Last nights Million Pound Property Experiment

[Mike Mitchell]

Well, I don't know that they HAVEN'T failed! I mean, I don't quite see how this series so far can be seen as a SUCCESS, and the opposite of success is, well, you know what it is. To me now, in hindsight, it looks increasingly like the product of a hip, flip, cool, young production team Somewhere In London, which cooked up the idea to have two excitable young things (in Colin's case, at least) swan their way through seven properties and Make A Million. Consider: Two luvvies, one down-to-earth builder bloke; the magic number seven (not 23, 18, or, more realistically, 100); the even more magic number "one million" (shades of Chris Tarrant here); loads of aggro; fantastic end results in terms of the actual design work; fantastic rolling advertisement for Justin and Colin.

The most interesting stories about this programme would be from the behind-the-scenes planning. A story of how the programme was conceived and made, warts and all, would be far more rivetting than the actual episodes. For example, what was the real reason the builder bloke pulled out? Did he just get sick and tired of the two boys throwing their toys out of the pram? I would have jacked it in after the first one if I were him. Why did the producers wait until the episode in which he pulled out to tell us he was off? (Okay, we were given a brief "taster" in the trailer the previous week.)

As these programmes progress through their allotted hour, one can see the producers' - and scriptwriters' - minds at work. All such programmes comprise deliberate peaks and troughs, the most blatant of which currently is the "No Going Back" series on Channel 4. It is almost laughable how one can predict with uncanny accuracy when the next ad break (on ITV/Five/Channel 4) is coming up, as there will be a sudden downturn in the family's fortunes. And then the ads are over, and, magically, the problem is solved! Everything is once again sweetness and light, and the intrepid family are now marching onward and upward on the sunlit uplands of progress... yada yada yada.

Another 15 minutes and boom! Another calamity, another ad break. And to think that there will be many thousands of viewers all lapping it up and nodding sagely into their cardigans, "How brave, how very, very brave..."

MM

[Mike Mitchell]

They'd probably have to go off and have a good cry. They are far too emotional a pair to be let anywhere near something as technically demanding as modern construction work, building regs and so on. As designers their work looks fantastic, but as builders or renovators I do not think they have a clue. I would have been much more interested in a programme with Nigel showing us how to do a bog-standard renovation without these two flibbertigibbets getting in the way all the time. It was really a programme about two talented drama queens.

MM

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its not illegal. The stamp duty is on the land and the property. Not on 'demountable objects' or indeed furniture. However the revenue takes a dim view of a

500 grand house with 300 grand of fitted carpets and curtain rails. But will accept maybe 10k.

Up till now no one has really made a point of separating the two. Now there is a point, so people will...as much as they can get away with.

Its legal and its only the fact that a stupid law that allows untaxed transactions below 500k and taxes them at full whack at a penny over that makes it a thing to be done.

If OTOH they simply taxed the residue ABOVE 500k at a small percentage, then it wouldn';t be woth the bother of fiddling around with accounting.

Its a stupid tax in its implementation, it reduces the liquidity of the market, and will be repealed as soon as tony and the boys get shoved into the nether darkenss whence they came.

[Lobster]

Well, it was made clear at the outset that any profit they make after paying back the Beeb, with interest, would be going to Children In Need. So it's not as if it's either their own cash they are playing with, or their own pockets they are lining - they are only TV presenters. I don't know what the CGT rules are for this rather unusual scenario; maybe the charity element will provide an exemption?

Have they actually made enough profit yet to worry about CGT anyway? ;-)

I think the issue of avoiding stamp duty is a biggie; I'm sure the dear old IR won't baulk at chasing that up. As someone else has already said, they shot themselves in the foot bigtime by admitting they were massaging the apparent selling price to get below 500K. Quite how or why the producers let that go out on air is a mystery. Bit of an 'oops' methinks.

David

[David W.E. Roberts]

It was really a programme about two talented drama queens.

Surely you mean talentless??

