Property Ladder S04E05 2004

[Music] brighton has been booming over the last 10 years and property developers have been having a field day but like many other 90s hot spots things are different now so perhaps it's not the best time to start a career in property development but how could it be a career if you don't make any money yeah no it's a good point [Music] a career in property developing can be rewarding both emotionally and financially but it's difficult getting started in an unstable housing market one wrong move and your first development could also be your last take chris chishlack his sister dot and brother-in-law cliff they've picked brighton for their first development but prices are stagnating the one thing's for sure they won't be able to make any money just by riding the markets so what made you decide to start developing property because we'd already had a house here seven years ago when chris was a student that made money for us without much work having to be done on it are you confident the market down here hasn't reached its pinnacle and might trail off now you've got to be optimistic i mean i'm not going to go into this development thinking house market's going to crash and we're not going to make any money the danger is the bright market has been hyped up over the last few years and it may drop off now i still think brighton has an appeal that many people still seeking to be next to the sea and where do you come in cliff i'm just a i suppose just provide a bit of finance if he wants help he'll shout but i i i don't have the time i don't have you know the international mistakes you get involved too much in the project itself so would you say that this is a brother-sister thing i hope so the deal is that silent partner cliff and sister dot have put up 93 of the money so get 93 of the profit chris puts up seven percent and does all the work developing with family and friends is a great way to get going but it's best to have a proper written agreement so everybody knows where they stand there's still that little bit of self-doubt it's just a bit daunting to think that i've got all my sister's money tied up in this and he should be daunted they've bought a run-down two-bedroom terrace property in hanover in brighton which is going to take a lot to turn around so who lived here before um it's an elderly couple i think they lived there for like 65 years unmodernized houses are a developer's bread and butter because a lot of buyers just can't see through the old-fashioned fixtures or don't want to do the work themselves so you can turn a good profit but only if you paid the right price how much did you buy the house for we bought it for 217 500. right and what what are you planning on spending refurbishing it well we reckoned we budgeted 20 to 25. i didn't want to keep towards the 20 mark right so ideally about 20 000. so that's 237 500 yeah you'd be in that and and what do you hope that you might be able to sell it for we reckon 265 000 would be nice so do you think that's realistic yeah hopefully no it is it is fingers crossed yes we believe that's a reasonable price along this road and so if you do get that figure you're going to make a 27 and a half thousand pound profits hopefully yeah they should be aiming for a 20 return which would be 47.5 000 pounds but these guys are nowhere near and in a stagnating market that's dangerous chris dot and silent partner cliff bought this property for 217 and a half thousand pounds their budget is 20 000 which i don't think will be enough they're hoping to sell for 265 000 but this means breaking the 250 000 pound ceiling price on properties on this road but even if they do they'll earn a 27.5 000 profit which is just eleven and a half percent but the money isn't the only thing they're being over optimistic about chris is planning on rewiring re-plumbing re-plastering decorating inside and out fitting the kitchen and the bathroom all on his own he intends to have it finished on budget in four months this would be a tall order for a seasoned developer so have you done lots of work like this before then not as grand as this i've done bits of renovation i've got two other sisters as well which have um i've helped out during summer holidays so this project at the moment is is really a learning curve yeah i mean this is where i gonna be learning all my mistakes which is great because you're it's learning all the mistakes on that's money exactly i can think of a better way to do it [Music] the key to successful developing is to modernize the layout for the right market but that doesn't mean change for change's sake in fact you should always think carefully about altering the layout because the more you do the longer it takes and the more it costs this property is a prime example it's spread over three floors on the top floor there are two reasonably sized double bedrooms on the ground floor there's a bathroom and a reception room in the basement there's another reception at the front and a kitchen at the back overlooking a small courtyard garden chris plans to make this feel more open plan by removing some of the walls so this is kind of a living floor down here yeah this is the this would be the family living area right this is supposed to be the living room and you've got a kitchen through there this wall here will be removed and it will open up to that back wall there