Mike wrote:
.
BUT

his comments were that the Kitchen and the Garden would sell the
house :-)) yes we have a garage and additional parking which were a
plus, but he went ape over the kitchen and garden :-))

He said our house has 'Kerb Appeal' (ought to, we have just had it
painted).

Soooooooooooooo

if you are thinking of selling, a garden 'well cared for' is a plus


Rule of thumb that some people use is 5-10% of house value spent on a
designer garden will add more than that to the house value.

I'm not sure it can be applied across the board - most london houses (500k)
would not support 25-50k spent on the garden. but the same house at £150k in
more sensibly priced areas would probably support 7.5-15k, and upper end
properties anywhere do support the 5-10% rule. I'd aslo be very wary of
spending much on the garden of a house that is already "the best house on
the street", as the price limit is set by location.

If you doubt this imagine two otherwise identical houses. One with a
crumbling concrete patio and weedy lawn. One with well designed and
construcetd terrace, well tended lawn, waster feature and beds full of
character plants. Most people here (including me!) would go for the first
one as we'd be buying great potential to do our own thing at a discout, Mr
general public on the other hand goes for the one with the fancy garden and
the shine of the garden rubs off on the house which is itself perceived as
"better".

pk

pk