Basement conversion cost Post Reply

[nooze2010]

Hi there,

Does anyone know roughly how much a basement conversion costs for a semi detached Victorian house in Clapham SW4?

And does it had the equivalent to the value of your house?!

Many thanks!

[webfountainwebdesign]

Hi

Costs for a basement conversion vary enormously depending on a long list of variables - square footage, depth of basement, foundations, tanking, rerouting drains etc - so there is no standard cost

Suggest you speak to someone who can give you advice based on your property's individual requirements

Give Philip at Nicholson Renovations a call on 07836 336467 / 020 7381 9149 http://www.nicholsonrenovations.com

[klw]

We've just done our basement and it was very expensive compared to extending our loft and ground floor side return.

There are so many factors which influence price (how big is your existing cellar, how deep you want to go etc etc) I would advise you to get a number of quotes ( they vary hugely) and go with builders who are hugely experienced, as any number of issues can arise with the tanking process and it is vital they get it right or you could have big problems in the future.

I now have a laundry room, family room and downstairs loo, as well as a big storage area. I think if we stay in our house it will be worth it, but it has been a lengthy and expensive process!

[supergirl]

I had a ball park quote about 2 years ago and a basement conversion is about £2000/2500 per sqm. obviously is can go much higher if you dig a lot (get yourself a pool , etc as someone said. But still, 2 years ago the cost of space in battersea was about £7000 per sqm so still worth digging!

you can save a lot of money if you dig under your garden as you dont need so much steel beams (a garden is lighter than a house obviously!). The law says you can dig under your garden for about 1/3 of its size (check the precise numbers). I have seen some fantastic works of basement with no natural lights but state of the art extraction, I have also project managed a few for some of my clients.

The thing is London and particularly Wandsworth is one of the few boroughs that charge a lot for skips, and everything that disrupt the pavements. So for instance if you were living outside of the M25 you could knock off 30-40% of your total quote.

PM if you need more info. PS: I am not selling myself, i dont work on those sort of projects but do know a lot about construction

[nooze2010]

Thank you all v much for these v helpful replies !

[CitySlicker]

Standard victorian terrace in Balham, about £180k all in, (ie inc fit out, planning application, architect, skips etc,); got a laundry room, bathroom, wine cellar (tiny) and decent size double bedroom. It's not cheap and you'll probably just about break even but not much else. We did it for the space rather than to add value. Try Estbury Basements, they're considered reasonable and they partner with Avian for the fitout.

[jonathan @ hamptons]

As webfountainwebdesign rightly says, it really does depend on how deep you go, how big it is and for the fit out what you use the space for.

I recently had my own house done by Estbury who were absolutely fantastic - very polite workmen, clean & tidy and very hardworking. We looked at a few different companies and looked at several of their ongoing jobs and all the owners were complementary about them. We didn't use Avian for the fit out but I've heard good things about them too.

As Supergirl says, allow around £2,000 - £2,500 per sqm as a general rule of thumb but this will very much depend on what you want to use the space for. If you've got a semi detached house in SW4 then this probably irrelevant but do remember that square footage / meterage space in a basement is only valued at about half that for the same space on the ground floor or above.

The space has completely changed our lives as with two children we really do have loads of room for them, and have now reclaimed the grown up space on the ground floor. It's like life before children again...!!!

Good luck,

Jonathan

[Bluebird27]

So I just got a quote from Estbury for a basement, and the quoted me the following:
£2,000 per m2 + VAT for the dig
£1000 per m2 + VAT for the fit out
Thus if you factor VAT in, the price is £3600 per m2 - does that sound right? That means it would cost £360,000 for 1000 square feet, plus your architect, surveyors and license fees - so really your looking in excess of £400,000.
I dont know, just seems to me those rates are very very high. From what Ive read Estbury was supposedly quote reasonable/fair priced for the market, but this quote seems to be on the high end.

What are your thoughts? Please share.

[CitySlicker]

That sounds crazy to me.
I don't know much about square foot costs etc (leave that to the husband) however when we had ours done, Estbury quoted us for a typical BTC house to just go as far as the back of the double reception, about £130k for the build and fit out. We didn't use them in the end as we did a whole house job not just basement. I presume if you were going for a "full basement" ie right back to the end of the kitchen (again assuming we're talking about a typical BTC terrace) then surely you'd be looking at no more than about £250k for the whole thing at best.
Worth trying Qualitas also, they were more expensive than Esbury when they quoted us but certainly less than you've been quoted above.
Sorry can't be of more help.

[Bluebird27]

Hi CitySlicker!

Thanks so much for the reply. We are actually doing a whole house job, and adding a basement as well. And it would be ideal to find someone who can do the whole job. May I ask who you ended up going with, and would you recommend them?

Thanks!

[jonathan @ hamptons]

In fairness I'd say that doesn't seem too unreasonable, depending on what you're having down there. I was speaking to one vendor recently who was working on a figure of about £400,000 to have a 1,000 sqft basement put under his between the commons house. From memory I seem to think that we paid around £1,850 per m2 for the dig alone when we did ours and that was nearly 2 years ago.

As I said before, it's definitely not a cheap option but it can revolutionise your living space and you should save around £100,000 in transaction costs when comparing to moving. You should also factor in the cost of redecorating most of your house afterwards as the bit they don't tell you is that your house will move and so door frames move, cracks appear, tiled floors and bathrooms crack and continue to do so for the next year or so as the house settles.

Give me a call or pop into the office if you want to discuss it further.

Jonathan

[CitySlicker]

Bluebird, I PM'd you

[Bluebird27]

Hi Jonathon,

Thanks for your feedback, that is super helpful! I may just take you up on your offer - which office are you in? The basement extension is really more of an investment for us. We are looking to sell in about 3 years so the main consideration in doing the basement is whether we can achieve a healthy profit margin or not- so it would be really interesting to hear your feedback on that.

Thanks again! x

[jonathan @ hamptons]

No problem, I run the Northcote Road office.

[nicolekirk]

We are in the midst of a major renovation right now - Portaloo in drive and all

Let me know if you want to speak to someone who has transformed things for us so far!

Nicole