As a savvy project manager, specifying and buying products or materials for clients – and landlord/renovators doing the same – for my own business, the economic squeeze has become astonishingly tight on budgets. For over a decade throughout the ’00s and into the ’10s, we had a deliberate deluge of European cheap labour and then crazy-low interest rates, both of which helped fuel a property boom.
These things outweighed the increase in worldwide material prices such as copper and timber from the massive expansion of BRICS development — so far so good. But layer on top of that the fallout from a global pandemic and Brexit, phenomenal energy increases, plus the inevitable backlash from years of unsustainably accessible credit and what do we get? Eye-wateringly high renovation and build costs. So can we find any positives here? Of course we can! My job is to share some of my tops tips on how to renovate for less. But be prepared: this involves you getting stuck in.
