‘We created our dream family home and made a £200,000 profit'

Telegraph

18-04-2025

When Ned Scott and his wife, Alex, started looking around for their first family house, they wanted to invest in something they could add value to – which is not an easy task in today's era of rising building costs.
Back in the early 2000s, TV shows like Property Ladder showed us how easy it was to buy a shabby house, give it a glow up, and flip it for a profit. But high buying costs plus inflation-busting increases in the cost of everything – from paint to plaster – since the pandemic have made matters a lot more tricky.
'It used to be the case that adding value was very easy,' says Ned. 'As long as you were extending you could get your money back, and make a 100pc return. Now it is a very different situation. With the cost of building work you have to be very savvy.'
By choosing their renovation project wisely, avoiding maximising space just for the sake of it, and keeping a tight hold on the purse strings during a five-month build, the couple have managed to parlay their initial total investment of £1.34m into a home worth an estimated £1.55m.
Ned, 39, an architect and director of Foils Architecture, and Alex, 36, brand director for an online retailer, needed a new home to accommodate their growing family – they have a daughter, Sasha, who is four, and last year the family welcomed Magnus, now aged one.
The couple's former home was a fully-renovated flat on the Boundary Estate in Shoreditch, east London, which meant they had some equity built up to help fund their move up the property ladder.
'It was a really lovely flat but it was on the 5th floor with no lift, and no outside space,' says Ned. 'It was quite hard work once Sasha was born.'
The couple wanted to move to south London to be close to family, but were less concerned by the exact postcode than by the type of property they wanted to buy – specifically something with potential to enhance or expand.
'We wanted something we could do work to in an interesting way,' says Ned. 'Interesting was the really key thing. We didn't want to buy a conventional terraced house, because there is a limit to what you can do.'
Breaking the price ceiling
Although Ned's quest for the unusual was driven by a desire to create a unique home, there is also sound financial sense in this strategy. The value of a real one-off property cannot be dictated by the recent sale prices of similar homes in the street, because there aren't any. Price ceilings can therefore be broken.
After inspecting a series of ex-commercial buildings, their search brought them to a detached Victorian former coach house in fashionable Peckham. Formerly the home of an artist, the house's layout was peculiar to say the least – with a kitchen and living room on the ground floor, a studio taking up most of the first floor, plus a bedroom, and a second bedroom space on an open mezzanine above the studio.
'It was very eccentric,' says Ned. 'It also didn't comply with building regulations – the stairs exited through the kitchen which is the most likely place for a fire to start.'
At the start of 2022 the couple sold their flat and paid £1.15m for the circa 1,600 sq ft house.
By happy chance, friends who live nearby were away travelling which meant the Scott family could move into their house while deciding how to reconfigure the property. The outside space consists of a small front garden, which meant that a conventional extension wasn't an option. But Ned believed that by stripping the house back to a shell he could squeeze in a lot more functional space without compromising on style.
The plan he came up with involved making the ground floor into an open plan kitchen and living room, with a spacious utility room to maximise storage and keep clutter out of sight.
Upstairs, the studio's floor was removed and replaced with a new half first floor, creating a full height living room below – but still leaving enough space for two bedrooms and a bathroom. Above this, the old mezzanine and half of the loft was replaced by a brand new second floor with Sasha's bedroom, a study, and a second bathroom.
In total the work added only around 100 sq ft to the property, but it also doubled the number of bedrooms and bathrooms.
Building work always involves risk. But to minimise theirs, Ned and Alex chose a property which was not listed, nor in a conservation area. Although they did need planning permission to add substantial metal gates and a new glass front door – their modest requirements meant that winning consent was straightforward and fast.
They also took the time to walk the estate agent who had sold the house through their plans, to get an idea of what it would be worth once completed. This gave them a useful guide to how much they should reasonably spend on the house, at a time when the cost of renovations has rarely been higher.
Construction costs jumped 15pc to 20pc between 2020 and 2024, according to UK Finance, thanks to the rising cost of steel, timber, and cement, plus supply chain disruptions. The Building Cost Information Service, which monitors the cost of building work in the UK, predicts that building costs will increase by another 17pc between 2024 and 2029, partly thanks to increases to employers' National Insurance contributions and rises to the minimum wage.
By the spring of 2023, Ned and Alex were ready to start work on the five-month build, which ended up costing £190,000.
For that they had the entire innards of the house – barring one supporting wall – removed. Then a steel frame was fitted to support the two new floors which are linked by an open staircase built from birch-faced plywood stained a vibrant cobalt blue.
To keep costs down, Ned project managed the build, keeping a close eye both on the quality of the work and the cost of materials. He avoided impulse buys and shopped around for every item, choosing to take advantage of his builders' 20pc trade discount where he could, and supplying some things himself.
Negotiating directly with suppliers often bore fruit – the smart greenish wall tiles in the entrance hall are from voguish Dutch tile company Pallet. Because the quantities needed were small he asked the company if it might have any surplus boxes lying around and was rewarded with a 50pc discount.
Ned also restrained himself from fancy finishes – the kitchen is from Ikea, upgraded with stainless steel worktops, and he shelved dreams of a sculptural concrete staircase and extra new windows at the back of the property on cost grounds.
'We could also have extended into the back of the loft, and added a big bedroom suite or even two other bedrooms, but we decided not to,' says Ned. 'The house's main downside is that it doesn't have a back garden, and so it didn't make sense to have a five or six bedroom house.'
This abstemious approach has worked. The house has recently been valued at between £1.5m and £1.55m – giving them a profit, on paper, of around £200,000.
Having lived in the former coach house for just over a year Ned is already itching to get started on another project. His long-term plan is to refurbish his way up the property ladder, if he can persuade the family that regular house moves are worthwhile.
That dream will have to be put on hold for a while, because Alex has been offered the chance to work in Berlin for a year. But when they get back to London, Ned plans to start looking around for another quirky property to transform.
'I have never been comfortable with the idea of a forever home, I think change is good,' says Ned. 'It is mostly because I do enjoy doing projects, but it has got to make financial sense too.'