Absolutely disgusting mate and a prime example of where legislation goes after the wrong person.
Originally, it was my intention to rent it out, of course it would be wrong if everyone who could afford a second property and buy it to keep it empty, there would be extreme shortage of housing, so I can see their point, so as I said I bought it to earn some rental income as well as running my self employed business.
But things didn't work out as planned, what went wrong was this, imagine you have an old banger, and it is looking rusty and tatty, and it is not worth much more than scrap value, if someone came to you and wanted to borrow that heap for a day or so, you would not hesitate and hand him the keys, but then one day you decide to restore that car to its pristine condition, spending so much money on it, and you practically replace all its rusty panels, puts a new engine, new panels and kill all rusty bits on its chassis, underseal it, replace all brake pipelines, new fuel tank, almost to a point where you literally rebuild that car from scratch, so after having spend so much, you don't now want anyone touching it, let alone allow anyone to borrow it even for 10 minutes!
That is what happened to this property, I bought it in a semi-run down state, but in a otherwise rentable condition, it was sold with a brand new double glazed windows, doors and brand new new carpets, with light yellow paint in each and every room on chipped wall paper! Only thing wrong with it was that both of its bathrooms were in absolute revolting state! The kitchen was not very impressive either, and had a Sine 18 VCW beast of a boiler hung in the middle of a wall with plumbing that made it looked like it was a ship's engine room! So all it needed was some money spent something in order of £2000.00 at the most, to make it into a reasonable and fit for renting to tenants, one corner of the dinning room ceiling below an upstairs bathroom had collapsed due to a water leak.
so I called in a builder to give me a quick estimate, just to refit two bathrooms, new tiles and repair the collapsed ceiling, the builder came in, he was short of work, he needed a new contract, so he talked me into renovating it completely, and enticed me to sign a contract to fully renovate it at a very modest cost, so for a sum of £10,500.00 back in 2002, he would carry out the following work:
1.Strip out all woodchip wall paper in each and every room, corridors, passage and landing, and apply a smooth coat of skim.
2. remove all old ceilings down, some rooms the ceiling did not look too good due to previous roof leaks, so all ceilings throughout the house were gutted out, and new plaster board ceiling screwed on and a coat of skimming layer went on.
3. Remove lose falling plaster on a couple of internal lath constructed (1930s) walls and a layer of insulation and new plaster board wall went in with a new skim!
4. remove all old badly dented and cracked door frames and architraves, and all old skirting boards ripped out, in went brand new timber frames and skirtings.
5. Supply and fit all new coving in every room, all the previous traditional coving was in a bad shape, it was beyond economical restoration.
6.refit both bathrooms with a new toilet pan, sink and steel bath tubs and do all the necessary plumbing. (I would choose and pay for the bathroom suit)
7.Re-tile both bathroom floors with new wall tiles provided by me.
8. gut out old kitchen units and refit new kitchen units, relaid kitchen to new layout, boiler moved to one corner, twice as many units than before, I supplied new units and hob and oven,
9.New boiler (Biasi Riva S24) new CH, ripping out all the old copper pipes and new pipes laid in in proper underfloor duct, not just buried in concrete. Old plumbing was all over the place on the surface of the wall, that looked horrible. I would pay for all material and supply a new boiler.
10. Fit all new doors and handles and locks and knobs.
11. treat all timber work (joists, floor boards etc) for Dry rot. did this when everything was is exposed. carried out by another contractor.
12. Do new wiring and a new 12way consumer unit with RCDs and MCBs.
13. replace all old sockets and switches. with new MK.
Then work started, within weeks the house was fully gutted out, 4 skips loads were hired to dispose off rubbish. The house was gutted out fully and leaving just a skeleton, a lot more came to surface when things were stripped back, so all extra work added to the original quote bringing it to £15,000.
I also wanted him to give me proper invoices, he said he will need to charge me VAT, and I said that is not a problem as I would be able to claim it back, and will pay for VAT, so as the work progressed, he would take £1500 payments each week, and he promised to give me a single VAT invoice when all the work is completed, about 10 weeks later, when I had paid him £15,000, and he still had quite a lot to finish : when he realised that he has already got most of the money except the VAT element, he did a runner.
He still had lots of work to finish :
1. fit the two bathrooms, both upstairs, and downstairs and tile walls and floor
2. fit doors and locks,
3. fit kitchen units and floor tiles, and still to do CH and boiler
4. Fit covings to all the ceilings
He left site and never to be heard from again!
So in the end I had to slowly finish off the rest of the work myself at my own pace, including I found that main sewage drains were blocked and old clay pipes had cracked and some water seeped into the cellar, so I hired Romanian guys looking for work, they completed the rest of it for me, I hired them on a daily wage.
i did all the plumbing and CH pipes laid, hang radiators, finish off , electrical wiring, floor tiling, fitting new kitchen units, covings, and so by the time this house was 90% complete, that is when the LA came after me, and by now I did not want to put tenants in it as the house looked too good for tenants, I feared they screw it all up as most tenants are not emotionally attached to a property that is not their own. So imagine all my hard work I put in could be ruined by bad tenants.
(Gas boiler and gas pipes were carried out by a mate who is gas safe registered engineer) I did the wet parts only
By this time, I had filled half the house with my own stuff, and all walls were painted in brilliant white emulsion, the whole theme was white, house looked breathtakingly like new and fresh. So I no longer wanted to rent it out for fear of being ruined.
so it was your original intention to retain it as an investment property, depriving some other family of a home?
And you have put yourself through all this suffering just to avoid paying Second Home council tax?
NO JOHN, you are inventing things, I was happily paying paying Full Council tax for this what the council classified as LONG TERM EMPTY, and I had been paying 100% Council tax throughout, then they doubled the council tax after about 10 years.
as explained earlier, and taking this aside for now,
I am entitled to exercise my democratic right to choose where I want to live, and buy a second home, and whether I want to rent it out or keep it empty. Choice should be mine, and not dictated to me by authorities by their own failings to meet the demand for more housing. Thank God for now, that there is no rule on when you get to an old age and your partner dies and your children have all settled elsewhere, so you are now living alone in your 3 bedroom house you spent half your life in it, and new rules comes into force to forcefully kick you out of your own house, you owned for nearly half a century, to be forcefully moved out against your will, to a smaller retirement cottage, in order to allow others with larger families to move in yours.
That is not my problem John.
May be there should be legislation against making big families and having more than one or two children, like in China, to solve the housing shortage, our Democracy is not much more different to Chinese doctrine of interfering in one's personal life, same as I was forced to rent out my 2nd home!
Having said this John, I am now renting this property in part as I am also part of the occupier, this gives me full control over it, unlike many landlords, I can walk in when I want, without having to give my tenants any notice, as I occupy two of the rooms, I am renting out 3 rooms, licensed as Additional HMO. to two other household.
and I am still using it as my second home, I can sleep there if I want, i can cook there if i want, and I can use bathroom if I want.
