Homes Under the Hammer host Martel Maxwell was left gobsmacked just as much as viewers after a couple revealed they had spent £1million on a house they’ve never seen.
The presenter, 47, couldn’t contain her shock as she learnt Doug and his wife Sophie made a colossal investment without having seen the inside of the Victorian property.
Doug, who is a property developer and builder, chose to buy a four-bedroom home in Brixton but when the house went up for auction it had a guide price of £668,000.
The property developer turned the place into his dream home after a spending a £908,000 staggering sum to renovate it for him and his beloved wife Sophie.
‘We’re going to move in here, a bit of an upgrade from the one-bedroom flat we’re in at the moment,’ Doug said.
Homes Under the Hammer host Martel Maxwell (pictured) was left gobsmacked just as much as viewers after a couple revealed they had spent £1million on a house they’ve never seen
Doug (pictured), who is a property developer and builder, chose to buy a four-bedroom home in Brixton but when the house went up for auction it had a guide price of £668,000
Digging deeper, Martel questioned: ‘I’m guessing you’d viewed it and really knew that you wanted it to commit that amount of money?’
‘We hadn’t viewed it. We viewed it from the outside! I only knew about it the day before the auction,’ Doug recalled.
‘I definitely wouldn’t recommend not viewing it but…,’ to which the host replied astounded: ‘It’s funny isn’t it, committing almost £1m without seeing it.’
The investment didn’t come without any obstacles as the builder revealed they eventually discovered some leaks in the roof – yet it would have ‘taken a lot for him to be upset’.
‘And nearly a million quid, I think that’s the most egregious breaking of our Hammer golden rule yet,’ the host added.
Doug and Sophie moved into the Victoria property while works were still underway, as the builder began carrying them out himself.
The couple captured viewers with their inspiring story about luck and destiny, and revealed it costed a total of around £75,000 to renovate it within a year and a half.
In the end, they quite literally both reaped what they sowed as an estate agent revealed the property was worth £1.5m.
The property developer turned the place into his dream home after a spending a £908,000 staggering sum to renovate it for him and his beloved wife Sophie
The couple captured viewers with their inspiring story about luck and destiny, and revealed it costed a total of around £75,000 to renovate it within a year and a half (Doug and host Martel pictured)
The investment didn’t come without any obstacles as the builder revealed they eventually discovered some leaks in the roof – yet it would have ‘taken a lot for him to be upset’
Doug ultimately confessed they couple was already thinking of selling up the stunning property due to ‘changes in working from home’
Martel has been a presenter on the beloved property show since 2017
Doug ultimately confessed they couple was already thinking of selling up the stunning property due to ‘changes in working from home’.
The stunning episode comes after Homes Under the Hammer veteran Tommy Walsh has admitted he is ‘happy’ and ‘not in any pain’ as he shared a positive health update amid his battle with cancer.
The TV star, 67, is currently battling the disease, which is just under his lung, but revealed he is nearly in remission.
The presenter, who has previously battled throat cancer, said the cancer is ‘slowly shrinking and disappearing’ as he continues his radiotherapy treatment called SABR.
Stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy (SABR) is the use of multiple small radiation beams to deliver high dose radiotherapy.
This is shaped to the size of the tumour and spares the surrounding normal tissue and organs as much as possible. SABR is most often used on small, well-defined tumours.
For Tommy, the treatment has ‘worked really well’ as he continues to fight and beat the cancer.
He told The Mirror: ‘So I had to have this new treatment called SABR and what it is is radiotherapy which targets it to an exact spot without damaging the organs around it. So they used that and it shrunk.
‘It is now not anywhere else. It is going away. Because it is shrinking it will shrink down to nothing and disappear. I will then just have to have annual checks. It has worked for me really well.
‘They thought it was in the lung and then I would have been in trouble. Surgery would have been serious. So I did not want but we had that as a backup. The SABR treatment has worked and I am healthy so I have not been in any pain.’
Homes Under the Hammer veteran Tommy Walsh, 67, has admitted he is ‘happy’ and ‘not in any pain’ as he shared a positive health update amid his battle with cancer (pictured at TRIC Awards last month)