so it just increased the living area yeah i know that'd be great this is a good idea the corridor's a waste of space and opening it up will make the sitting room feel bigger [Music] but upstairs their ideas seem to go a bit awry so what are your plans up here then plan for the house is is to change it from what it's going to be a two bedroom into a four bedroom family home this room is going to have a partition wall along here separating the room into two equal halves which is going to need another doorway cut open in this wall so there'll be three much smaller smaller rooms there'll be three single bedrooms the problem is although dividing the master bedroom does create an extra bedroom all three end up being too small to take a double bed which will certainly limit who'll want to live here this house is gonna be aimed at a young family with a couple of children possibly three on the age of about two to seven um gosh very specific yeah i mean obviously there is scope i mean i'm not going to turn people away if they've got kids who are older than seven so if they're eight that's them i'll think about it but i would let them yeah one thing doc was saying with her teaching is that the kids tend to fight about room size and stuff like that so what we're going to be doing is is make three rooms a very equal floor size so there won't be any arguments between who has the better room so it's gonna be very even house for the children and the parents will have a good size room downstairs so the children got to be under seven and they've got to not argue it is a good idea to know who your market is but this is the first time i've met developers who've only just stopped short of giving them names and more importantly i think they've got the market wrong young families are attracted to properties with decent outside space ideally unsafe quiet roads and near good schools there are other areas of brighton much better suited to this market whereas the people buying here are more likely to be young professionals the smaller houses suit their lifestyle the area is full of funky pubs and is within easy reach of the train links to central london as a young professional market they probably would prefer three good sized bedrooms and i think that having three very small single rooms and one double will quite considerably limit your market in terms of the young professional market and i i wonder if you wouldn't actually make the same amount of money for less for and spend less by refurbishing what you've got making a really nice three-bedroom house with this house it's a case of less is more i'd leave the top floor alone so there are two decent bedrooms on the ground floor i'd refurbish the bathroom and then turn the reception into a third double bedroom and in the basement there will be a reception and kitchen on the money they've got this is the best layout by far they've allowed 5 600 pounds to do the building work 5 000 for the new kitchen bathroom and downstairs lou 1500 pounds for new windows 2000 for a new central heating system [Music] 600 for a fireplace 3200 for redecorating and 500 for the courtyard garden along with a sixteen hundred pound contingency fund that comes to a total of twenty thousand pounds but i can't see the contingency lasting five minutes the budget doesn't include fees mortgage payments or anything for labour if chris can't do all the work himself it's a big development for a novice like chris i only hope he knows what he's doing it got to a stage where i was panicking about how much work had to do and so i thought if i start everything you know it made me feel a bit better and then now it's just sort of chaos chris schlack wants a career as a full-time property developer but he doesn't have the cash so he's using sister dot and brother-in-law cliff's money to finance his first development while girlfriend caroline supports him as long as i've known chris this has been um something that he's always been interested in he's always had a passion for using his hands being creative and he's one of these really annoying people who actually likes to take things apart see how they work and then put them all back together again he's going to need to be good with his hands because this is supposed to be finished in just 16 weeks but one week in the only thing that's happened is that chris and caroline have moved in [Music] it's only dawned on me the quantity of work that i've taken on board and in the time scale that i propose to do the works and it is a daunting prospect of doing all that work in a short space of time and the shuttle isn't the only problem they've bought a two bed terrace property in brighton with dreams of turning it into a four bed family home but their budget's too small the new layout's wrong and the market for this property won't be young families [Music] brighton is a massive pool for young professionals living in london an amazing 40 of buyers are moving here from the capital in fact there are five times more 20-somethings in the seaside city than the national average so chris is mad if he doesn't design the property with this market in mind so you think that by splitting the top room it's more likely to appeal to the family market but i think the top room is definitely going to appeal to family market because it's it will leave um three very evenly sized bedrooms which um will be suited to children