Fairly Substantial Houses In Bad Conditions

TS7

TS7

TS7

Soldato
Joined
16 Feb 2010
Posts
2,577
Location
East Mids
There's a few houses not far from me, around five minutes, which would probably be worth around 500k - 750k however they are in appalling states. I went past one the other day and it had single glazed windows which were chipping, rooms on one side of the house were empty with random wardrobes in the middle. Other rooms had what appeared to be curtains from around 30 years ago half hanging and half fallen, the front garden is overgrown and in a mess.

The only reason I can think is that these houses may have been passed down through the family and it's now been given to someone who hasn't been as successful and can't run / maintain the house.

There's a few other in the same state not too far by aswell.

Just a bit odd really.
 
Not really that odd, iirc a reasonable percentage of housing in the UK is unoccupied for one reason or another, either due to things like problems tracking down who owns it/an heir, people having bought it and not using it/waiting for it to become so seriously out of repair that they can rebuild*, or because they are owned by a company/organisation who may not know they own them** or don't have a use for them but want the land kept in the company, or even legal disputes involving the owners (for example one of the houses round here was empty for about 5-10 years because the owner bought it from the council at a discount as a tenant, then tried to sell it before the contract he signed said he could. cue legal issues).

I vaguely remember hearing that a lot of councils have housing/building stock that they own, but may have slipped between the cracks when they were selling houses or changing from one system to another and often it doesn't get sorted until there is some query raised.
Or they may own, but don't have the money to renovate and can't let them be used until they've renovated, so they end up getting left to rot.


*IIRC some buildings are "protected" in such a way that you can't just pull them down, can't improve them without permission but can leave them to rot and collapse on their own, thus freeing up land that may be worth much more empty than with a decrepit small outhouse on it.

**If a company buys out another one, or goes bust sometimes the people that end up with the assets may not know quite what they've got.
 
Werewolf said:
Not really that odd, iirc a reasonable percentage of housing in the UK is unoccupied for one reason or another, either due to things like problems tracking down who owns it/an heir, people having bought it and not using it/waiting for it to become so seriously out of repair that they can rebuild*, or because they are owned by a company/organisation who may not know they own them** or don't have a use for them but want the land kept in the company, or even legal disputes involving the owners (for example one of the houses round here was empty for about 5-10 years because the owner bought it from the council at a discount as a tenant, then tried to sell it before the contract he signed said he could. cue legal issues).

I vaguely remember hearing that a lot of councils have housing/building stock that they own, but may have slipped between the cracks when they were selling houses or changing from one system to another and often it doesn't get sorted until there is some query raised.
Or they may own, but don't have the money to renovate and can't let them be used until they've renovated, so they end up getting left to rot.


*IIRC some buildings are "protected" in such a way that you can't just pull them down, can't improve them without permission but can leave them to rot and collapse on their own, thus freeing up land that may be worth much more empty than with a decrepit small outhouse on it.

**If a company buys out another one, or goes bust sometimes the people that end up with the assets may not know quite what they've got.
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Ah I see. Thanks for reply.
 
Andelusion said:
what's it got to do with you?
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Because he's interested?


It's a shame when grand houses are left to rot, there was a large house near me which used to be owned by a company afaik, ,it sat boarded up & unoccupied for about a decade until a few years ago when tit was sold to developers who turned it into a pub
 
For those that know Liverpool we have a similar set of abandoned houses on Edge Lane. They're huge properties, and it's a pity they're left to that state and are soon to be knocked down, no doubt to be replaced by 2x4 apartments..
 
When you consider how much it costs to get roof/fascia/gutters, windows/door fixed and that is just the outside its easy to see how homes become old and tired. Private homes take a lot of money to keep up to standard.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Buy, do up a bedroom and living room, move in, slowly fix garden do up rest, buy another one, sell the first one for major profit, rinse repeat.
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The OP is 18 so I doubt he has the funds to buy houses in the £500k-£750k range. Even if he is able to knock the price down a bit that's still a hefty deposit plus stamp duty to find from somewhere.

Anyway moving back to the OP, you gotta remember that the bigger the property, the harder it is to maintain, especially if you are lazy. If people are not into gardening then the garden can easily become overgrown. As for the windows, well my dad's house is singleglazed with chipping paint in places, sash windows are 'period features' and he's never really liked the idea of doubleglazing for some reason.

As you say inheritance could easily play a part in this, in fact part of the trouble with large, expensive houses is that they can often push you over the IHT threshold. Say one of those houses was valued in the middle of your quoted range (£625k), that would mean a £120k inheritance tax bill (assuming there's no widowing or whatever) even before any other items are taken into account.
 
Werewolf said:
*IIRC some buildings are "protected" in such a way that you can't just pull them down, can't improve them without permission but can leave them to rot and collapse on their own, thus freeing up land that may be worth much more empty than with a decrepit small outhouse on it.
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It depends on the listing but for many protected buildings its not that any renovation is prohibited 100% is that it has to be done in the initial style and period of the building and costs to much. For instance in old town here in Edinburgh even many of the bog standard terraces have a facade retention protection on them, so you have to replace the old rattly 'I hate heat' sash windows with exact replicas, and your stuck with expensive wooden ones and single glazing even though plastic double glazed ones in the original style would look pretty much identical, a fraction of the price and last just as long. Some restrictions aren't nearly as harsh though.

For many buildings like this it just costs way to much to do up and compared the alternatives that smaller developers can do with refurbishing an unprotected house with cheap modern mass produced fitting, the only people that can do them up tend to be the older class of existing residents who have the money and have no intention of moving.
 
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