following on from programmes like sarah beeny's property ladder, has anyone had any experience of doing up properties for profit?
is it a lot harder than made out in the tv series? or does hard work and research pay off?
if you are doing work yourself then is there any problem with regulations for electric or plumbing work? can u do the work and just get a pro to check it after?
i'd like to hear opinions as i'm very interested in getting into it and have the passion to give it a good go...
No money in it now, the market is saturated with people doing the same sort of thing. You will not get a bargain as people can expect certain prices. It is difficult and does take more than 30mins! Do your research first before even thinking you can just buy a house, do it up and make a fortune.
The TV series never seem to take into account that if you take 6 months off work to do up a property there is six months' loss of wages to take out of the 'profit'.
Hard work and research account for f**k all, what you need is some bent bastard who works in or owns an estate agents, who is prepared to rip off sellers by telling them they haven't had any offers, then allowing one offer through (yours) at much less than the asking price, you then pay the est agent a cut and also get a cut price house. Finding an estate agent like this isn't hard - they all do it. If you want to do it the other way (via an auction) expect to buy a shithole in a part of town where no one wants to live - anything else isn't profitable.
You used to be able to do this but it has now been stopped by the NECEIC. You now need to pay a CORGI and a NECEIC registered person to do the plumbing and electrics.
My advice? - don't bother, unless you've already got at least 200K lying around doing nothing and surplus to requirements for at least 5 years.
The only plumbing requirement is that gas work is done by a competent person. Though if it turns out you diy-ed it some buyers may look askance, so doing it 'proper' may be sensible. Rest of it anyone can do, though there are water byelaws and BR to consider.
2.Electrics - now covered under Part P of the BRegs, you may get a suitabley registered person to self certify their work, or you can just put in a Bregs application and get it passed like anything else.
Recently (about a year ago) sold a property and the estate agent (or more likely the other side's solicitor) wanted certificates for gas, electrics and windows, and they had to be CORGI, NECEIC and FENSA respectively.
I think you can make money at it, even now, but without a property boom to offset losses made elsewhere, its very very difficult.
You have to find an unattractive property that can be made attractive at minimal cost, in an area where property is generally at least staying the same sort of value.
THEN you have to know how to get the maximum effect for minimal outlay.
That means knowing good tradespeople and enough about what they do to stop them buggering around.
The short answer is, if you have to ask the question, you probably don't know enough to make it a proposition.
OTOH if you are prepared to make a mess of one, and lose money, chances are you may in time become better and make money. I have always found that you go through three stages in any learning curve..
-Utter chaos, but you stumble through somehow.
- Not bad, but you kick yourself for not having got twenty points or so covered more fully.
- More or less professional, with only two or three major cockups, and at that point you can be relatively pleased with yourself.
These are recent (within the last 12 months) requirements....if the house has DG they want a FENSA cert, if rewired it has to have an NECEIC cert....this may just have been an over-zealous solicitor, and as far as having someone from NECEIC inspecting your work, forget it, this is what I did until about a year back, until NECEIC informed all operatives that issuing certs for work not carried out *personally* is totally out of order and wouldn't be tolerated
Are you saying there is some new requirement in the next 12 months. If so, what ? Are you saying that DIY/check is no longer possible to get DIY works passed for building control ? Sound a bit fishy to me. Simon.
I didn't say anything of the kind, only that on a house sold within the past
12 months, nothing could go forward (salewise) without these certificates.
Yes it's possible, providing you get them to pass it at the time of fitting, it's a bit late a year or two down the line, especially with electrics when he hasn't seen the first fix /cable clips / conduits / etc.
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