers
will stick a meter on teh walls and murmur "Ah, a U value of almost 0.7,
that is poor insulation in there. I won't buy this house"..it may well
be that it could use a complete dry-line. Forget it., Just turn up teh
heating, make the house warm and cosy, and tell them the vwalss are
';cavity and we put some insulation in' the fact that it only went in
one wall, and you stopped when teh comnay demanded outrageous amounts to
finish the job, need not be mentioned...

Things that are GOOD to do:

(i) What IS good is to do the things that people find extremely
unpleasant and disruptive to do, that are in fact quite cheap. Like
knocking down a stud wall and rearrange internals. If you are going to
rip the interior out, thene a brand new plumbing and wiring system IS
good, because people look tha the guarantees (not woth the paper of
course) and teh shiny new COMBI-CRAP and think 'well we shouldn't have
to mess with THAT for a while'. Very few will open a cock to see if
inhibitor is in tho. But lots of cheap plastic switches and plugs 'Fully
wired sir, and could easily have brass or chrome fittings added to suit
your intended decor' do help. Unless you are goinhg for a staright out
of 'clssicinteriors' look where your expected buyer is someone who can
be relied upon to have his tatste entirely defined by interior design
magazines, and a chequebook large enough to indulge the fantasies, its
unwise to go beyod the practical.

(ii) Other obvious practical things. Like a decent sized garage, or at
least off-road parking, a place to actually DO things - an office, a
hobby room, a utility room for the washing and so on - and bags of
storage. All these things do have appeal for someone who has progressed
beyond pure styles and is fed up of having the pile of dirty underwear
kicked in the corner of the plain white and bare Feng ****e flavored
bedroom..extra rooms will of course be instantly transformed into
bedrooms by the curuous habit estate agents have of pricing the house on
a per bedroom basis. I calculated that I could actually call this a 6
bedroom house, and a couple of stud walls would easily make it
eight...but in fact its really only used as 4. The other two being an
office and 'playroom' respectively. Abroad they simply quote squre
meters on the implicit understanding that once you move out of the
rental market into home ownership, you are sensible and intelligent
enough to know that ointernl walls can be moved around..

(iv) Obvious things that detract from PERCEIVED value MUST be fixed.
Water dripping through the roof needs to be stopped (but the underlying
rot it has caused, if sufficiently concealed, need not be). Everything
should work - no loo cisterns with coat hangers trailing out the top.
Likewise evidence of maltreatement inappropiate to the target markets
conception of how a house SHOULD be treated, must be removed. I recall
the story of the two lads who had rented a house prior to its sale, and
simply driven two cold chisles into teh 9" prick wall, and laid a
section of scaffolding plank on top for a shelf. Fine in yer 'rustic
period charm, owned by artist' house, but not in an upwardly mobile
bijou teracce-ette trying depseratly to forget its working class origins...

(iii) Gardens. Ragged unkempt gardens are OUT, as are washing machine
and diddicoy decorated front yards. Get a skip in, and a diger and
dozzer, and scrape the lot flat. Tip in materials to at least look as
though it has a safe play for little Johhny to get dirty in without
risking contamination from spent nuclear fuel rods idly discarded by
BNFL. Never mind thgat its built over an old slag heap oozing cadmium,
or a flood plain lianle to flood at any minute. Just cover over with
soil, decking, paving, slabbing, or indeed anything that disguises the
terrible and grotesque possibility that your upwardly mobile suburban
buyer might chance upon Real Dirt. Or worse still, get it on his car tyres.

Of course if its being advertised in 'country living' its a different
matter. Make sure there is a a place to wash the dog, the horses, the
off roader and several acres of (carefully arranged) Real Dirt that the
owners can occasionally sample in green wellies and barbour, before
reitiring contendedly to the safety of the Patio (NEVER decking, at
worst a raised garden are constructed with teak railways sleepers 'that
my grandad brought back from the Far East when we worked on the railway
as a POW')


I suppose the key elemant in all this, is simply, know your buyer, and
play shamelessly on their aspirations and fears. Your house should rasie
no wrinkle of alarm in their chequebooks, there should, in short, be
NOTHING WRONG WITH IT as far as they can tell. All nasty edges should be
carefully rubbed off, smoothed over and coated with magnolia. That is
stage one.

