The annual HSBC Home Improvement Survey 2012

The annual HSBC Home Improvement Survey 2012 says valuation experts continue to cite a loft conversion as the best way to improve a property’s value and that London and the South East remain the region where a loft conversion can add most value.

Recent headlines from the survey are slightly misleading as they don’t take into account overall property values or regional discrpencies.  

Closer inspection of the survey shows that a loft conversion still remains value for money particulary in areas where space is at a premium. According to the rather conservative statistics in this survey, a loft conversion can sstill add over £40,000 to your property value in these areas making it still good value for money.

However, for most of our customers in this area  a loft conversion is not simply to add value to a home, it is required to provide much needed space for families who simply can’t afford to move to another house to get that all important extra bedroom.

One of our customers tells it like it is.  “We put the house on the market for £290,000 and set about looking at bigger homes in a similar area,” said Mark Thomson from Surrey. “Much to our surprise, in order to get that all important fourth bedroom we would have had to buy a house between £400 and £450k.   Add to that, the cost and stress of moving and we decided that a fourth bedroom was not worth £100,000.”

“We couldn’t have put it better ourselves Mark!

By Becke Livesey