A dad has been left devastated after his auction purchase on Homes Under the Hammer barely made a profit as he vowed to 'never do it again.'
Property developer Justin went on BBC's Home's Under the Hammer programme and bought a plot of land along with a council storage depot in Milton for £79,000 in 2015.
With a budget of £100,000, he thought he was onto a quick profit.
However, the experience was tainted after he ran into severe problems and the project was delayed for multiple years.
He told presenter Dion Dublin that he wanted to purchase two detached houses and name them after his daughter, Amy Rose. reports the Daily Star.
The dad planned six to eight months to finish the mountainous job with the help of only one bricklayer - and at an estimated cost of £100,000.
However, six years later when Dion finally visited Justin at the site again, he said: "What a magnificent-looking house! It's got lots of space outside, a big double garage, security gates."
Inside the homes, Justin fitted an impressive modern open-plan kitchen, coupled with a high-spec finish, a utility area, dining and living room, finished with four large bedrooms.
But he revealed things were not as great as they seemed.
He said: "The original budget was a lot less than we ended up spending but I was anticipating about £200,000, and we ended up spending well over £300k."
Now, the house has been sold for £361,000 but with the bidding cost of £79,000 calculated, the properties would see a loss of £18,000 at the very least.
Dion added: "But Justin still has got the large storage shed and depot area. Should that be sold, they would probably see a small profit overall."
Justin reflected on his auction purchase and shared: "I've never built a new house before so I wanted to do this because I had the land available when I bought the big shed at the back from the council.
"So that's why I built a new house and I've learned from this never to do it again."
Whilst building the houses, he faced difficulties receiving approvals from the council and that they didn't like the idea that the houses were not facing the road in line.
"They were talking about the frontage needed to be the same all the way down the road, so they told me that they wouldn't allow it," he added.
"But we went ahead anyway [with the application], it got refused, we went to appeal, and it got refused again, so now we're back to square one and looking at a single detached house, four bedrooms."
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