basically hey i think it's going to be quite an unsatisfactory family house and and it won't appeal to young professionals either and and i think the danger is is that if it's unsatisfactory as a family house and unsatisfactory as a young professional's house it's kind of not very satisfactory for anyone to make matters worse chris paid too much for his house so he has to smash the 250 000 ceiling price to make a profit but that's not going to be easy there are some great places on the market for much less how much do you think this is worth then chris um from what i've seen and known in the air i mean it's got its own garage um i'm sort of guessing around two seven five it's actually on the market for two four nine nine fifty really and one of the reasons for that is the fact that at two hundred and fifty thousand pounds the stamp duty goes from one percent to three percent and so there is this psychological barrier at 250 000 and it's really hard to make a house sell for just over the 250 level to get over that point you need everything to be absolutely perfect and you can't afford to make any mistakes and i think there's a danger that if you try and appeal to a family market you will be making a mistake and you won't get that premium a day later chris decides to find out what local estate agents think of his idea for a four-bedroom family home i wouldn't probably recommend it um you would end up with two pretty small bedrooms you're probably better keeping it as a spacious three bedroom if you do that you're losing your main bedroom i mean that that first floor room is is going to be one of the most impressive rooms upstairs you're gonna walk into that nice big room and that's what people expect to see right a four bedroom house has got to be a good size the rooms have all got to be good size sure and when you start chopping rooms into half it's sort of false economy because exactly yeah and to get those kind of figures you need to do something outstanding three weeks later i'm hoping he's changed his mind [Music] there is a decision there's gonna be it's gonna stay as a freebie it's gonna remain it's gonna remain so the good news is they've made the right decision the bad news is it's taken three weeks to do it and practically nothing else seems to have been done and as a i mean as the main investor really in this project are you pleased with progress or are you would you prefer it to have moved on faster no no i think we're doing well um he's done a schedule which i am happy about we can see the jobs that are needing to be done in respect of design of the house i'm happy now everything has clicked into the right area i'm i'm happy with the layout and you know now i really do feel that chris's skills will go forward and and you will be able to see progress though just in case that doesn't happen the silent and up till now invisible partner brother-in-law cliff suddenly becomes rather more visible right let's get organized and rather less silent just get rid of all bits that are in the way that's all got to come down get the frame out and take the coating off chris turn around huh play around wall everything yeah but now put it rather than pushing him don't go right to the floor yeah knock that piece of wood out too lazy to cut the last bit i couldn't there's a stud there although chris mayer spent three weeks preparing his schedule he didn't use any time to get advice from the building inspector now they just have to hope that what they're doing is up to scratch we're waiting for the building rigs guy to um to shut up turn up and just to uh he's just going to oversee that what we're doing complies with current building regulations that we're not doing anything sort of untoward this is an unload bearing wall it's only a partition wall so he shouldn't have any problems um he'll just sort of keep popping around from time to time to make sure the job we're doing just meets all the regulations that are required to meet today's standards basically on a job like this you only have to give building control 48 hours notice before starting work but i'd always recommend talking things through before getting anywhere near your hammer because they can make you put it all back chris didn't and he's busy removing the basement walls so no surprise that when the building inspector does pay them a visit he's not happy with what they've done you've got a um another wall directly above it so it's supporting the weight of that wall this is not touching the floor yeah i can't speak for the way it was originally constructed i think if you speak to engineers they say that even if it wasn't designed as a load-bearing wall they do become load-bearing over time the inspector is worried that the ceiling should have been supported before the basement wall came down and to make matters worse removing these walls has created a fire hazard because there's nothing to stop smoke and fire traveling up the stairs leaving no safe escape from the rooms above so they either have to put back the basement wall or put a fire door on the ground floor at the top of the stairs if we do if we do put a fire door on the corridor upstairs would it then be possible to have open plan down here as originally intended you've got that fire no it was i was a bit gutted um it would have been nice for him to say yeah it's all fine carry on as as you were going to but you