Martin and Angela James Britain's Empty Homes

There are nearly a million homes lying lost and abandoned in the UK,

waiting for someone to breathe life back into them.

Whether it's a tired semi or a rambling mansion,

we're on the search for Britain's Empty Homes.

If the thought of rescuing an old house tugs at your heartstrings,

then we're going to show you how you can make one your very own.

Today I'll be showing a couple of home-hunters around two vacant houses they could call home.

-A lot of potential in it - this is the best bit of the property, really.

-It is.

We meet the people determined to take buildings from obsolete to occupied.

You suddenly see them being brought back into use - you get a really big boost from it.

And we'll see how once despondent domiciles have become dream des reses.

While many people may dismiss empty properties as something of an eyesore,

clued-up buyers know that behind their doors, could lie a world of possibility.

Martin and Angela James have lived in their current modern house in Northamptonshire

for the past seven years but are keen to try something different.

I think Martin, more than me, would like a house with a bit more character.

This one's a bit of a box.

-It's a lovely box!

-But it is a box.

-But it is a box.

I think we do agree on the sort of property we want.

I think you would prefer to have somewhere to eat in the kitchen or a kitchen/diner.

And holistic therapist, Angela, needs a quiet space away from the house to work in.

I need a decent-sized garden because I need to have, as I've got now,

a room out there that I do the therapies in.

I reckon Martin and Angela's best bet for finding what they want

could lie behind the door of a vacant building.

Now then, Martin and Angela, what's behind this move of yours?

It just feels the right time, basically.

-We've been where we are for, what, seven years?

-Yes, you've got the seven year itch!

Martin gets a little bit bored sometimes.

We would have moved more but sometimes I dig my heels in and go, "No, I'm not moving!"

But you're prepared to give in now. Why are you prepared to go for this move at the moment, Angela?

Now, I think I'm ready to take on a challenge with Martin.

Are you fairly flexible as to the kind of property you're looking for?

Is there a picture in your mind of the ideal?

A village location - I think we like that.

Something with, not a big garden, but a garden you can do something with.

Let's think about the budget cos that's going to dictate everything. How much have you got to spend?

-All in, 320-350.

-So that's the purchase price AND money to do it up.

-Let's see what we can find you.

-OK.

-OK.

So, they want a house with character, three bedrooms,

a large kitchen/diner and space for Angela's holistic therapy room -

all for a budget of £350,000.

We need to find them somewhere that fits the bill,

which is why I've brought them to the village of Wilbarston,

six miles outside Market Harborough in Leicestershire.

With a pub, post office and shop, it has all that the Jameses are looking for,

with a backdrop of beautiful open countryside.

This detached cottage hasn't been lived in for more than two months.

It's on the market for just under £250,000,

which will give them a further £100,000 spare from their budget to make it their ideal home.

OK, let's start with this one. What do you think?

-Um...

-Looks very good.

-Looks interesting.

It's very interesting. The good thing is that although we are in a conservation area,

which does have an effect on what you can try and do to this building,

in itself, it's not listed.

-OK, that's good.

-It's a really good thing.

-Currently on the market for £250,000...

-All right.

-OK.

-..for an initial spend,

leaving you, potentially, £100,000 or so to play with, depending on what you want to do to it.

-Let's see what you think.

-Yeah, I'm excited.

Since the owner passed on, the house has been empty and is up for sale.

Inside, there are three bedrooms...

..two reception rooms...

and a kitchen, which all need a revamp.

Now, come in here.

-This is currently kitchen/diner, as you can see.

-Mm.

-Not the biggest in the world.

-No.

-I don't think you would want this as your kitchen/diner.

-Definitely not.

The point about this whole area is that it's an extension to the earlier property,

so my suggestion is that the wall with the wallpaper on it, all of that can come out,

and that wall there would all go.

-Behind that is a bathroom...

-Right.

-..and again I would get rid.

-Yeah.

