Can you renovate a house for 20k?

No, £20,000 will not renovate a whole house, not in London, but spent carefully it will do the rooms that matter properly. A proper whole-house renovation starts from £1,200 per square metre, so even a small terrace sits well beyond that budget once you touch wiring, plumbing and plaster throughout.

What £20,000 does buy is real. A full bathroom refit starts from £7,000. Repainting a whole three-bed house starts from £4,000. That still leaves room for flooring in the main rooms and clearing the worst of the snags. We did exactly this shape of job on an ex-rental flat in Lewisham: new bathroom, full repaint, sanded boards. It looked like a different property when we handed it back.

My advice is to resist spreading the money thin. Ten rooms half-done looks worse than three rooms finished properly, and cheap work tends to get redone within five years, so you pay twice. Pick the bathroom or the decoration, do it once, do it right. If you want to know exactly how far £20,000 goes in your particular house, we survey free of charge and give a fixed written quote against your budget, so you know before anyone lifts a tool.