know things are never as straightforward as you want them to be although you have to admire putting a brave face on it this mistake could easily have been avoided if only chris had been better prepared later that day they decide the fire door is going in on the ground floor which will cause more problems it won't be that bad i think this would be the best options it allows me to open up the wall next to the stairs into the kitchen so you're walking down and as you're walking down you're looking into the kitchen and make the kitchen feel a lot bigger and area as well putting the fire door at the top of the stairs means that chris can get rid of the basement corridor but here's the snag most buyers make a decision almost the instant they enter the house and i think putting a solid fire door on the ground floor will spoil their first impressions [Music] but there is an easy solution it's really clever here is this this is a fire door at the top of the stairs but it's glazed so you have this wonderful view out of it although this is a more expensive option i think it would be money well spent people make up their minds within the first 10 to 15 seconds of walking through the front door whether they're going to actually buy the property and so i think it's a shame the first thing they see will be quite an enclosed hallway rather than a lovely open hallway and a view out of the window the way i plan to build it is that it will just look so like it's meant to be there it will just all the doors will match and it hopefully won't sort of stand out and it'd be quite you know all there's another doors behind there hopefully effect as opposed to oh that just looks like a really cramped enclosed um hallway yeah it would be a shame if it does feel like a quantum closed hallway and there is a danger it'll look like it's turned into two flats getting the hall right is crucial so overlook it at your peril halls are worth money properties with halls are worth more than those without so you must maximize the effect and if you think that the price per square foot in brighton is the third highest in the country as a developer you can't afford to waste any space every inch should be thought out and planned to make sure that those first 15 seconds count a day later a decision has been made i can't really justify spending another two uh 375 pounds when the budget is so tight as it is anyway so as far as i'm concerned i'm going to stick with the dog standard fire door and if it turns out that people don't like it then i'll possibly then look into replacing the glass one i agree he needs to be conscious of every penny he spends but that means making sure he spent it in the right places and the hall is one of those getting this wrong will put buyers off and no sale means no profit it's now one month into a four month development and although the scaffolding's gone up and the basement walls come down not much else seems to have happened [Music] though chris hasn't been idle he's thrown out the schedule he devised over the first three weeks of the job and has come up with a new master plan i've drawn up a to-do list per room um which each room is sort of listed out with what jobs are required and it's going to be a case of going through them just ticking off the jobs as when they're done so it's not so much a schedule anymore it's just a big job list of what to do you can't do a development of this size without having a schedule because it's crucial to do the right jobs in the right order i think chris might be spending too much time preparing his job lists and not enough time actually doing them then when he finally does get going he starts more and more jobs but never seems to get around to finishing them i've just got to get stuff done so i might just do this wiring and focus my attention on that at the moment obviously i'm wide sup wrong [Music] that's too runny removing the wall down here i've started that's not being completely finished yet i mean i need to put new doorways to comply with fire eggs upstairs the whole pretty much the entire upstairs has been started but none of that has been finished so the bathroom hasn't been installed yet this version hasn't been decorated there's preliminary electrics but the electrics aren't finished the heating has not been done yet [Music] this job's beginning to piss me off at the moment nine weeks in with nothing finished i've come back to see whether there's anything i can do to help him focus you've still got a lot to do on this project haven't you yeah i mean every room has been hit and nothing's really been completed yet which is um one thing i've never ever done again i think i got to a stage where i was panicking about how much work had to do and so i thought if i start everything you know it made me feel a bit better and then now it's just sort of chaos the key is to have a realistic schedule which you can actually cope with chris didn't but now he really needs to grab hold of this development if he ever wants it finished there's no point in writing a shed and just shoehorning all the jobs in and thinking well that look that would be good and not sticking to it on day one but then the reason why he's been dragging his heels suddenly becomes crystal clear to do big jobs and knowing that it's gonna make living here uncomfortable you sort of well i'll do it you know i'll do it tomorrow you know