So you open this up in a pretty big way,

cos what the property could then offer you is a mixture of character where it exists -

you'd keep that bit - and then you'd go for a nice modern, slick, clean look in the kitchen.

-Yeah, I can see that. Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Good. Let's continue through here.

This is where the character really comes to life.

This room is similar to what's next door - very cottagey, very cosy.

-Yes.

-No square lines.

-No square lines.

It's good, it's got the two windows, cos you've got a bit more light coming in than you'd have normally.

-In terms of space...?

-It's all you'd need.

-I think it's enough, yes.

-Because it is basically a sitting room, isn't it?

-Yes.

So, after a quick tour of the three upstairs bedrooms, one of which has an en-suite loo,

I take Angela and Martin outside to show them where there may be the possibility of extending.

Right, let's have a first look at the rear of the property.

-Aw!

-Quite sweet, isn't it?

-It is.

Now, as you've seen upstairs, it's a bit poky.

What we're suggesting is that you could come out on the left-hand side of the property

with an upper-storey extension that would come out over half of the new open-plan kitchen/diner.

-Right.

-That would allow you space for either very generously apportioned three bedrooms

with an extra family bathroom upstairs in the property,

or you could potentially squeeze in a smaller family bathroom and go for a four bed.

That makes it a better proposition - it's too small as it is, upstairs.

-So, that would be a lot better.

-Yeah.

The garden is a decent size and there is a detached garage

plus there is an interesting space that would be ideal for Angela's therapy room.

This used to be the old village wash house.

This is a project in its own right.

-You can't wait to get in, can you?

-No!

-Now, this is quite an interesting space.

-Oh, my gosh!

-This is tremendous.

-Yes.

-Can you see yourself in here as a big open-plan studio?

Definitely! I think you could even split it - I might share a little bit with you!

-LAUGHTER

-What would you do in your half?

I'd... Well, I was just thinking, get rid of the garage, have a garage and a room.

-So save yourself the job of the garage.

-We've got more garden.

-Brilliant.

-Fantastic.

-Yeah.

Something like this is a real asset.

To realise all the potential here, demands the expertise of an architect,

so we asked a local one to inspect the house

and price up for knocking through in the kitchen to create an open-plan space,

extending and reconfiguring the upstairs to create three large bedrooms and a family bathroom

and turning the old wash house into a therapy room for Angela.

-We're thinking about £20,000-£25,000 to do this up.

-In here, yeah.

About £10,000 on a new garage but you've saved that already by putting it in here.

But all in, we are confident that for the £100,000 left over from your 350 budget,

you would do all of that - put the extension on the back of the property,

renew the kitchen area etc.

So, going to the top of your budget of 350 but you would achieve it.

-Yeah.

-It has a lot of potential in it. This is the best bit of the property, really.

-It is.

Yeah, it does feel good, actually, it's got a nice vibe.

-So, worth showing you?

-Very much so.

-Something for you to think about.

-Something we would never have thought of, I have to say.

-I'd have probably just not walked in here.

-Ah! So we might have opened your eyes a bit?

-Yeah.

-Brilliant.

When it comes to making a vacant house your home,

keeping your eyes open for any opportunity can pay off handsomely,

which is exactly what happened when Catherine and Sam Heppenstall found Stubbin Farm

in Holmfirth in Yorkshire.

We'd walked past it many times as a family

and often thought, "What a beautiful house - we'd love to live there."

We'd approached the guy who owned it many times and one day he said, "Yes, you can buy it."

It was just, like, "Crikey!"

The house was in a shocking state

when they paid £130,000 for it in 2002.

It were derelict - it had been empty for six or seven years,

so it were really uninhabitable.

-Totally, we had trees growing here in the kitchen.

-Yeah, it were grim.

Yeah - grim's a good word for it!

It was a really sad house but you could see it had once been so happy and it just needed a little bit...

Well, it ended up being A LOT of love and attention.

Being in such a beautiful location dictated to Catherine and Sam how they wanted the house to look.

We tried to use as much reclaimed stone and locally-sourced materials as we can to make it blend in.

