Hello! This is my first post on this forum, recommended to me by a relative, and I'm also completely inexperienced at most of this stuff so bear with me!
My partner and I are considering purchasing a new house, with a view to living in it, which is a really good development opportunity and will be fantastic when it's renovated but which needs a lot of work doing to it.
The vendor has had architect's plans drawn up, which look great, and they have obtained planning permission, good until January 2022. The plans include not only some moderate internal modifications to the property but also the addition of a large, single-story extension to the rear and a small two-story extension to the front of the house.
We don't realistically know whether we can actually afford the cost of the renovation and building work, but we have got quite excited about the property so we haven't ruled anything out yet.
I wanted to ask a couple of questions.
Firstly, for people who have no experience of having any kind of building work carried out for them and no contacts in construction or any of the trades that we're likely to need, would you warn us off taking on such a major project?
Secondly, if we were going to go ahead, bearing in mind that we haven't even bought the house yet, how would we proceed? We have the architect's plans but I don't know whether more detailed plans would be required. I presume we'd need a structural engineer to do some work, some kind of surveyor, and so on. What order would we engage people for all the jobs we need? How would we go about getting people like structural engineers and builders in to assess the building and determine likely costs before we've even bought the property? Is that even possible, or would we need to take the plunge, buy it, and then get people in to give us quotes for the work?
Thanks in advance!
