House of horrors up for sale with a guide price of just £1-plus

A property located in Birmingham with a guide price of £1-plus is set to go under the hammer at SDL Auction Bigwood’s next sale.

While it may look like an ordinary terraced house with a trimmed hedge, bay window and gable porch, there is nothing typical about 93 Douglas Road.

This ‘house of horrors’ has plenty of cobwebs to be cleared away, with fallen plaster, heaps of rubble, holes in the roof and a broken toilet. However, these are just a few of the frightful features of the property.

Due to be sold at the auction on Tuesday 29 October, appropriately just days before Halloween, the house’s hair-raising condition has had a major influence on its value of just £1-plus.

Neal Hume, valuer at SDL Auctions Bigwood, is confident that investors will not be spooked by the grisly condition of the house.

He says: “This property may be a ghost of its former self but any serious investor will have the vision to see beyond the disrepair and imagine the possibilities. It’s actually a really lovely house with some attractive features such as original fireplaces and picture rails.”

On the ground floor, the property has a hallway and kitchen, plus two reception rooms, both with impressive fireplaces which appear to be later additions installed in the 1930s. The front room has a large bay window, while the rear reception room has French windows leading out to the garden.

Upstairs, there are three bedrooms (two with original cast iron fireplaces), and a bathroom. Meanwhile, outside, there is a small yard at the front and a good-sized – albeit overgrown – rear garden.

Neal adds: “With good-sized rooms, an upstairs bathroom and a garden, all the main ingredients are there and I’m sure there are many investors who won’t be able to resist the opportunity to perform a spectacular transformation on the property.”

Douglas Road is within walking distance of a good range of shops and amenities, including Acocks Green railway station, which runs three trains per hour into Birmingham. It’s also six miles from the city centre and the same distance in the other direction to Birmingham International Airport.

93 Douglas Road, Acocks Green, is due to be sold by SDL Auctions Bigwood in its sixth auction of the year at Villa Park, Birmingham, on Tuesday 29 October.

“There’s still time to enter your own property into the auction and, as you can see from this house, condition is no deterrent. Investors are always looking to add value and a property such as this provides them with plenty of scope,” Hume concludes.