Yeah, and look as though it's original.

Catherine and Sam have worked hard to make their perfect family home in a once derelict farmhouse

and it's cost them much less than if they'd bought it newly renovated.

The farmhouse cost us about £130,000 and then we spent another 220 on it,

so, recently, when we had it valued at £500,000, it really did make it worthwhile.

I would never give it up.

I love it - we've got the pigs, the chickens. We're doing the good life!

I want to do it - I don't want to be striving towards something else.

I want to stop and enjoy what we've got and I want the children to have their memories planted in this home.

The memories within the walls are our memories and will reflect that in years to come.

For every empty property lying boarded up in your neighbourhood,

the chances are there's an empty property officer working hard behind the scenes

looking for clues as to who owns it and what can be done to bring it back into use.

Sue Hague heads up a team based in Devon covering an area of almost 700 square miles,

taking in both urban and rural properties.

What people tend to think is that if the council comes to see them then it's because they're in trouble

and that's not the case.

In her sights today is a new case in Exeter

brought to her attention by the council's environmental health department

after a concerned neighbour contacted them.

I haven't seen this and we need to have a really good look at it,

see what kind of state it's in

and then see where we need to take it from there.

Sue's first task is to establish if anyone is living there or not.

The property appears to be very, very overgrown.

I'm quite surprised, just looking at this, that we haven't been contacted before.

Extremely overgrown and...

Good heavens!

Completely full of rubbish.

I have to say, this is one of the worst I've seen.

A lot of this looks like it could be building rubbish.

It could be that work's started on the property, maybe to convert it,

and not actually managed to get the planning permission that they need.

So, that's something we'll really need to look at

and see whether there is any planning application in on the property.

But what we really need to do is get this cleared.

But that's just the front garden.

Sue's still not seen inside.

I can't see down to see whether there's any post lying around.

If you can see that there's post in there,

it probably means that at some stage they're going to collect that post.

What we can do is write a letter to the actual property

and then, hopefully, once the owners pick it up they'll contact us.

It doesn't always work but at least it's a way of attempting to get hold of them.

It almost looks like it's open at the back.

She's keen to check the back of the house to make sure it's secure.

We have a wall.

But the only way to gain access is through a neighbouring building.

Thank you.

It looks as if the original door that was on the back has been removed.

There's certainly not any activity gone on there for quite a while.

For now, Sue's done all she can at the house but the investigation is far from over.

The next step is back to the office, make a few calls,

see if we can find out who the property belongs to and take it from there.

If you want something done about a vacant building near you,

contact your local property officer who can investigate it for you.

Martin and Angela James have lived in their current home in Northamptonshire for seven years

but now they're itching to live a quieter life in a semi-rural setting.

With £350,000 to spend,

I think a vacant home could offer them everything they want.

We started off at a cottage in the village of Wilbarston near Market Harborough

on offer for a figure just shy of £250,000.

£100,000 under budget, it had ample room to satisfy Angela's need for workspace.

-This is tremendous.

-Yes.

Now I'm taking them to the village of Swineshead and to Elm Cottage.

Set in an idyllic spot, this place has not been lived in for the past 11 months.

Right, now, property number two -

quite an old property, it's probably a good 200-300 years at its core.

It's hard to tell because it's been covered in this pebble-dash render.

-It's a pretty village location. What do you think?

-I like the village.

-Very nice.

-It all looks very nice but this, straightaway, looks too small, I have to say.

-But that is reflected in the price - £175,000.

-OK.

-Yeah.

-Way under your £350,000.

This is a classic case of a historic property that's just been left

to literally fall apart and it's going to require some very sympathetic historic renovation.

-OK.

-You'll see what I mean on the inside...

-Mm.

..and we'll see whether you're up for it!

Inside, there are two bedrooms and two reception rooms.

The whole house is in need of a complete renovation.

Come on in - squeeze round the door.

You're quite right, Angela - it isn't the biggest place in the world, to be fair.

-You can see for yourself.

