The cosmetic flip that made £42k off £18k of work. Three places amateurs blow the budget. Managing builders without losing your mind.
Last month I finished a flip in Bradford. Bought it tired for £82,000. Spent £18,400 on the refurb. Sold it twelve weeks later for £142,500. Net profit after fees, finance, and SDLT: £42,100. The number of people who’ve asked me “how do you do that?” this month is in the dozens. The answer is the same one I’ve given for twenty years: it’s a process, not a flash of inspiration.
The refurb didn’t include any structural work. I didn’t move walls. I didn’t open up the loft. I didn’t add an extension. I painted everything, fitted a basic but well-laid-out kitchen, refreshed the bathroom, ripped up the carpets and put down LVT downstairs and carpet upstairs, cleared the garden, replaced the front door, and re-landscaped the path. That’s it. Cosmetic, predictable, fast. The kind of work three good local builders can quote on within a week.
This issue is the operational deep dive on cosmetic flips. The deal of the month is a fully-costed breakdown of last month’s Bradford flip — line by line. The regulation radar covers what’s actually changing for refurb work (building regs notification thresholds, the EPC point-of-sale rule that’s still being discussed, scaffolding licence fees). The reader question is the one most refurb projects fall over on: my builder is over budget — what now?
Cosmetic flips are reliable. They’re also boring. That’s why they work.
The line-by-line refurb cost: full repaint throughout (£2,400), new kitchen units, worktops, and appliances (£4,800), bathroom refresh including new bath, toilet, basin, tiling (£2,900), LVT flooring downstairs (£2,100), new carpets upstairs (£1,400), modern lighting and sockets (£1,300), front door replacement (£800), garden clear and landscape (£1,500), professional clean and dressing (£600), 5% contingency (£600). Total: £18,400.
The win wasn’t the headline number — it was the absence of nasty surprises. Pre-purchase: full structural survey (no damp, sound roof, no subsidence). Builder briefed with a scope-of-works document that listed every fitting by spec, every paint colour, every flooring product code. Three quotes obtained, mid-range accepted. 25% paid up front, 25% at first floor sign-off, 25% at second floor sign-off, 25% on snagging complete.
BD7 sells refurbished 3-bed terraces at £140,000–£150,000 with 28 days on market. Property listed at £145,000, accepted offer at £142,500 in week 11, completed week 18.
Tom, this is one of the three or four moments where a flip either makes money or doesn’t. The first thing to do is pause work for 48 hours. Not to be difficult, but to take the emotional pressure off and look at the numbers clearly. A panicked “just finish it” conversation usually adds another 10%.
Get a written breakdown of where the £6,200 has gone. Three categories. (1) Genuine surprises (something behind the wall, a discovered structural issue, a council notice): this is real cost, and reasonable to absorb if the scope changed. (2) Scope creep (you asked for a better fitting partway through): also real, also reasonable. (3) Overrun on agreed scope (he underestimated the original quote): NOT reasonable, this is on him.
Most overruns are 60% category 3, which is the conversation builders hate having. Be polite but direct: “I want to finish this project with you. Here’s what I’m willing to pay for vs what I think is on the original quote. Let’s agree the split before either of us does another day’s work.” Most decent builders will split 50/50 on overruns rather than walk off — they want the final payment and the reference.
If the builder won’t engage, calculate what it costs to finish with a replacement. Materials are sunk. Labour to completion is probably 35–45% of remaining scope. Pay the original builder for completed work to date, get final invoices and rights-to-snag in writing, and bring a new team in for finish. Painful but recoverable.
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