because i've got other stuff to do today and it's sort of just pushing it back a little bit to try and avoid disturbance in our lives but as i say now i've got such a short time until the completion date i've just got to you know lock ourselves in one room we'll have one room to live in basically and the house has just got to get blitzed to save money chris and his girlfriend caroline have been living on site i think this has really slowed things down and i'm not the only one who's worried show me what you've been doing a couple of weeks in big brother-in-law cliff has come back to check on his investment so you've just been just looking at holes and running cables when you ever see you done uh saturday so you've done lots of thinking a lot of plasterers don't we your walls in here to plaster as well the wall's good enough um i have to double check the plaster about that so you've got a lot of work ahead of you yeah that's right decorating i've been away for a couple of weeks and i've come back i certainly would like to see more done inside we've got a busy morning yes right okay i think what's important perhaps going forward is that you know i just spent a little bit of time making sure that he's actually sticking to his timetable um i can't say that i'm upset with the slip in time but i think it's fair to say that i'll watch a bit closer the next two or three weeks and make sure it doesn't carry on and that he does try and make ups on the ground [Music] and with cliff back on site work on the property really begins the kitchen's going to be um in a bit of a bit of a raw state for three or four weeks it's not a big chaotic scene luckily it's only me and caroline living here and as long as we've got sort of running water a fridge and a cooker it's you know that's a kitchen believe that and you'll believe anything i'll tell you what i'm glad this isn't my kitchen uh you're going to eat them here for a couple of weeks so just remind me again what we do between now and the new kitchen it was working got cooking i think at the moment there's no real um there's no area in the house that can be used in safari they're still working on the basement level um which comprises the kitchen and the lounge our bedroom is currently sealed and the hallway which goes to other rooms as you can see is pretty much blocked i suppose the best way to describe it is like you know you see the cartoon there's a sort of black cloud over your head wherever you run it just sort of follows you it's sort of a bit like this in this house chris cheschlack wants to make property developing his full-time career and he's due to finish his first development in three weeks time but he isn't even close he's started jobs in almost every room including a bit of rewiring re-plastering even a porch but despite starting the development with an impressive looking schedule he's fallen further and further behind by now you you've sealed the brickwork the new loft hatching ladder and made good the incidents don't just skip that yeah right and uh and on the first floor you've stripped the walls coving cladding and carpet except you haven't no i don't have to stick to this religiously it's more of a game plan type thing to final goal but it's not like if i don't get this done by the end of this week i then start the next one with this half finished you know everything can just sort of push on slowly and it should be okay but instead of finishing off what he started chris has decided it's a good time to learn another new skill plumbing doesn't faze me at all i'm quite maybe naively confident about that i'd allow myself a week to lay the new system this is mad even a professional would have trouble removing the old central heating system fitting a new one and installing a new bathroom in seven days but then chris has a secret weapon i'm using a simple sort of plastic push lock like push locking system so it should be fairly straightforward even then progress is slow [Music] a week later the plumbers arrive expecting to just have to fit the boiler when we arrived he was probably around 40 to 50 percent ready on the heating side plum inside he wouldn't hadn't even started that end of it taking on a development of this size and expecting to do all the work on his own always was a tall order kevin the plumbers come up with a solution that should get him at least some way back on track though obviously not for free alfred helped him yesterday because he was getting himself in such a bottle that we thought if i get this first fix for him then he can start getting things into position because i mean it's just one complete mess at the moment um got four plumbers in and uh two of them are installing the new um boiler in downstairs and there's another two um who are starting on the bathroom upstairs which wasn't originally the plan not that i don't think i couldn't be able to do it but it would have taken probably you know uh i wouldn't like to know how long it would take to do but having plumbers here you know exactly how to do it is going to make things um really quick there is a cost implication um with bringing the other plumbers i'm not quite sure what it is yet if chris ever wants this property finished he does need help but it's crazy not knowing what the help's gonna cost so how is your budget going how much have you spent so far budget i'm around um the 12 000 mark at the