If your solicitor told you not to buy a property, that in their view there were too many 'red flags' with the purchase, would you continue and risk £140k anyway?
You might if you knew it was to bag this beautiful four-bed cottage tucked away on Gower peninsula with a sea view, bursting with potential to renovate and update into a stunning coastal home.
The house certainly captivates Homes Under The Hammer's presenter Martin Robert, with his imagination whirring as what could be done here while wandering around the charming cottage. Even though it is stuck in an interior design state from decades past, he suggests where walls could come down and ensuites could be added.
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But Martin leaves the BBC viewers waiting until the last part of the initial property tour to reveal this home's enthralling and most mesmerising selling point - a stunning sea view.
The cottage went to auction with a guide price of £120,000 and rather surprisingly sold for just £140,000 to local property developer Oliver.
At the cottage, Martin meets Oliver to discover how he feels about securing such a seaside bargain. Martin says: "What a find, I absolutely love this place. Were you surprised by the price because I thought it might go for higher?"
And then Oliver drops the bombshell that he was told not to buy the property and why it might have been such a bargain.
He says: "The legal pack changed right up until the day of the auction so it was a bit of a punt, I think that might have been what scared people off.
"The (seller's) solicitor was changing the legal pack up to the last minute - things didn't get registered, there were different title numbers for different bits of land, the plans were differing from what Land Registry actually said."
Martin is stunned by the scenario that has rarely come up during the 26 series of the popular BBC daytime property programme. He says: "I mean all of that is hyper red flag stuff, isn't it? Obviously what we say to people is, you make sure you have the legal pack, make sure you read it and understand it, and make sure the solicitor has looked over it."
Oliver says: "The solicitor said don't buy it. Regarding the titles, she said you can't guarantee anything apart from the triangle of land that the house is on, and that's it."
Martin is even more stunned: "Your solicitor? Your solicitor said don't buy it? So you went completely against your solicitor's advice?". "Umm, yeah", chuckles Oliver.
Another condition of the purchase in the ever-changing legal pack was that the previous owner had split the land and planning permission had been sought for a bungalow next door and that Oliver must not object to any of the plans.
But the size of the house, the location, the sea view and the potential for profit overcame Oliver's worries and he went ahead with bidding on the auction lot and winning. With a budget of £70,000 and a timescale of four to five months he planned to release the potential this Gower house was hiding.
Seven months pass and the programme returns to see a whitewashed cottage that has undergone a full renovation project according to Oliver, from new windows and doors to damp-proofing, to installing gas at the property to provide heating to adding a combi boiler.
The roof has been replaced and there's also new render that's now sporting a bright white coat of paint, the walls have been insulated internally and every room has a new internal door.
In the front garden there's a new retaining wall which has been back-filled with soil to create a flat expanse looking out to sea. At the back of the house all the paths have been redone, Oliver's team has built retaining walls, adjusted all the drains, levelled off the driveway, added fencing - the list is comprehensive.
Inside, many of the walls have gone and the new external stable door opens into a new open-plan kitchen dining and lounge area with a new oak staircase, flagstone floor and log burner in the retained chimney breast.
Not so aesthetically pleasing but vital, Oliver has had two RSJ beams installed to ensure the structural integrity of this new and sociable open-plan space.
There is still a separate and cosy extra lounge next to the newly created open-plan space with its own fireplace and log burner joined by an absorbing sea view at the window.
The ground floor bathroom is now a shower room providing a home for a new boiler in a new cupboard. Upstairs the layout has also been reworked to create an ensuite for the master bedroom.
Oliver has also decreased the size of one of the bedrooms and by joining it to the adjacent room has created space for a generous bathroom that showcases a freestanding roll-top bath at the window and a separate shower unit.
The project came in at £110,000, around £40,000 over budget, which Oliver puts down to all the work that needed to be done at the site, inside and out, the cost of materials increasing and his desire to create a renovation that was high-end.
The plan is to sell the property so while the building team were transforming this Gower cottage, Oliver's solicitor was also hard at work sorting out and resolving all the legal issues.
Oliver's overall spend is £250,000 but the estate agent values the property at between £375,000 and £400,000. Oliver is obviously keen on the upper figure and if he achieves this will have made a pre-tax profit of a whooping £150,000.
Seems the purchase of the 'red flag' Gower cottage in this instance turned out to be risk worth taking. This story was part of series 26, episode 10 of Homes Under The Hammer which is currently available to view on BBC iPlayer.
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