A question about how prices and materials supply is?
Mrs_OAB and I are considering either work on our house (extension, full underfloor insulate & replacement of cavity wall insulation, new bathroom, new kitchen, new heating pipes) vs moving house - again, possibly a renovation project.
We saw a compact 1960's 4-bed bungalow at the weekend, which basically hasn't been touched in 20 years and it a total, everything needing doing. I was at £80k easily for roof & verges, doors & windows, heating, wiring, all internal woodwork, insulation everywhere, 2x small bathrooms and 1x small kitchen...no structural issues it seemed.
Having seen the house at the weekend, it has really made us think about actually doing what we are thinking about.
So - what is current supply of materials like? Are prices still much higher? Is now a good time again for finding people, or is there still a shortage of good people? (etc)
Supply of materials is basically ok, except for anything with microchips. Boilers, kitchen appliances etc. are still problematic.
Prices are not quite as high as they were for general building materials, but they have all gone up and stayed up. Lots of things in our sector are having a 10% price increase in Jan we’ve been informed.
Labour is still in a massively short supply. We do Kitchen and Bathroom fitting work with tiling and basic building works and my order book has never been as big. I’ve no new availability for 12months nearly.
ive been putting off windows for 2 years now as prices im seeing suggest there is a labour shortage so they are cherry picking the work.
Look at the costs of insulation - not just kingspan ... its all through the roof.
MY point of ref was a good size extension august 2020 - insulation appears to have doubled.
Sheet timber appears to have come back down , structural timber also - but insulation is still mega bucks
We moved into a new (100yr old) house in April and have put the plans we had for it on hold. Nothing grand, just a 7m x 3.5m single storey extension. Builder wanted £50k (plastered, wired shell) for that and we just didn't feel it was good value for money.
After 7 months we've got used the the smaller house so probably won't bother now.
I'd say work out the costs now - add 50% for contingency - and if the numbers still add up it may be worth going for! 🙂
Exactly Trail_rat - and as ever, the housing market asking price is bearing little resemblance to real world costs of renovation. Saturday's viewing was followed by a phone call from estate agent today - I suggested £80k costs to do up, and was told that I was way over estimating...
Ask estate agent for their indicatice cost to bring property upto acceptable standard.
They won't gave a clue - but ask the question, if only for the comedy value.