Next, it must cater for their undyed snobbery. This takes many forms,
from 'period feetchers' to 'a two car garage' or 'rough grazing' But be
careful of going to far. Totally overt attempts to dictate style, rather
than merely hint at it, are expensive, and will appeal only to the
person who does indeed know exactly what they want. The trouble is, they
know exactly what its worth as well. The snob buyer will want to feel
that this is a house they can impose THEIR style upon - never mind that
it has been force fed to them by a hundred makeover programs and glossy
magazines, its still 'their style'...so neither naked, warts and all,
nort overdressed....No, this is time to dress the old tart up a bit - no
over powdered harridan she, but a face lifted demure, shy whore, with
just a hint of fishnet and garter, and a delicate bit of lipstick. No
blatant nudity, more a hint of seduction in her smile...

So that is the buyers fear, uncertainty, and doubt removed - or reversed
and used to discredit alternative properties, and sapirtations of some
magazine lifestyle catered for. There is one other area left to pander
to - GREED. You MUST leave - at least for the stupider younger person -
old people grow wise - some development potential...some hint that they
might be able to add value by their own cunning. Planning permission for
extensions etc may be wortyh more than the value add of actually
building them. Its a mistake to price a house way above the rest of the
street - a colleague of mine with a wife with more apsiration than
sense, bought a listed pile in the middle of a council estate. Its grand
gardens once, were now the resting ground of a huge block of boring
houses and even more tedious inhabitants. He sold it rapidly at a loss.

Ruthless cost benefit analysis is your friend. The 10 grand swimming
pool that no one really wants is out, but adding a utility room to take
all the washing machinery and boiler out of the kitchen, and enabling a
big 'family kitchen' is fashionably desirable. Lord knows why, since
most modern kitchens seem to be employed for little more than boiling
kettles for the pot noodles, despite Jamie Olivers best efforts.

And beware individuality above all esle. It was once remarked teht
'every mother wanst her child at one an teh same time to be the most
outsatnding child in his/her class, but th the same time *completely
normal*'. The innate dichotomy of this aspiration is of course neatly
hidden by the natural parental cognitive dissonance. So it is with
houses. It must be the best house on the block, whilst preserving is
utter in-keepingness with its mates. It should be enough to be the best
family house on the street, without engendering the feeling that it
really doesn't belong there after all....

Above all, it should NEVER be the house that YOU would want. It should
be the house that appeals to the ghastliest nouveau riche idiot that
would ever contemplate moving into the neighborhood.

Take IMM for example. ould you want to live in an urban box, completely
sealed and insulated from the world to the extent that even th eair
coming into the place is carefully treated and pre-warmed to prevent
power loss, full of ghastly eco-lamp fittings, shefing a pale wan light
over its Romm 101 featurelessness? with triople glazed picture windows
gazing out on a featureless landsacep of identical Miltin JKensyian
'living units'? Of couse not, but slap in a combi boiler - arguably the
cheapest and most soulless and least useable form of heating (but
staggeringly efficient, on paper) rip out the fireplaces, the agas and
all the 'peeriud feechers' and transform it into a sterile load of feng
****e and he will be in it fatser than a turd running down its ultra
efficient drainage system...and willing to pay a ridiculous premim for
the snob value of waving his utility bills in everyines face down teh
local themed pub and demonstrarting tnat by careful use of his fart
conservation system, he is actually running in credit with the utility
companies, and thus has offest 0.001% of the extra mortgage value he has
had to borrow to buy the stupid place..

Know your arsehole, is the name of the game. If carpeted loos and an
avocado suite is what he wants, it is your bounden duty to supply them
at the best markup you can rip...'There's nowt so queer as folk', as
they used to say, before it becmae confusingly politically
incorrect...so do your research, and in the words of the most profitable
Hollywood producers.. 'Give da peepul vot dey vant'. Or as modern
marketing would have it, 'vot dey have been brainvashed into thinking
they van't'.