-Well, I'm a very small person and even for me this is claustrophobic.

-Might be good for decorating but...

-Don't touch that too much.

-Sorry.

One of the reasons this is going to be a quick look around the property is that we can't really go upstairs.

These stairs here are full of damp.

I have looked at it earlier but I'm not going to take you up there.

So, up here you've got two bedrooms.

Effectively, it was a two up, two down.

But, as I say, there is scope to extend it.

-But as you can see, everything needs doing - the lot.

-Right.

Come through here.

That's your bathroom, in there. As you can see, it all needs sorting.

-The whole place needs gutting.

-Yeah.

This is the sort of house where you'd say to a builder, "Give it back in six months' time."

Yes, exactly. I don't think you'd move in and do this on the hoof.

I think you'd have to trust the builder - really, really trust him.

Well, come through here.

Well, last but not least down here, we've got this - it's obviously been knocked through at some point.

This, I think, is hiding a timber beam.

-Don't knock it too hard!

-I think the beam's all right - it's the ceiling I'm worried about!

You've really got to empty all of this.

-But, you know, it's a project!

-It's a project.

There are ways of extending this, very similar to what we saw in our first property,

that is to create a kind of a two-storey wing on it.

You would push through that wall, there.

Outside, the garden is big enough to give scope for extending the house

and there is a garage which could become a therapy room for Angela.

To get an idea of how to tap into the potential here,

we asked a local architect to give it the once over.

She measured up to see just how much work and cash would be necessary

to get the place just how Martin and Angela would want it.

There are two ways of looking at this place.

One - you could look at pricing it up to just simply renovate what's here.

That's going to cost you somewhere in the order of £60,000-£80,000.

On top of the £175,000 also.

If one was to turn it round a little further and look at bringing this out to about here,

-so the wall would be about there.

-OK, right.

Two-storey gable, like that,

running back into there to give you a third bedroom and potentially an en suite.

You're probably talking about an additional £80,000.

-Mm.

-So, about £160,000 odd, which combined with the asking price, puts you pretty much at your 350-ish...

-if you were going to take it on but you probably aren't!

-I don't think so!

-OK.

-It's a lot of money for a small property.

-It's a small plot, um...

I think, you know, I take on board what you said

and I know I've been quite negative,

but I can see you could do something with it.

Angela and Martin have toured two empty properties.

Both offered massive scope to become their dream home.

We'll find out later if they're up to taking on one of them.

Meanwhile in Exeter, empty property officer, Sue Hague,

is back on the trail of vacant homes in need of residents.

This morning we're going to see a little two-bed terraced property

that we've known about for about four years now

but only actually within the last two years managed to find out who the owner was

and actually managed to work with him to bring this property back into use.

Getting a grant from Exeter Council means the owner of this terrace is now able to renovate it

on the condition he then lets it to tenants on the housing waiting list.

Today, Sue's meeting a council-approved builder to assess what work needs to be done.

-We need the windows and doors in first to secure the property.

-OK.

Then we'll need the electrics in and the central heating pipework to be done,

-so we can start putting the floors down and get everything secure, so we can walk around safely in it.

-OK.

So, once we get to the stage where we've got the floors down,

-how long would you envisage then for plastering and...?

-Within a week.

-Really? As quick as that?

-Once the floor's down, yeah.

It's going to need a complete renovation from the ground up.

Oh, good grief!

It's going to look very, very different, isn't it?

But it needs to!

-We can't get much worse than this.

-No.

It's a relief to see it cleared.

Now you can see the framework of the house, you can see what it's going to become.

Sue's next port of call is with the landlord of a flat at the other end of the process.

The main problems here were that the property was suffering from damp.

There was only a gas fire in the main lounge, with a free-standing heater in the bedroom

and the old doors at the back were wooden ones, they weren't really helping the situation at all.

Lovely lounge area and a nice garden area out the back, as well.

It is lovely, the garden, isn't it?

Getting help from the council with finance and building work

means this place is ready to be occupied once again.

