It is hard to be certain, but I'd say that the bloke's assertion that they had had an offer of 500k was a simple lie. Surely no-one was surprised when it turned out they had "turned this offer down".
One reason I draw this conclusion is that we have already seen on the "Justine and Colleen Million Pound Property Experiment" that there is a stamp duty discontinuity in pricing around there. If the blustering oaf had claimed to have had an offer at "a penny under 500k" it would have been more plausible, but as he was keeping all the figures in his head maybe that 1p got lost in the wide open spaces in there. This issue means they are also insane to hold out for higher offer as the next price range is around 575k.
I was intrigued by the nasal strangulated voice of the red-haired harridan - was she English ?
Apparently she has her own property development company..... Although I did wonder last night how much she's getting paid for Property Ladder and how much she makes from the property co. Maybe she has plebs to do the work for her and gets both incomes.....
He was a bit taken aback, though, when, having claimed he couldn't actually say offhand what the total spend was, Sarah piped up with "£129,000", which proved to be right on the button, give or take a couple of hundred quid. I also had the feeling that there was an increasingly sarcastic tone underlying Sarah's comments as the programme progressed, as if to say, if these wankers are not going to listen, then at least the viewers will be left in no doubt as to their status in the five-knuckle shuffle department.
Of course she wasn't! Yet another brash, arrogant know-it-all from across the pond. Dontcha jus' love 'em to bits!
I loved the way they casually said they'd had a half million quid offer and then said they were holding out for more. I have a sneaking suspicion they made the offer up to avoid looking silly.
Oh, yes. Saw some of that and found it too depressing.
Everyone thinks its easy running a business. I've run three. Its a total bitch. Everyone thinks making a profit is just about spending money and having a decent end result. It isn't. You are dealing with two large numbers - cost and return. They are always close together - never more than a few percent apart. Profit consists in tuning the cost down below the return.
A veruy old acquaintance of mine bought a computer parts distributin business from someone years ago. The seller remarked that what he wanted to do was 'something with computers' but what he ended up doing ws 'fine tuning the cashflow'
An instinctive appreaciation of cost benefit analysis is the one and only absolute pre-requisite for running a PROFITABLE business.
However, as one of my ex-colleagues remarked, 'you don't need to make money to make money' and proved it by selling his loss making business to someone else at a huge profit, who sold it on to...yes. Worldcom!
No. The world is largely composed of two sorts of people, those that ar tossers, and accept it, and those that are tossers, but think they are actually clever.
Those who are actally disciplined enough, or simply motivated enough to learn from mistakes and refine their businesses towards eventual profit, are few and far between.
After all its always much easier to PRETEND that you are clever, and hope to thereby sucker someone else out of their money.
I have observed that most would-be entrepreneurs are, in teh final analysis, not actually interested in actually making money. They are interested more in "being, and being seen to be, entrepreneurs"
I ermembver vivisly the TV program that featured Clive Sincialr and Alan Sugra. Whilst clive raved on about te technical merits of the 8088 versus the z80, Alan sugar merely remarked that 'he didn't understand all that technical stuff, he just wanted to get a product that worked out to the sort of customers he understood at a price they could afford'
Guess who is still in business...
Good business is essentially boring attention to detail with a sprinkling of vision and luck thrown in.
That is because their motivation is not profit, but the realisation of their own ideas.
It took being penniless in a foreign country with no social services to indicate clearly to me the difference between working for yourself, and working for a customer.
And in many ways its just as much fun to bend your skills towards
meeting someone elses design criteria, as your own.
Mind you, spend enough marketng dollars and you can convince the world that what you wanted to produce is what they wanted to buy. See Microsoft.
When I sold my business, for really not too bad money, it was handed obver to a sarah like person, who reckoned 'she could have done it so much better'
Withing two years it was on the rocks, and within three was sold off, to a firm who has just sold the dregs of what I built to someone else again.
