Politics
Homes Under the Hammer’s Martin Roberts ‘scared beyond belief’ as he spots life-threatening problem with house
HOMES Under the Hammer host Martin Roberts was left “scared beyond belief” at a life-threatening problem with a house.
A Welsh home for sale on the BBC show was hit with a series of issues during a recent episode, including a break-in and flooded floors.
Martin was left “scared” as he visited the property[/caption]
Martin, 57, went round to investigate the three-bedroom home in South Wales, which was in desperate need of updating.
The TV host, who has featured on Homes under the Hammer for almost two decades, was extremely concerned about the issues the property had.
From damp in the walls to a water-logged living room floor, things didn’t look promising for the end-of-terrace home.
Oxfordshire couple Simon and Rebecca were still keen on the property, made a big and bought the home with the hopes of modernising it.
The floor was completely water-logged in the property[/caption]
However, as soon as they began their makeover of the property, they were hit by a number of problems causing by a spring running under the house.
The entire lower floor was water-logged and the floor often found wet, while they also faced a break-in during their renovation works.
To make matters worse, the retaining wall of the home wasn’t in good condition, with Martin describing it as “scary beyond belief”.
Looking around the property after the sale, the host said: “It’s this really nice big open space but straight away you see that wall obviously has a problem.”
The outside wall was not safe at all – with Martin saying he was “scared”[/caption]
Martin said there could be a problem with the wall[/caption]
Martin added: “Can you imagine the weight of soil and Welsh hillside that’s holding up? It is scary beyond belief.”
As to how much it would cost to fix, or even rebuild the wall, he explained: “You’d be looking at tens of thousands of pounds, probably £25,000.
“Either you just hope it’s ok or you touch it and you open Pandora’s box.”
Simon and Rebecca went ahead with the home Rhondda as they were “drawn to the area” due to the low price of properties.
Simon and Rebecca bought the property and spent £10,000 on refurbishments[/caption]
“The more we looked the more we fell in love with the place,” Simon told the host, adding they planned to spend £10,000 on refurbishments.
After 13 months of renovation, the Homes Under the Hammer team returned to the property to see what renovations had been carried out.
Extensive work had been done to the flooring in order to stop the spring from flooding the area, diverting the water elsewhere with drainage.
Meanwhile, they recovered well from the break-in, saying: “At first it was off-putting of the whole project and it did take a couple of weeks to think ‘don’t let this slow us down.”
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Instead of replacing the dangerous retaining wall, the couple added they had reinforced it in order to make it safe and would re-evaluate in the future when they had more funds.
Going over their planned budget, the couple spent £15,000 on the revamp and were able to rent the property out for £575-a-month.
Homes Under the Hammer airs weekdays on BBC One at 10am.