moment right you have to bear in mind that when you've added on another 12 000 for buying and selling costs and and the legal costs involved with this project you're around 24 000 pounds and considering you've still got to buy the kitchen you've still got to buy the carpets how would you feel if you just just get to break even point you don't actually make any money at all i wouldn't be over the moon but i wouldn't be probably as gutted as you expect i mean i've i mean i've gone into this sort of um for the long haul i want to do this as a career and although but how could it be a career if you don't make any money this is yeah no it's a good point [Music] chris needs to stop treating this like a hobby and get on top of the development if he wants to stand a chance of making any money but he doesn't seem to be in control of what's going on kitchen would be although it's out back at the moment it'll be pumped up again today um it would be temporary running functioning kitchen again unfortunately kevin the plumber knows better this i'm afraid to say chris is your sink for two weeks yay well caroline i think we'll wait and see i might have to uh brief her already before she ain't gonna be she'll be right living in the best organized development can get you down so you can imagine what it's like living here oh no right i heard the kitchen sink had them had a little accident today i mean you know we've still got a sink and a bath upstairs that have running water so i think we're going to be a bit creative on our washing up techniques if only it was that easy a few days later the old wiring system is switched off surprise surprise before the new one is finished the last week or so um the house has sort of become a little bit unusual i didn't want to happen i can't remember life before this it's getting to that point where it was or it still is sort of getting me down you sort of look around and you sort of see how much it has to be done it doesn't mean that you're brushing your teeth next to your washing up and you're washing your face after you've just cleaned the dishes and it's a bit it's not how you choose to live your life shall i say i live in this house i work on this house i sleep in this house all over sea is this house when i'm away from this house everyone asks me about the house i suppose the best way to describe it is like you know you see the cartoon there's a sort of a black cloud over your head wherever you run it just sort of follows you it's sort of a bit like this with this house it's getting hard to get out of bed which sounds funny because i know you know i'm sitting there going i've got to do this this and this and um my body's just saying that it's just not having it i do feel really sorry for caroline and even little for chris but if you're going to live on site then you must be realistic too it's going to take you time to keep it clean cost you money to keep it habitable and remember even if you're the best project manager in town be prepared for the time when there's no hot water no power and have somewhere else to stay it's like the crucial turning point it's still gonna be a struggle but you know i know i'll be able to get through it this property was due to be finished and back on the market by now but that's a long way off oh my god chris had been hoping to do most of the plastering himself stuff really sticks to rotten eggs but to push things forward he's now decided to get a professional to do the work and even that doesn't get off to a flying start originally the plaster was going to come for the whole week but i've had to knock him on the head for for one day so i had to do preparation because i've messed him around he's had to jiggle his diary so he's had to go to another customer tomorrow which means more holdups and more money but chris has a much much bigger problem he needs to smash the ceiling price of 250 000 pounds but the market here has been pretty stagnant ever since he bought the property and the costs on the development keep going up which means the profit's going down and down if he doesn't do something very special he may even lose money it's got to the stage where i don't think he can see the wood for the trees [Music] so i've come to help him find inexpensive ways to finish his development but still give the gloss the young professional market craves in this converted factory even the way it's painted gives the top end feel if you look they here they've got um the different colors that have been used there's a different color behind the kitchen units different colors skirting different color on the walls now it's very neutral but it's not bland i mean they're very subtle the color differences if you look it has a very contemporary feel to it because of it plus the skirting and this is these are this is just standard pieces of four by one and it's cheaper than turned up og skirting in chris's kitchen he plans to fit a beach shaker style affair but i think that will give a cottagey family feel he needs to make sure it's hot right now that means gloss white clean lines simple fittings and an expensive feel regardless of what it actually cost with the tiles there's an easy way of getting cheaper tiles if you measure the floor space you want and the wall space you want and you go to tile warehouses locally they often have end of lines or discontinued stop which they have just the