What are the different types of refurbishment?

The most useful way to sort refurbishment types is by purpose, not size: rental turnaround, pre-sale spruce-up, forever-home upgrade, and commercial Cat A or Cat B work. Each calls for a different specification, and mixing them up wastes money.

A rental turnaround is about speed and durability. Hard-wearing paint in one colour throughout, tough flooring, a sound but simple bathroom, everything compliant for the next tenancy. We do plenty of these on ex-rental flats around Lewisham and Bromley. The whole point is a short void period, so the schedule is tight and the spec is practical rather than pretty.

A pre-sale spruce is different. You spend only where buyers look: decoration, the hallway, the front of the house, kitchen and bathroom made presentable rather than replaced. Repainting a three-bed from £4,000 often pays for itself several times over at sale. A forever-home upgrade is the opposite. You will live with the choices for twenty years, so the spec goes up: better sanitaryware, proper joinery, and you fix what sits behind the walls while they are open.

Commercial work splits into Cat A and Cat B. Cat A takes a unit back to a clean, lettable shell with basic services, usually the landlord's job. Cat B fits the space out for a specific occupier: layout, finishes, branding. How heavy any of these gets, light through to back-to-brick, is a separate question about levels of refurbishment.