Of course, if its your home you are buying, go and get the best place in
the best location with the worst overall appeareance possible. My house
was on the market for over a year, and was severely reduced in price,
and I still knocked 15% off the asking. I lived in it a while, and
eventually knocked it down. The plot with planning permission was worth
more than I paid for the house, and 7 years of living in it...rent
free..and now, all in all, the total cost of the new is about what its
worth. BUT its more or less exactly what I wanted. Or possibly have been
force fed into thiunking I want ...:-)

Hey. Its a life. Go with the flow, and make money out of the stupid,
because one day they will make money out of ou as well...;-)




Regards, NT

Lobster wrote:

But you do have to wonder why they didn't try to rebrand the series
with a different theme - did they think viewers wouldn't notice the
maths didn't add up or something? Maybe they had too much film in the
can where the 'boys' were referring to the 'experiment' to be able to
eradicate it.

Perhaps they thought the experiment was a better "hook"? Maybe they were
counting on enough of the populace having got used to Gordon Brown style
maths to not notice ;-)

Assuming the builds *were* parallel, and Nigel was meant to be
involved in all of them, I would think the producers would have had
him firmly tied in contractually, as otherwise disappearing midway
through a production shoot like this would have totally destroyed the
illusion of continuity.

Plausible?

It could be they did a couple of batches of parallel work - say the
first 4 houses in one block, then the rest in the next. Although in that
case you would have thought they could have made more of an allowance
for the shortfall...


--
Cheers,

John.

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N. Thornton wrote:

Lets make this another thread: just what are the good and bad things
to spend on, in terms of affecting sale price?

OK done! - see new thread "Good and Bad spends"

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
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| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 12 Dec 2003 17:30:54 -0800, (N. Thornton) wrote:

And me and the Missus sitting there shouting "you ****ing idiots" at
the telly every 10 minutes when another 10 grand of savings is lopped
off the family's savings as the result of another boneheaded decision



Hi.

All TV is staged like this, if not exactly like this. First you watch
the stuff and work out the plot. Then the theme, then what appeal-game
the show is playing, and who watches it. Then you figure out the
others too and then realise that watching these same cycles of rubbish
dressed up as 'exciting tv' is too mind numbing to continue with, and
go get a life.

Indeed. With the Missus being off sick for some of this week she's had
the morning TV on, and all it makes me want to do is pull me brain out
through me ears with a blunt stick!
--
cheers,

witchy/binarydinosaurs

"Ed Sirett" wrote in message n.co.uk...
On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 17:55:12 +0000, N. Thornton wrote:

Lets make this another thread: just what are the good and bad things
to spend on, in terms of affecting sale price?


I will defer to the expertise of Estate Agents in this matter but I'd
reckon on it being the things that people don't want done whilst they live
there.

1) Installing GCH. (not improving it when it's already got it though).
2) Rewiring if the wiring is so bad that a lender would require it.
3) Anything that would stop a lender being happy regardless of weather
needed or not.

Also maybe
4) Removing a dated and/or cheap look to kitchen or bathrooms.
5) Adding a shower even if only an over bath unit. - It is now nearly
impossible to let a flat without a shower in the middling rental market
round here - so I guess the same applies to buying.
6) Replacing the electrical fittings with a consistent and modern style -
cheap but can make a big difference.
7) Nice light fittings.

Good ones. I'd also think ceiling fans: very cheap to put in, a
blessing in summer, and some people know it. Adds a 'show' of extras
too. Thats only my theory though


Regards, NT

On 13 Dec 2003 08:24:53 -0800, (N. Thornton) wrote:

Good ones. I'd also think ceiling fans: very cheap to put in, a
blessing in summer, and some people know it. Adds a 'show' of extras
too. Thats only my theory though

Is that the ceiling fans that look like an aircraft propellor from
WW1?

I'd always imagined those were a waste of money. But possibly only
because I don't have any previous with them!

PoP

PoP wrote:

On 13 Dec 2003 08:24:53 -0800, (N. Thornton) wrote:


Good ones. I'd also think ceiling fans: very cheap to put in, a
blessing in summer, and some people know it. Adds a 'show' of extras
too. Thats only my theory though


Is that the ceiling fans that look like an aircraft propellor from
WW1?

I'd always imagined those were a waste of money. But possibly only
because I don't have any previous with them!