right amount for you and you can really knock them down in price you can get appliances from big discount warehouses where people buy a lot of stock in and then are able to sell it off much cheaper and it's not only the inside that needs the perfect touch to make sure this property smashes the ceiling price because even the smallest outside space can add a premium and that's exactly what he needs the most important thing about your garden is to make it appeal to the young professional market and the most important thing about that is that you can entertain in it and there's certain things that need to be done one is it needs to be low maintenance two you need to be able to not only see it from the house at night to be able to use it at night as well and so therefore lighting's crucial mirrors a good thing to use as well because i personally feel that if you're going to use mirror in a garden you you want to obscure the edges with plants so that you don't actually realize it's a mirror and it just feels like there's another bit of garden sure um but it creates a great illusion of space when the space is really small there are some simple rules to make the most out of it don't fill it with lots of tiny things just because there isn't much room it'll feel cluttered and claustrophobic a few bold plants are far more effective don't use too many different materials keep to about three and i'd recommend gravel pebbles or broken slate they're inexpensive go down quickly look contemporary and any idiot can lay them chris is going his own way and laying more expensive decking it will take longer and costs more but it will look good and at least it's a job he seems to have finished inside it's a different picture from day one this has been a pretty poorly organized development i thought black paint got knocked over went through to the kitchen for a light socket this property should have been back on the market two months ago there's an accident waiting to happen instead chris has started but not finished jobs across the entire house and now it's got to be done in two weeks chris goes into hospital for an operation on his knee and if it isn't finished by then it isn't going to be finished at all he's calling in friends and favors for one final push so what better a time for him to take on yet another job he's never done before so it's one trouble with a kitchen like this is that it doesn't come like with any instructions that you would get with a normal kitchen from those large chain suppliers but um it's all quite fun quite interesting i'm sure i'll work it out i just hope he remembers you have to have a fantastic finish to get away with creating a top-end look on a budget because that's the only way he'll break the ceiling price on this house the pillar here for the doors it just gets in the way of this opening i think for the sake of ease and just getting it done i'm just gonna make a little notch for it to open of course the kitchen was fitted by professional kitchen fitters that's good thank god one cover down eight more to go whilst i wouldn't recommend you rely on family and friends in this case every penny saved is a very good thing because otherwise i think chris is going to be struggling to make any profit at all if after all this i don't get above 250 i will be somewhat gutted chris cheschleck originally wanted to turn this victorian terrace into a four-bedroom family home in the end he turned it into a three-bedroom home for young professionals six months later it's time to find out whether his renovation has been successful has it been fun um i wouldn't say the last week it's been much fun i mean the house needed painting there was so many little jobs needed finishing so i think on saturday end up like 13 people being here [Music] he may have used up all his favors but at last it's all done and it looks great [Music] fortunately chris did change his mind and swap the country-style kitchen for a modern contemporary look and even though he fitted it himself the finish is very good i'm really happy the way it's turned out and yeah it's turned out better than i it's attention to detail on the ground floor i think he's made a mistake fitting a solid fire door that really spoils the look it is a shame because this door here does look like there's another room and actually there's this lovely window letting in lots of likes if it was a glass door i couldn't justify spending the extra money i just think it probably is one area it would have been worth spending the extra money [Music] instead chris spent 400 pounds decking the back garden money i'd have spent on the glass fire door because although it looks nice pebbles would have looked just as good and cost a fraction of the price [Music] chris's original idea was to create a family house with one double and three single bedrooms but this would have been totally wrong the young professional market are far more likely to want better sized rooms like the three doubles chris finally settled on another slip square what a relief you didn't turn this into two bedrooms yeah that would have been a big mistake it would have been awful actually the other great success is the bathroom it's simple stylish and again with a great attention to detail which is exactly what the property needs but even with the great end-of-line bargain of one pound of tile for the bathroom floor modernizing this