[Angela]

I persoanlly would like to see more of the lady architect they used yesterday, she had some good ideas and I think better taste than those two wallys.

I hope they do an out take show, then we really might find out what happened with the first builder!

Angela

[John Rumm]

they are doing all the houses in parallel, presumbly

have been no summer shots. Damn I was looking forward

This is probably one of the best explanations when you think about it....

The production team would have set up parallel builds in order to bring the show in in a reasonable time frame - and use a solid block of the presenters and productions staffs time. This leaves the problem of needing to predict in advance what the profit from each build will be, in order to set the appropriate financial "entry point" on supposedly subsequent builds.

The moment one of the builds actually returns significantly less profit than anticipated (and this had happened twice big time so far), the whole house of cards falls down, and it becomes impossible to maintain the illusion that the builds were done in strict sequence.

[Chris Oates]

Whatever the finer points of it being legal what they did was completely bogus. The fittings are hired for the program so to sell them they have to be bought - from the alleged profit

[Richard Faulkner]

Its implementation has not changed over the years no matter what government has been in power, so there is no reason to think the Boys in Blue will change it.

The recent change in the law means that people will have to justify the price of the fixtures and fittings at the time of sale, and the revenue will be able to examine the transaction for up to 9 months.

Effectively, the Government have said that they know this is going on, that they are losing revenue because of it, and they are taking steps to recover more money out of it.

[Mike Mitchell]

Not at all. As far as their design work goes I think they have produced some fabulous looking properties from these sows ears they bought.

MM

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its not teh fittings they were 'buying', its the fixtures. E.g. I could sell my house as a house, and charge for the Aga, the boiler, the fitted carpets, etc. etc.

[The Natural Philosopher]

In fact essentially you are correct.

Except they think of it as a single question 'will this make entertaining television?'

What is interesting about a guiy who spends all evening first at teh refeiernce library and on teh 'net checking thungs up, manages to identify a decent l;awyer, talks to all teh builders first, and in short approaches it as one would any other major project?

Nothing. Its about as interesting as going to an evening out with the chartered accountants society. (Which I have domne, in fact. The high spot was surreptitious placing of bets on the length of the speech by the chairman. My accountant won with a mind numbing bet of 45 minutes. He took 47).

Its all part of teh general celebratin of utter incompetence that has hallmarked teh media and the education ssytem and teh government every since Phony Tony came to power.

Its acleed 'empowerment' - making you feel that even you couldn't be as big a d*****ad as the bloke on the telly.

[N. Thornton]

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

Regards, NT

[PoP]

When Labour came to power in 1997 they made a big statement about how the Tories had increased tax 62 times over their 18 year tenure, and listed them all. Many people who had seen Labour in power in the 70's were no longer around, and many who were not of voting age back then did not have the experience either.

If the Tories ever regain the wish to get into power there's an open goal waiting for them to score in returning this particular favour about the number of tax rises.

PoP

[Lobster]

they are doing all the houses in parallel, presumbly

have been no summer shots. Damn I was looking forward

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.

It's also a bit puzzling about the departure of Nigel the Property Developer. If the builds were in parallel, you'd expect him to have been involved in all of them, wouldn't you; however he left after build 3 or 4 in the sequence. My guess is he was only contracted to do the small houses, and that the departure was planned all along, and nothing to do with the primadonna antics of the boys.

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?

David

[Lobster]

Course they have! - it's been going on for ages on a smaller scale (ie

10-fold) with the 50K stamp duty threshold.

David

[Ed Sirett]

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.

[No-one]

Watching the show made me think that apart from a fireplace and the paint in one room, the rest of the design was hers. IIRC, the wallies even said they hired an architect because this size of project was way above their league.

Probably left due to "artistic" differences. i.e. he had to be stopped from physically attacking the wallies by the production crew.

Personally, I just loved the Harrogate house where they argued that they had measured the garage and it was big enough for a car :-))

As others have said, the series has depended on fresh (large) injections of capital.

[John Rumm]

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 ;-)

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...

[John Rumm]

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