Shay Lally Houses to Restore
IN OUR BRAND-NEW series, The Big Reno Clinic, experienced quantity surveyor Shay Lally provides answers and solutions to the big (and little, but important) questions you may have about making the most of your home.
This week’s question
“How much does it cost to renovate a house per square metre?”
Shay says:
Establishing the cost of renovating a house on a per m2 basis is only ever for guidance
purposes. It gives homeowners an approximate cost of how much it’ll cost them to renovate their home. The figure that’s calculated using a m2 rate is often referred to as a budget sum.
The current cost to renovating in Dublin is approximately €1,650 per m2 (this figure is nett of any SEAI grants and doesn’t take the vacant/ derelict homes grant into consideration).
An m2 rate will never fully capture all of elements of a renovation project because usually at this stage the person is only thinking about renovating, they have little information to share and the through extent of the project is yet unknown.
Traditionally a budget sum can go up or down by as much as 25%. I’m going to explore some of the reasons why this is the case under the following headings – current condition of the house, remedial works, scope of works and fixtures and fittings.
To help us on our way I’m going to use two neighbours living on the same street in the same house type who plan on renovating their houses at the same time. I’m going to call them Neighbour 1 and Neighbour 2.
The current condition of the house
As we all know some people are very houseproud, take great care of their house and only use tradespeople to do work in their home. Other houses aren’t well kept or may have a lot of badly done DIY.
Neighbour 1 has lived in their house for 25 years and have kept the house in great condition. Anything that was broken was fixed and everything is well maintained. Neighbour 2 recently purchased the house off a landlord who’d rented the house out for the past 20 years. Minimal maintenance and repair work has been done to the house in this time. There’s water damage due to unresolved leaks and plumbing issues and no upgrade works have been done to the house at all in this time.
As a result Neighbour 1’s house will be cheaper to renovate because it’s in better condition and little to no money needs to be spent on correcting old issues.
Remedial works
Remedial works is the term used to describe any work that you need to do to a property to fix or repair underlying issues before you can renovate the house. Subsidence, a leaking roof, dry rot, woodworm and rising dampness are all examples of remedial work.
Neighbour 1’s house has been extensively renovated by the previous owner before they bought it. At this time the roof was replaced, rotten joists were changed out and an old rising dampness issue was rectified. In the past 25 years they’ve had no issue with any of these items because they were all done correctly at the time.
The roof on neighbour 2’s house has been badly repairs and the rising dampness was never properly fixed, plus there’s a little bit of a bounce in a few of the floors and they suspect some of the joists need to be replaced.
In this case, Neighbour 2’s house will cost more to renovate because the roof needs to be replaced, some of the joists need to be changed out and the rising dampness issue needs to be resolved.
The scope of works
This is essentially a list of all the work you’re planning to do to your property.
Both neighbour 1 and 2 plan to demolish the load-bearing wall between their kitchen and dining room. They’re both planning to turn the old window in the dining room into a slider.
However, neighbour 1, along with renovating upstairs, plans to reconfigure the layout up there to accommodate an en-suite. Neighbour 2 is intending to renovate the upstairs but leave the layout the same.
Despite these houses being the same the scope of work differs. As a result Neighbour 1’s renovation will cost more per m2 because their scope of works is more extensive than Neighbour 2’s.
Fixtures and fittings
When it comes to fixtures and fittings we can all lose the run of ourselves and blow the budget.
Let’s pretend Neighbour 1 has really expensive taste but Neighbour 2’s taste is a lot more modest.
Neighbour 1 opts for a bespoke kitchen, timber engineered floors, expensive sanitaryware, and aluclad windows, whereas neighbour 2 choose more modest fixtures and fittings. This will impact and increase the cost per m2 on Neighbour 1’s renovation project.
The verdict
We started with a figure of €1,650 per square metre and I explained that this figure is only ever a starting point and that it can increase or decrease by as much as 25%.
Using Neighbour 1 and 2 we can see the impact the condition of the house, underlying issues, the scope of works and the fixtures and fittings you choose have on the cost of renovating.
My Advice
Follow my tips from last week and get clear on your budget, get an understanding of what condition the house is in and insert any remedial works required into the brief. Set some budgets for how much you’d like to spend on kitchen, sanitaryware, tiles, floors etc. The more fixtures and fittings you choose from the outset the better as it will result in a more accurate cost per square metre. Worth noting during a project there will be a change, a variation or an additional item meaning that the actual cost per square metre will only be known when the project is complete.
(Note: The figure quoted when somebody asks, “how much does it cost to….” is only ever for guidance purposes.
Shay will be back answering your questions next week. Send him your pressing queries on managing a renovation to reno@thejournal.ie