Houses can have architectural flaws that can become major sticking points in a sale, and most people — whether buyers or sellers — find it difficult to know how to rectify them. The proposed new sellers’ pack (if and when it comes into effect) may tell us what we need to know about rotting roofs and rights of way, but what it certainly will not give us is objective advice on how to improve design weaknesses or expand interior space.

Fortunately a company by the name of architectyourhome has recently set up an advisory service to help people who are thinking of buying a new home to calculate likely costs and other issues associated with renovation. This could prove an invaluable aid as the market slows, because significant value will be added only where owners make radical improvements to the fabric of a property or increase the square footage significantly. In these slow-growth times the potential for a loft conversion or a rear extension will become a fundamental consideration when making the decision to buy.

Architectyourhome was set up in 2000 by Hugo Tugman and his wife Jude — they met and trained as architects in Bath — to advise clients on small domestic projects. Hugo realised that many private clients were afraid to use an architect and that many architects were unwilling to undertake small-budget work.

“The biggest problem tends to be communication and the biggest stumbling block is generally about money,” says Hugo. “Many people consulting architects for the first time don’t understand why they aren’t given ideas at their first meeting. And because they don’t always understand what an architect does and where the costs lie, they often feel out of control.”

One of architectyourhome’s great achievements is to break down the architect’s fee into manageable, bite-size pieces, hiving off expensive services (such as detailed scale drawing), so that both architect and client feel happy with the financial situation as it proceeds.

Currently, architectyourhome’s most popular service is the half-day consultation. This involves a four-hour site visit — at a fee of £400 — in which an architect comes to your home to discuss your project. He or she will measure up, draw sketch layouts and then prepare outline proposals. You will then be sent a set of drawings and a menu of services (all independently costed) to take the project to the next stage. “It’s certainly better than a builder’s sketch on the back of a cigarette packet,” says Hugo.

There are plenty of testimonies to the success of this aspect of their work, but I wanted to test-drive the new buyer’s advisory service. So I posed as a potential purchaser of my own house and asked Hugo Tugman to come and look at my unsightly façade. In my role as a worried and uncommitted buyer, I gave him a tight theoretical budget of just £20,000 as a make-or-break decision-maker.

The first pleasant surprise was that Hugo did not balk for an instant at a sum that many architects would barely consider sufficient for fitting out a family bathroom. My house is an elongated bungalow, with no entrance hall and no centralised layout. Its façade is an inconsistent attempt at Modern Movement geometry and it has a period-typical — but now redundant — carport to the side. Its other major drawback for would-be purchasers is that it lies in a conservation area in which any change to the exterior would be scrutinised closely.

“The issue of planning consent is obviously a crucial consideration if your purchase is dependent on making significant alterations to the exterior,” says Hugo Tugman. “What people don’t always realise, however, is that, if the changes are within the scope of permitted development, you can do quite a lot without planning permission.”

Planning issues are rarely cut and dried, but architectyourhome can at least give potential purchasers informed probabilities about what they will or will not be allowed to do. And, because they operate as a franchise — with 15 architectural practices around the country — the architect who visits your home is likely to be familiar with the foibles of your local council, always a crucial factor in gaining consent.

After a probing conversation and an hour and a half of measuring and sketching, Hugo came back with a radical reworking of the façade which — astonishingly — came in well under the budget I had suggested.

At this stage — like so many clients — I decided to up my demands. So Hugo patiently reworked the drawing to take into account my new concerns and, after a further half hour, while I went to fetch the children from school, he produced an eco-friendly, still-in-budget design that masked the exterior in an attractive, contemporary wooden frame and enclosed the carport to create a utility room and a new focal entrance hall.

In some ways my project was more straightforward than many. “It’s easier to give a reasonably accurate projection for a design in which construction is the main issue,” Hugo says. “Building costs are fairly standard, but anything decorative is harder to estimate. The great temptation is always to choose the £400 taps over the £40 taps.”

At the end of the session, I felt that Hugo had come up with an imaginative, workable solution, and, more importantly for a house purchaser where time is of the essence, he had come up with it on the spot.

If I had really been buying the house — or if I ever come to sell it — I would definitely go back to architectyourhome to proceed with the next stages of getting a full measured survey (£600) and planning permission advice (3-4 hours at £75 an hour).

In the meantime I can only echo the words of my son when I showed him the drawings: “That’s cool.”

• Architectyourhome: 0800 8498505 www.architect-yourhome.com

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