Property development, finances and tax- help and advice

[98elise]

Saleen836 said:

If the house you are looking at has a guide price of £80k you had best hope there is no one else at the auction to bid on it, too many people have also watched HUTH and have money burning a hole in their pocket and bid way over the odds for property, the guide of £80k will most likely sell for around £100-110k leaving no room for profit if you are not doing any of the work yourself.

Definately.

I've bought and sold at auction, and 20% over the guide is pretty normal. To make a decent profit you need to be doing the work yourself.

To the OP, for your budget what work are you expecting to have done? As a rule of thumb everything costs twice what you first thought was reasonable

[Prohibiting]

New kitchen and bathroom. I was looking online the other day at bathroom suites. You can get a nice modern suite including taps, bath, bath panels and a fancy shower for the bath, fittings, absolutely everything for £700ish max. Surely it would be no more than £2k for a bathroom tradesman to rip out old bathroom, tile and fit new suite?

[Prohibiting]

Well I've just rang the agents, acted very polite and nice to ask how much it went for as the property went to auction on the 13th. They told me that it actually got pulled out and it was sold privately for £80k. Nice price.... Profit definitely to be made there!

Good tactic though... every property you are interested in, ring up beforehand and ask for an immediate private sale and see if they bite.

[Pork]

Prohibiting said:

Well I've just rang the agents, acted very polite and nice to ask how much it went for as the property went to auction on the 13th. They told me that it actually got pulled out and it was sold privately for £80k. Nice price.... Profit definitely to be made there!

Good tactic though... every property you are interested in, ring up beforehand and ask for an immediate private sale and see if they bite.

No brown envelopes were used at any point.

When I did a renovation (bare brick), quite a few of the tradesmen I spoke to had been renovating houses in the past and got fed up of having to give bungs to get a house.