'I would hope that we could be looking at tenanting the property next week or the week after.

'You get a really big boost from it when you consider you see the property right at the beginning'

and it can be in as severe a state as the one we saw before that was nearly derelict,

and then you suddenly see them being brought back into use

and you see a family move in and start a happy life in a home that they can afford.

There can't be anything better than that.

Bringing an unloved house back into use can reap both emotional and financial rewards.

And sometimes it's not what you know but who you know, as Adrianne Brewer discovered

when a friend of hers put this Georgian farmhouse on the market in South Devon in 2004.

We were in Devon visiting them and he said, "Come and have a look at it."

So we went over and it was an October day and the rain was horizontal and it was dark and miserable

and the house was... It was a sight, just completely derelict, broken windows, the roof was broken

but there was just something about it.

When you see a house like that, there's an element of wanting to turn those houses back into family homes.

Coombe House hadn't been lived in for two years when she bought it and began a twelve-month renovation.

Once we owned it and we started really doing the design work and the planning

then I think it got a bit scary because you realised how much there was to do.

In fact, I brought my father over from Canada and had him start the project for us.

I just didn't know where to begin - it was so huge.

Her father's experience in the construction industry certainly helped at the start

and Adrianne knew she wanted to create a look that was sympathetic to the period of the house.

We've left a lot of the original stone on the walls and the flagstones in the floors.

In some of the rooms, we've revealed the original stonework and I love that we've done it like that.

When we bought the house, it had been on the market for about £500,000.

Our budget had been around £350,000-£400,000 to bring it back to a family standard.

Hopefully, it's still worth more than that now, finished, if one wanted to sell it again,

which, at the moment, we don't.

If you buy something that needs work doing to it,

then you probably can afford a little more than if you were buying it already done.

It gives you a lot more house in the end

than if you're buying something somebody else has done the work to.

And she's clear that taking on an abandoned place was the right thing for her and her family.

We love being in the house - it's really calm and peaceful and it's full of light.

It suits the family beautifully so we enjoy the house very much.

And if you're keen to make an empty house your next home, here is how you can start your search.

Once you've chosen your location,

make sure you let local estate agents know precisely what you're looking for

and to notify you the moment suitable properties hit their books

but you may have to act fast as they're often highly sought after.

If you're prepared to cast your net wide for your ideal house,

auction houses often have vacant buildings for sale,

so why not check out their catalogues on line?

Martin and Angela James want to move somewhere semi rural.

They'd like three bedrooms, a large kitchen/diner

and a garden where Angela can create a holistic therapy room.

I've shown them two houses well inside their £350,000 budget

but has either convinced them a disused dwelling is the right choice?

I'm going to start slightly back to front and deal with our last property first.

-It's not for us.

-It's not for you - clearly too much of a project - but could you see its merits?

I can only see some merit in doing up what's there.

In other words, putting a two up, two down in good order on that plot.

The plot's too small for doing anything else.

Well, let's revisit what I hope are somewhat happier pastures!

Our first property with that extraordinary outbuilding.

We gave you quite a lot to think about in terms of how you might knock it around.

What did you make of that?

I thought it was very good - a lot of potential there for doing different things with.

We talked about the barn or the old washroom, that's what it was.

There are a lot of options that need re-looking at.

But it would certainly give you the space that you're looking for in terms of a therapy room

-and the retreat that you're craving.

-Yes, definitely, that fitted the bill.

And I could see what we could do with that place.

So, what happens next?

I think we need to look again. We need to have another look at it.

-I think so, yeah.

-It's definitely an interesting proposition

and it's not something I'd have looked at if I'd just seen it on paper.

Brilliant. We've inspired you to take on an empty property

-and may have found something you wouldn't have considered in the first place.

-Definitely.

-Well, I'm delighted. Thank you very much indeed and very best of luck.

-Thank you very much.

Like any kind of prospecting, it takes time to find your diamond in the rough.

Once you've found it, of course, you can cut and polish it to fit your very own exacting requirements.

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