About us
Meet the webmasters
We are Clive & Damaris West, husband and wife and now working on our sixth house. During the time we have been together, we have taken properties and made relatively minor changes to them and sold them on at a reasonable profit.
The knack is all about what to do and what not to do. It is easy to get carried away and spend a fortune which you cannot hope to recover from a buyer. On the other hand, you can listen to the estate agents and do nothing and be stuck with a house you cannot sell - not even for what you paid for it.
The most important thing and something we were keen to get rid of early on is the mortgage. As long as you have a mortgage, no matter how small, you are not your own boss. You need to ask permission for absolutely everything. One house which did still have a mortgage on it and which we wanted to rent out, the building society insisted on being consulted with regard to the rent we were proposing to charge. When questioned, they wanted to ensure the rent was 'adequate'.
What were they saying? Was it that if we couldn't get enough rent, they would reduce the mortgage? No, it wasn't that. Perhaps it was because they thought we might undercharge and they cared about us. No, it wasn't that either. It was basically just nosiness so we wrote 'not relevant' on the form that we had to send them requesting permission to rent out (also crossing out the text 'Request for permission to rent out' and replacing it with 'Advice of intent to rent out').
If you don't do that, they will bog you down with red-tape preventing you from doing anything to the house you have sweated blood to buy. We couldn't wait to pay off the mortgage.
As soon as we were our own agents, we started decorating, putting up shelves, replacing doors and kitchen units and all the other 'little' jobs which make such a difference. The house promptly went up in value by about 30%.
Another year, another house
We rented out the house for a couple of years spending that time repairing another house and making it more 'habitable'. We found ourselves in the fortunate position of virtually having to fight off buyers who not only were attracted to the location but liked what we had done which really wasn't that dramatic.
Several more houses later and we took ourselves abroad to Italy where we are now. We have just bought our biggest house so far - a 350 square metre detached property with 4 ensuite bedrooms that is partially finished. The house sits at the top of a hill overlooking a National Park and in 9 hectares (about 20 acres) of its own land (location, location, location).
The money for this came from the sale of two houses in the UK (opposite each other funnily enough) which we had opened up with some light-coloured decoration, glass-panelled doors, double-glazing and relatively little else but which had produced a return of some 80% over a handful of years. We had made major efforts in the garden of both houses and, in fact, sold one of them to a professional garden photographer.
At the time we were selling those two houses (our last contact with the UK) we bought a delightful semi-detached property in Umbria which was grossly-underpriced mainly because the agent had neglected to promote it. As a result it had lain on his books for some time.
The views from the terrace of that house are absolutely superb; looking out over the mountains and another National Park. In 3 years we increased the price by about 80% again and all we did was some simple decorating, opening up the land a bit, sorting out the drainage and getting some nice floor tiles in the living room. We are using the money from the sale of this property to refurbish the new house (see the picture).
This may come across as boasting but it is no such thing. The point of this is merely to demonstrate what two relatively ordinary people can achieve by just tackling the obvious elements. More information about what to do and what not to do can be found on this site.