Home improvements add little value to homes - survey

Many of those surveyed had carried out major jobs on their homes

Seven out of 10 estate agents believe redecorating a home makes no difference to its asking price, a survey suggests.

The study for insurance firm LV of more than 200 estate agents also found 64% said the same about garden landscaping.

Putting in a new kitchen would have little impact on the value of a home, according to one in five estate agents.

They said competent structural work was most likely to boost a property's value - with a good loft conversion likely to increase the asking price by about 8%.

Gas repairs

However, they warned the increase in value was unlikely to cover the amount of money spent on having the work done.

The survey also polled more than 2,000 householders, with significant proportions admitting to carrying out major jobs on their homes without professional help.

One in four said they had undertaken electrical work, one in five had attempted plumbing, and nearly one in 10 had tried structural improvements such as removing walls.

Some 6% had had a go at major building work such as a loft conversion by themselves, and 3% attempted DIY gas repairs.

John O'Roarke, managing director of LV home insurance, warned that badly done work could reduce a property's value by as much as 5%.

'Bungling cost'

He said: "With house prices falling or stagnating in some parts of the UK, it's understandable that many homeowners should try to bump up the value of their properties through DIY home improvements.

"But although nine out of 10 people in our survey recognised that jobs like gas work should only be left to the professionals, nearly 500,000 Brits are still prepared to give it a go.

"Not only could bungling these jobs be dangerous, and costly to put right, but if they caused a serious problem with the property it could invalidate the home insurance cover."

In contrast to the views of the estate agents surveyed, a fifth of the householders thought redecorating would add most value to their home and 14% thought it would be refurbishing the kitchen.

Some 12% believed improving the garden would have the most impact and 6% said replacing the bathroom.

Only 1 in 5 believe aliens are on Earth

Might this actually be the true corpse of Napoleon Bonaparte?

All smokers smell. All buses are late. All politicians are mendacious narcissists.

Some things in life are so truly self-evident that they require no discussion. Which is why I was thrust into prehistoric hysteria by a piece of research that declared only 20 percent of the world's population believes that green people are already in our midst and enjoying our Corn Flakes.

According to Ipsos, the fine researchers of markets terrestrial and celestial, the majority of the world is still unwilling to accept that aliens are already here and disguised as us.

And by "disguised as us", I am not specifically referring to Lindsay Lohan, Ray Kurzweil, Dennis Kucinich, Newt (even though that name might, to some, be such a giveaway) Gingrich, Jack White, the members of Devo, or the man who lives on my street with the curiously pointy-eared chihuahua.

Ipsos performed this research on behalf of Reuters, and the results are, to my small and oozing mind, startling. It's not as if there were merely a couple of respondents. 24,077 people were questioned as to their feelings about their fellow alien. And, thankfully, though it's clear that too many of the world's citizens are blind to the realities of their existence, at least there are pockets of intelligence that offer us all hope.

In India, for example, 45 percent of those surveyed declared that, yes, of course, some of their fellow men are really green, have three heads, and pretend to love cricket. 42 percent in China also said they believed aliens were among them, but it is not recorded whether they said that some of these space people worked for Google.

While the US polled at a hopeful 24 percent seeing the light, countries like Sweden, Holland, Belgium, and France are full of self-regarding dullards who seem incapable of seeing beyond the ends of their nasal hairs. In each of these alien-forsaken places, less than 10 percent of respondents claimed to believe in the inevitable truth.

John Wright, senior vice president at Ipsos, offered Reuters a difficult defense of these intellectually incurious countries: "Maybe it's a simple case that in a less populated country you are more likely to know your next door neighbor better." Or, perhaps, you are more likely to believe that you see famous faces in the random shapes of potatoes.

One can only hope that the people of India and China will continue to educate the rest of the world in the realities of the universe. That way, when the aliens finally cast off their human masks and prepare us for a singularly hopeful future, it will be the open-minded believers who will be left in charge of our troubled planet.