property hasn't been cheap how much did you end up spending on the building work um grand total is 24 735 pounds [Music] chris's budget started at 18 400 plus the contingency fund but it's a credit to chris that the overspend's not been worse the building work went up from 5 600 pounds to 8 eight hundred and ninety six [Music] chris hadn't allowed anything for paid labor which cost three thousand five hundred and sixty four pounds [Music] the new windows went from 1 500 pounds to 1940. the kitchen and bathroom went up from 5000 to 5540 the garden went from 500 pounds to 713 pounds but chris has also made savings the central heating cost 1464 pounds the decorating went from 3200 to 2618 pounds and he saved 600 pounds by not putting a fireplace in the problem is once you add in the fees mortgage payments and the original purchase price it's cost 255.000 two hundred and thirty five pounds more than the ceiling price on the road would you mind setting it to loss i would mind greatly yeah i've worked my tits off on this place you know and for me to you know to go okay let's lose five grand and let's earn nothing for six months i'll be i'll be gutted i'll be i'll be really upset let's hope then the local agents think it's worth more than it costs strange place to put a door makes it a bit dark like a big sick really it's odd that upstairs is very ordinary and yet down here is very very good it's going to appeal to a young young couple i would think it's actually made the best of what space there is here i do think they also put some creeper or something to go up that wall or painted cream it's always good to have a decent sized main bedroom yes a nice bathroom this certainly adds value the current valuation would be in the range of perhaps 260 to 265 000 pounds i think that price should be 265 000 pounds i think if you said vendor would pay stamp duty this could achieve a 265. i'm actually really impressed that it was valued at 265 000 because brighton is one of four places in the country that has recently dropped in value so to have got that sort of level is down to your detailing your colors the finish that you've executed and you've pulled it off it's really impressive that's the good news the bad news is that by the time you've added the purchase price budget and extra stamp duty if they sell for 265 000 pounds they'll only make a profit of 4 4465 pounds 93 of that goes to dotten cliff who bankrolled the development the rest goes to chris now you're taking seven percent of profit share of this project which actually works out that your earnings during this project are 12 pounds a week 12 pounds a week every week for every week you've worked that's been fun you've enjoyed it maybe it hasn't i haven't made a profit on this property but what i have done is transform a house in six months which i'm really proud of and okay it hasn't made me a lot of money this one no but the next one like will first though they have to sell this one right okay well where's this guy i'm not sure about this door i don't know whether you can get around it with a glass door i think he's actually done wonders to the house i like the double ended bar very luxurious pebbles nice easy maintenance that's right no lawnmower needed overall the touches are very nice the quality of the finishing is really good i think i'd be prepared to spend more than possibly about the 250 thousand pound mark i'd agree with that to the right person you'd probably get 245. probably play 250. but if they sold at that price they'd make a substantial loss but this has been a difficult development from day one you were meant to be in control of the scheduling but it you did my schedule was fantastic sticking to it i wrote really nice schedules really you know do you think you might have wasted quite a lot of time writing these schedules as you didn't stick to them it's like i do obviously need to improve on my you know stick into those schedules would you back another project with chris whether i could give him um another go another house to give up all that money again i'm not quite sure whether it's the right time for us to do that i'm not gonna bust my gut again for 12 hands a week so that's that's stupid i need to make sure that there is good money to be made in there with today's inflated prices it's difficult to find the right property though it is possible to make money developing even in the toughest market but i can't say often enough the key is to make sure there's a real difference between the cost of buying it and doing it up and what you can really get when you sell chris is lucky if he'd stuck with his original plans or the finish hadn't been so good this could have ended up a complete nightmare as it is he's lived in a building site worked day after day for six months and earned 12 pounds a week still it's a profit next week i'm in nottingham with a couple who decide to ignore the experts when we had a surveyors report he said to us i thought it was roughly 50 000. yeah he told us not to touch it he said it was too much work for a first-time investment and we took my notice [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] hello you

Channel: The Forgotten Vault

Views: 14,722

Rating: 4.9636364 out of 5

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Id: tpb4jSG-ttI

Length: 49min 2sec (2942 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020