House 6 - Ovenden
6 - Bought for 55,000 this was a bit of a gamble, first of all it was in an area I was not familiar with - Halifax, and a bit further away than i would generally travel to and from work. (still within my 10 mile search radius on right move) As the saying goes - know your area - clearly I did not know this area - sandwiched between a rock and a hard place - in other words Ovenden and Boothtown - not very smart! even worse than the last one.
Had a house like this been on my doorstep it would have sold for more than double in its original condition. It was not the cheapest round these parts (though still very cheap for what you got but I still paid 5k too much!) I knew it could be a lovely little house done up even with its little quirks and there was room for a small profit. I could get up 1/2 hour earlier and be at work an hour earlier than usual, and work an hour or 2 later to miss the traffic and get it rattled off a lot quicker. Im starting to get familiar with these kind of houses now so getting up to speed.
The deeds
According to the plan on the deeds I was buying the garden only, It all had to be re written with the correct outline including the house - this took 6 months to do at the land registry after I'd got the keys and it held the sale up by a good 6 weeks. It would have taken a lot longer had it not been for my solicitor's persistence.
Another old lady by the name of Mabel lived here along with her disabled husband.
The disabled lift - in recent times had been used as a transportation of the washing from floor to floor.
My first job was to get rid of the lift. I'd been on ebay and seen these lifts sell for a few thousand, and thought this could be a nice little bonus! So i put it on ebay for 0.01p and not one person was interested. I tried phoning round companies in the north who specialise in these type of things and it turns out that the lift is now obsolete and you cant get the parts for it. Best thing i could do was pay someone £150 to take it away.
I thought no chance I'll take it apart myself and get it weighed in at the scrap yard.
Then set about dismantling it - half a day in and getting hardly anywhere it was time to get the angle grinder out. My 4" grinder barely tickled the heavy duty powder coated steel, so it was off to buy a 9" one. I had to get this thing dismantled before the joiner came on Monday to patch the large hole in the ceiling where the lift came down through the floor into the living room. It took me all weekend, fortunately there was a scrap yard just over the road and 3 van loads later it was gone - didn't get a penny for it but i was well and truly glad to see the back of it.
The cellar.
In the particulars it said surface water does flood into the cellar from time to time.
The same weekend of dismantling the lift there was torrential rain and it came up in the cellar about 6 inches then drained away slowly over a few days. I fitted a sump pump in the cellar - a fairly inexpensive simple job just labour intensive with an enormous benefit to the house - the cellar no longer flooded - yes water came up but it went away just as quick, meanwhile i had to try and find out why it flooded in the first place. There was a blocked surface water drain at the front that went under the road and down a hill where the drain was broken and blocked with tree roots. The council actually did a fantastic job of tracing it and fixing it.
Also in the cellar there was a bit of a pong - and it turned out the sewerage pipe which ran along the front of the terrace under the pavement was cracked in 4 places, and seeping through into my cellar. This was the job of the water board who after a lot of keystone cops visits they finally got round to re-lining the whole drain along the terrace.
2 very big jobs done there and worth the council tax and water rates!
While the water board were there I was talking to an engineer and he was telling me about the very high water pressure in the area and advised to get a water pressure regulator valve fitted. what a great idea!
I'm hearing tales more and more about push fittings on pipework blowing out due to fluctuations in water pressure. Needless to say i had one fitted and will probably do so again on many more terraced houses to come.
Without going into too much detail a lot of work was done here on this house - new wiring, central heating, 65% plastering, joinery, etc etc etc still a lot was saved too in all I spent 10k on materials + labour + 6k on all fees (there was a large penalty on the mortgage for ending it early and council tax was 150% because it had been empty for more than 3 years andwas not claimed as my residence).
less my wages a profit of 4.5k .
Once again I paid too much should have stuck with my original offer of 50 - I was in too much of a hurry and the agent was bumping me up, It's very easy to get carried away.
This one was never going to make good money, the only saving grace was that it was a lovely little cottage. I was lucky to come out on top. Oh well as the saying goes - you need to fail in order to succeed - any more duff ones and i've had it!
Before
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| Simon blitzed the overgrown garden |