Subsequently I have seen so many apparently sane people go mad once they had their own propjects to run, especially using other poeples money, that I now realise that the appearance of sanity in business and teh ability to actually achieve a profitable result, are not at all the same thing.
I have a friend of SWMBO's family who runs a substantial building and construction firm. He reckons that 50-7% gross margin is good for the trade. He reckons to achieve that is a question of hard nosed project management, and careful design. Inventiveness and artiness has no place.
99% of customers do not want to live in the millenium dome, but well found properties of flexible layout, and bits that work ON WHICH THEY CAN EASILY IMPOSE THIR OWN STYLE such as it is (not, in most cases).
Big spaces with inteseting features like alcoves and dormers, can be adpated to make amazingly nice rooms. You don't need to make them amazingly nice tho. Leave that to teh buyer. Just spend teh minimum to hint at teh exciting possibilities.
Flattering the ego of the potential buyer ' of course its a very FUNCTIONAL space that you could REALLY add character to by...'
A grotty little bathroom into which a decent bath can never be instrted without seriosu structiral modification has limited appeal. Unless yu can find a rich art fart sucker who thinks its the bees knees.
It was remarked by someone deep in our local radio (that I happened to overhear at a pub) that the media is now comprised of career media people, straight out of 'meedyar studdys' who have absolutely no experience of the real world, and are selected solely on the basis of being able to project a false persona to the camera.
Its the same in politics.
The point is not to edcucate, or pass rational comment, merely to entertain and gain ratings and hence advertising revenue.
Or in the case of politicians, to sell the party brand to the electorate. It is not necessary to be able to govern or manage anything in order to become prime minister, apart from the party apparatus, merely be a good sales and marketing type.
Cf Phony Liar.
If only the vast numbers of people who to "polTicks and Meedyar studdys" were being taught that...they might vote somewhat differently.
But these folks seemed totally unconcerned that they had spent double their original "budget". This is not good business practice. In fact, it's pants.
One thing that made me angry recently was a viewer of our family home, which is up for sale. This woman proceeded to catalogue all her 'special needs' for a house makeover - special taps, marble floors.... I'd almost nooded off by the time she came to lapis-lazuli spittoons. She then expected me to reduce the price of the house by the amount all this garbage would cost her, and put in an offer £60,000 below the price I carefully spelled out for her. Quite deaf to anything that contradicted her.
What these property development programmes clearly demonstrate is that it is not easy and you can end up loosing your house. This should be emphasised a lot, as many have naively tried and failed.
If they got the 1/2 million then they did well, but they could have done oh so much better, with much less effort. The buyer will have a great house as all is new.
I disagreed with Beanie in keeping the original layout. One of the selfbuild mags did a slot on a similar terraced house rip-out about 5 years ago, which was not so severe, which I think was in Kew. They made downstairs all one room, put a modern open tread staircase half way down the space parallel to the road. To Maximise bedroom space they put the bathroom in the roof space using Velux windows and a warm roof. I think they opened up the bedrooms to any available roof above to create the impression of space too. They maximised all the available space inside the house, extending out the back too. This would have cost far less than the one last night and had greater and more appealing impact.
It all depends on the area, whether it is worth doing all this to a small terraced house. Last nights e.g., was worth it in the end, as was the Kew one.
They had the advantage of having expert advise available at all time. They could have learnt from others mistakes and made a lot of money a lot more quickly, still had their house and the them and the buyers would have been happy.
The amateurs make themselves look like idiots. Beeny does strongly say where they are doing it wrong and explains why. Though some have overruled her and it has worked.
Those two were in management. How did they do their jobs right with that sort of logic.
What counts is what she is prepared to pay and what you are prepared to accept.
The rest is hot air and fluff.
Ive dne teh same: Looked art a crumbling listed cottage, worked out what would be needed to set it right, subtracted that from market value, and offerd 50 grand less than what it was mortgaged for.
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