Helping Innovate Property (HIP) – Blog, Housing Market News and Articles

In a time when finances may be tighter than ever, moving home may simply not be an option, but developing your home and adding to its value could be. You might be completely fed up with certain aspects of your home, so make a list of these, alongside a list of the things that you do like about your home, and start evaluating what may be involved in changing what you don’t like about your home.

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Searching for a property can be one of the most exciting yet overwhelming times in your life, with numerous different estate agents, auctions, online websites and new property developments, where do you start? Well, firstly, before you even start the search for a property, you’ll need to establish exactly what you’re looking for, as it is easy to get carried away once you start to look. Have a specific criteria in mind, such as three bedrooms, a garage and a large garden, alongside your maximum budget.

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Unfortunately, these days we are all, through necessity, more security conscious then we have ever been. We always lock our doors and our cars, we don’t leave valuables where they can easily be seen and when out and about we are alert to the risk of pickpockets and, as the now depressing familiar announcement goes, we make sure we “keep our personal belongings with us at all times. We are careful when going online and everyone seasoned web surfer knows how to spot a phishing attempt, so we ought to be pretty well equipped to repel attempts at fraud and theft. But how many of us consider whether we are protecting our houses from being stolen?

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Maintaining and caring for a wood floor can bring back its brilliance and increase its life span. Whether you’ve just moved into a new house or have an old floor in need of restoration, buffing a wood floor can revitalise the room, without having to replace the boards themselves.

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According to a new study produced by Halifax, the cheapest floor space within a house is in Northern Ireland’s Londonderry, with the most expensive being in London’s Westminster. The study revealed that for a square metre of property in London, you could be paying, on average, a whopping £7,486, but with homes averaging at just 71 square metres, they are the tiniest in the country.

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Looking around my in-laws’ family home, it was hard to know where to start. Decisions as to whether to keep, throw or consign to storage had to be made on every single treasured item collected over the past forty years.

With three empty bedrooms and an unruly garden on their hands, their decision to downsize made perfect sense. Yet the reality of squeezing the contents of an entire family home into a lovely (but far smaller) bungalow was starting to hit.

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Have you ever considered what would happen if your home was destroyed in a flood or fire? Would you have enough money to build your home back to its original state? As much as thinking about worst-case scenarios is often something we put to the back of our mind, by being prepared with buildings’ insurance for such disasters it could save you a lot of money and heartache in the future.

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When it comes to making your home safe, whether it’s you that’s living in it or you’re renting it out to tenants, one of the most important safety regulations you will need to carry out is checking your gas systems. This guide will help identify what you should and shouldn’t be doing with the gas in your home; who should be helping you with any problems you may have, and how to make sure your home is gas safe.

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They appear in almost every home at some point or other, and if your house is a new build, you’ve probably noticed quite a few. But do you know the natural cracks caused by the slight movement of your home from the cracks that mean there could be a more significant problem than you first thought? In a lot of cases cracks become part of the furniture until you decide to decorate again, but by being able to identify and treat cracks, you could get to the root of the problem before it becomes anything more serious.

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One of the most common problems in households around the UK is damp, and with an average of 25,000 gallons of rain water hitting these homes, there is no wonder why many suffer from this problem. What’s more, once you have damp in your home it can lead to more serious health problems, which is why it is imperative to notice any signs of damp in their early stages and get them treated as quickly as possible.

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We’ve all seen them. A once beautiful home with original features stood derelict. Boarded up and consigned to the scrap heap. Yet these houses still have a lot of potential.

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