Property Ladder: Profit from Property [Paperback]

I live in North Cumbria and wanted to buy a house in need of work, do the work and sell for a profit. If I had done so before reading "Property Ladder" I think I would have lost money.

This is a well written, well laid out instruction book telling novices like me what to do and what not to do. The mistakes made by case studies from the TV series are essential reading. I found myself about to do exactly the same and personalise a property which would rule out some potential buyers.

The principles of property development are at stake here. Do not buy the book if you are not sure what colour goes with what or how to install a shower cubicle. These subjects are well documented elsewhere and as the reader will discover, making money out of property does not have to involve doing skilled renovations yourself.

"Property Ladder" is not packed full of unnecessary and unhelpful photographs of finished projects or glamorous shots of the author arranging flower displays. Thankfully the book explains, reminds and excites the reader about how to make a profit if only you keep reading this book and stick to the clearly written rules.

The problem with this book and the accompanying tv programme is that it encourages maybe too many people to try their hand at 'developing' property. As another reviewer pointed out, 'developing' is buying land and building on it from scratch - what property ladder is describing is 'property modernisation', nothing more.

There are a lot people out there who know what they are doing, they buy a property for the right price, they know what needs to be done to it for the market sector it is in, and sell the property on for a reasonable profit (note 'reasonable' being about 10% of resale value, dependant on the timescale). The key to all this is in the INITIAL PURCHASE PRICE.

Go to a property auction and for most properties there is always some hopeful who will pay just that little bit too much for a property because he or she thinks there is a killing to be made. That is the problem - too many people want to try this for a living and the net effect is that for those that DO know what they are doing there are far less properties to go around. Net result, a market flooded with amatuerish 'makeover' jobs at inflated prices as people try to recoup what they have unnecessarily spent on their new money making scheme.

The bottom line is - you need to buy sound properties at minimum 25-30 percent below their potential value. By sound properties I mean properties which do not have unseen structural problems, this means you have to know what you are looking at. You then do 5 things:

1. Replace or renew kitchen

2. Replace or renew bathrooms, preferably fully tiled.

3. Replace or renew Fuse board and electric system

4. Replace or renew Heating system

5. repair and repaint everything else including gardens.

(NB 1 and 2 include plumbing)

These books spend far too many column inches on how to 'dress' the property for sale and not enough on how to identify and rectify underlying problems which is where most people fall down and 'go over budget'

I must add to this that (having met her) Sarah Beeny is a very astute and knowledgeable businesswoman who knows her stuff. However please remember that Property ladder is a TV programme which needs ratings - To do this they select the programme applicants that have paid over the odds for problematic properties and either dont know what they are doing or have plans to spend far too much on the modernisation.

What this book should tell you is how not to do it.

This book has been a great help as I have been interested in buying a house and renovating it. This book has helped me decide that I probably do not want to do this at the moment as I think that it would be too difficult for me to fit in around everything else in my life. The author is clear about what your priorities should be as a property developer as she was in the TV series. The advantage this has over the TV series is that it is less voyueristic.and more practical. I would compare it to some good lecture notes from a fantastic lecture