Hello.

[Sorin]

Hi everybody,

 

I am new here and I have been looking at houses for the past year. My wife and I are torn between buying a house that is already in good condition and buying one in poor condition and extend&renovate it ourselves.

I will be looking for advice regarding chalet style house extension opinions and members with previous experience in this matter.

[ToughButterCup]

Morning, welcome to BH.

I know less than nothing about Chalet style houses, but a quick site search gave me these results. Might be worth a look?

Ian

[Ferdinand]

I live in one of one type of these - a bungalow conversion done by the previous owner.

 

My comment would be that you need to be *sure* that a chalet style house meets your requirement wrt fabric quality, as they are awkward to do major changes to upstairs and around the roof and windows.

 

That says do the conversion of a wreck yourself,  or get one that you know will meet your needs for a considerable periods with only minor works. Don't mess with Mr Inbetween. If you get a restored or renovated one, make sure it is renovated to modern enough standards that you are happy for the next decade. Compare them to current building regs for example, ask to see heating bills, take heat images and compare it to the similar neighbours, that sort of thing.

It goes without saying that you need to develop a reasonable graps of what the cost of necessary renovations are in blood and treasure.

 

In particular don't pay restored-house money for one that needs major work, but I am sure that is the plan and is easy to say.

 

If you get a chalet style house in Zermatt, we will all come and visit you ? .

 

Ferdinand

Edited April 9, 2020 by Ferdinand

[Sorin]

Thanks for the replies guys,

 

I am not sure that chalet is the best name but I see that this is how these types of houses are advertised as. I uploaded a picture with an example. These are semi-detached houses that originally had a slopping roof and it is very common to square that and create an extra bedroom and a bathroom upstairs. You can easily see in that picture where the extension was added to the house.

To give you a little bit of context, we already have an offer accepted on an extended house like the one in the picture that we like very much. However, since the covid lock down, our vendors told us that they cannot look for a house to move so we are in waiting now. However, this crisis might change things, they might not want to sell anymore, house prices might go down etc. So we were thinking maybe we could buy a cheaper house that is not extended and look around for some builders and architects to get some quotes on how much a job like that would cost. The area were we want to buy is full of this type of houses and I understand from realtors that permission planning won't be an issue.

I am interested if anyone had a similar job done and how much work is involved, ballpark costs and other experiences.