Buy a home for £10,000

Tesco has just started selling homes for £10,000. John Fitzsimons finds out why, and looks at other properties you can snap up for the price of a new car.

It’s long been the case that you can buy almost anything you need at Tesco, but that idea has been expanded still further now that you can buy a five room property from the supermarket giant for just £9,999.

There is a catch though. You’ll have to put it together yourself.

Just as Ikea offer cracking deals on furniture, so long as you are at least competent with a screwdriver, now you can do the same with Tesco’s flatpack home.

What you get

So what do you get for your money?

The properties are basically log-cabins, and boast five rooms and an upstairs storage area (which you can access via ladder). The cabins, which have been designed by Finnlife, are made from Scandinavian whitewood and measure 32ft by 16ft. As with most flatpack furniture, the various pieces have grooves which slot together.

This is just on a far grander scale than your bedside cabinet.

The cabins come with double glazing, while certain models even boast laminate flooring, guttering, underfloor heating and even a terraced decking area.

Very civilised!

Where do I sign?

The cabins are only available online from the Tesco Direct website – funnily enough the pack’s a bit too big to be housed in the aisle next to the milk – and you’ll have to pay £5 as a delivery charge.

Related blog post

• John Fitzsimons writes:

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Brilliantly, the Tesco website warns that an adult will need to sign upon delivery.

Thankfully a full manual offering step-by-step instructions is provided, though anyone who has ever put together anything that comes in flatpack form will no doubt attest that such instructions are not always as useful as one would hope.

Tesco also states that no specialist skills will be required, though some tasks ‘will require more than one set of hands’.

And for those of you that, like me, are avid collectors of Tesco Clubcard points, there’s more good news. Buying one of these Finnlife Log Cabins will net you a whopping 19,998 Clubcard points.

That’s an awful lot off your next big shop.

The downsides

Obviously, these properties are not perfect. First of all, you’ll need somewhere to put it. The manual states that the log-cabins will need to be built on foundations of concrete or compressed gravel.

You’ll also need to do your own research as to whether constructing the cabin will require planning permission.

Critics have dismissed the initiative as a glorified garden-shed, and while that strikes me as a bit harsh, I’m not certain I’d feel too comfortable with it as my place of residence. It just looks a bit soulless.

Finally, you can get the exact same cabin from gardensite.co.uk for £600 less, at £9,399, although of course you won't get any Clubcard points with this purchase.

A sign of things to come

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Sell your home

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See the guide

Anyone who has ever watched the Channel 4 programme Grand Designs will know that flatpack style properties are pretty popular on the continent, with a number of firms in Germany which offer a similar service, where you essentially design the property and it is then shipped over to the UK in pieces to then be slotted together to form your home.

It’s not for everyone, but I’ve no doubt it will increase in popularity, particularly as household names like Tesco begin to dip their toe into the market.

What about you? Would you be happy to buy your home in flatpack form and put it together yourself? Let us know what you think via the comment box below.

Bargain homes

Tesco's initiative got us thinking - what are the cheapest traditional homes available in the market today? With the help of Rightmove, we have compiled a pretty eye-opening list.

If you’re in Wales, you can snap up this one-bedroom flat in Wrexham for just £23,000. As the estate agent says, it is certainly ‘in need of modernisation’, a fact borne out by the picture of a pretty beaten up kitchen. I think the accepted term for the size of the flat is cosy – the lounge is 3.48m by 4.8m, while the bedroom is just 2.51m by 3.56m.

Alternatively, you could pick up this four-bedroom terraced house in Brynmawr for just £24,950. Again, the pictures show that a hell of a lot of work is needed on the property before it’s inhabitable.  

A quick scan of the Upmystreet report for the neighbourhood makes for interesting reading too. Not only is unemployment high in the area, but within the Blaenau Gwent council area (which in fairness covers 69,000 people) car theft is almost double the Welsh average, while theft from cars and burglaries are also above the Welsh average.

Then again, statistics can never tell the whole story - so please share your experiences if you live there!

Cheapest properties for sale in Wales

Scotland

It’s a similar story north of the English border. First up, you can nab this two-bedroom terraced house in Kilmarnock for offers over £29,000. Again carpets, decor and modernisation are required throughout the property – pretty much a given for any home at this price – though the rooms aren’t too small.

And again the Upmystreet report is eye-opening. High unemployment and a lot of long-term illness, while the crime figures for East Ayrshire council show non-sexual crimes of violence and serious assault figures of well above the Scottish average.

Cheapest properties for sale in Scotland

England

Incredibly, you can buy a three-bedroom house in Welling, Kent, for less than £8,000. However, all is perhaps not as it seems. Firstly, you have to pay in cash only, and there is no access for internal viewings. This is because the property has to be sold in conjuction with the property next door.

However, for just £15,000 you can nab this two-bedroom terraced house in Burnley. It’s pretty clear why the property is so cheap – cracks and changes to the structure of the property are clear from the outside, while the interior has been vandalised and needs complete renovation.

Cheapest properties for sale in England

Would you snap up any of these properties for the price shown, if you had the money or the inclination? Let us know using the comments box below!

Make the most of what you have

In my opinion, if you're looking for a building project, the best option is to get more out of a property you already own, without shelling out £10,000 on a second building for you to construct in the garden.

Self-build experts Buildstore are holding a Making More Space weekend on the 10th and 11th July at their National Self Build & Renovation Centre in Swindon, offering a range of seminars on how to expand your home, what you can do without needing planning permission, how to fund your home improvements, and also whether they will make much difference to the value of your home.

Tickets are free, so check out the Buildstore website for more details.

More: House prices are invincible | Get £300 for remortgaging!

At lovemoney.com, you can research all the best deals yourself using our online mortgage service, or speak directly to a whole-of-market, fee-free lovemoney.com broker. Call 0800 804 4045 or email mortgages@lovemoney.com for more help.