Well, having stayed in a non aircon hotel on the beach in Yucatan, all I
can say is they made it possible to sleep. When the power failed, it wasn't.

They work, particularly in low humidity environments, and a little on
higher humidity.

They aren't a patch on aircon, but they are a lot better than sweet FA.



PoP

PoP wrote in message . ..
On 13 Dec 2003 08:24:53 -0800, (N. Thornton) wrote:

Good ones. I'd also think ceiling fans: very cheap to put in, a
blessing in summer, and some people know it. Adds a 'show' of extras
too. Thats only my theory though

I'd always imagined those were a waste of money. But possibly only
because I don't have any previous with them!

If youre going to spend 20-40 on something for the house, I cant think
of anything that offers better result for your money.

Regards, NT

PoP wrote in message . ..
On 13 Dec 2003 08:24:53 -0800, (N. Thornton) wrote:

Good ones. I'd also think ceiling fans: very cheap to put in, a
blessing in summer, and some people know it. Adds a 'show' of extras
too. Thats only my theory though

Is that the ceiling fans that look like an aircraft propellor from
WW1?

I'd always imagined those were a waste of money. But possibly only
because I don't have any previous with them!

Interestingly, when we let out a property with one of these fitted,
the first thing the letting agent said when she saw it was 'get rid of
it', so I swapped it for a pendant fitting...

David

On 14 Dec 2003 01:01:28 -0800, (N. Thornton) wrote:

PoP wrote in message . ..
On 13 Dec 2003 08:24:53 -0800, (N. Thornton) wrote:

Good ones. I'd also think ceiling fans: very cheap to put in, a
blessing in summer, and some people know it. Adds a 'show' of extras
too. Thats only my theory though

I'd always imagined those were a waste of money. But possibly only
because I don't have any previous with them!

If youre going to spend 20-40 on something for the house, I cant think
of anything that offers better result for your money.

It'd stop me buying the place... Fans are great where mozzies are a
problem, a noisy PITA anywhere else.

Jim.

Jim Ley wrote:

On 14 Dec 2003 01:01:28 -0800, (N. Thornton) wrote:


PoP wrote in message . ..

On 13 Dec 2003 08:24:53 -0800, (N. Thornton) wrote:

Good ones. I'd also think ceiling fans: very cheap to put in, a
blessing in summer, and some people know it. Adds a 'show' of extras
too. Thats only my theory though

I'd always imagined those were a waste of money. But possibly only
because I don't have any previous with them!

If youre going to spend 20-40 on something for the house, I cant think
of anything that offers better result for your money.


It'd stop me buying the place... Fans are great where mozzies are a
problem, a noisy PITA anywhere else.



Slow turning ceiling fans are almost completely silent.


Jim.

Mike Mitchell wrote in message . ..

The Independent reported yesterday that the Inland Revenue is taking a
very keen interest in the £500K sale, plus the ten grand for "fixtures
and fittings".

Interestingly, I noticed that in last night's final 'summing-up'
episode, tey made a big point of saying how they had made sure that
the fixtures and fittings were genuinely worth 10K...

David

On 24 Dec 2003 09:40:17 -0800,
(Lobster) wrote:

Interestingly, I noticed that in last night's final 'summing-up'
episode, tey made a big point of saying how they had made sure that
the fixtures and fittings were genuinely worth 10K...

Perhaps they've been reading these comments and thought, better safe
than sorry!

MM

I would like to see Nigel given 2 years and a wodge of money and see
what he can do. I have no doubt he could make charity more money!

replying to John Rumm, grinfem wrote:
Million Pound Property Experiment: has anyone got a recording of episode 4,
the one for Harrogate? I know it was ages ago but I used to have it to show
to my students and I've lost it!

--
for full context, visit https://www.homeownershub.com/uk-diy...ent-37570-.htm

"grinfem" m wrote in
message ...
replying to John Rumm, grinfem wrote:
Million Pound Property Experiment: has anyone got a recording of episode
4,
the one for Harrogate? I know it was ages ago but I used to have it to
show
to my students and I've lost it!

--
for full context, visit
https://www.homeownershub.com/uk-diy...ent-37570-.htm

It's time you got a more up-to-date video to replace this 13 year old show.
--
Dave W