The many benefits of doing nothing rather than doing up

Kirsty Mcluckie saves herself from costly improvements

Nothing, house related, fills me with more dread than having the bright idea to add value to a property with some genius improvement project, only to end up with the reverse effect.

It is one thing to lose money on your house by an act outwith your control. If the ground floor floods or the roof is ripped off by wind, hopefully you can claim the insurance, complete the repairs and move on.

Even damage through accidental stupidity, perhaps blowing up the kitchen or ploughing a ride-on mower through the patio doors, is something that most of us would kick ourselves for but recognise the fact that accidents happen.

I have been circumspect in the face of property market dips that have wiped thousands off the value of my home, through the vagaries of international finance.

But to plan, budget for, execute and build the very home improvement which, instead of adding value, costs you thousands would be soul destroying.

A report published this week by Hitachi Personal Finance has identified the costly renovations you should think twice about, quoting estate agents and those who’ve made expensive mistakes.

Tearing down walls to reduce the number of rooms, particularly bedrooms, is a no-no. A three-bedroomed house is always going to sell for more than a two-bedroomed one, no matter how much natural flow you have created with a sledgehammer.

Another way to knock a few thousand off your house value can be to update it, apparently.

One homeowner quoted in the report found out the hard way: “We had our small house valued last summer and proceeded to work with an interior designer to modernise it. After spending £30,000, we got it revalued, only to discover it’s now worth £30,000 less.”

One wonders what can have gone so catastrophically wrong. How bad can an interior design decision be?

Perhaps the most efficient way to devalue your property, however, is to alter things without the correct certificates.

A homeowner from Bradford described her ill-advised loft conversion in the report. “After months of hard work and thousands of pounds, we learnt that we couldn’t actually class it as a bedroom as we didn’t have the appropriate certification.

“As we needed to sell fairly quickly, we didn’t have the time to rectify the situation, meaning that we were significantly out of pocket.”

All of which is very off-putting, particularly because the day before reading the Hitachi Personal Finance material I had come up with a genius idea about a project to improve the value of our house.

Now that our children are almost grown up, I mused, we could convert the integral garage, adjacent utility room and upstairs studio into a onebedroomed flat.

We could let it out, either as a short-term holiday let or on a longer term basis.

We could even move into it and sell the larger portion when it came time to downsize.

What could possibly go wrong?

Now that I’ve read the horror stories, my enthusiasm is dimmed. Would potential future buyers still see a modern family dwelling in a rural location? Or would they see a recently semidetached house without a garage or a utility room, with the one thing that is likely to wipe the most off the price of a house – noisy neighbours?