Is this what you’d consider to be a ‘middle class’ style house?

FFS

This. I can’t get past page 2 of the comments.
If you like a house, buy it.
I’m a music teacher, professional, uni educated - I would be considered lower middle class. I live in a 4 bed semi
A friend of mine is married to a High Court judge and they live in the countryside in a 5 bed detached with a couple of acres of land. They are middle class.

Ahhh…for some reason I thought Ashbourne was in Kent 🤦‍♀️ Sleep deprivation really has made me an idiot! It’ll be the new-build thing then - our house is over 100 years old, and house prices for non-new builds are reasonably cheap round here. But when developers cram a full-sized house onto a tiny postage stamp of land, for some reason they charge the earth!

Save the 'sharp-clawed' lecture for someone who gives a damn. I’ve already had some idiot today call me 'stupid' for saying 'realtor' instead of 'estate agent,' so I’m officially finished with people who think policing tone and vocabulary is a substitute for actual intelligence.

If you're so desperate to find something to critique, have a look at these pathetic excuses for listings instead: 171823655 and 174515789

Idk who taught the people in the first one to hang art, but it clearly wasn't anyone who owns a spirit level or has a shred of aesthetic awareness. And as for the second one? They literally couldn't be bothered to move the vacuum cleaner out of the frame—it's just sitting there in the foreground, as if it’s a feature of the hallway.

I agree. Regardless of social class - it’s a superficial shell of a non intellectual lifestyle.

That was a bit unnecessarily sharp-clawed. I’m assuming you’d acknowledge that that hideous confection, decorated and AI rejigged a for particularly lurid Middle Eastern or Russian oligarch tastes, is hardly typical of the UK property market either.

Those carpets alone are a cry for help.

It’s bold to claim 'staging isn't a UK thing' while I’m literally looking at a £44 million Belgravia townhouse (Rightmove ref: 157525997) that’s been stylized to within an inch of its life. Just because you’re only browsing bargain-bin listings where agents take photos on a potato doesn't mean everyone else is doing the same. Maybe stop shopping in the gutter and you’ll see what the actual market looks like.

What used to define Middle Class is fast disappearing. As the older generations die out, and Societies tastes and attitudes change.

And of course the Economy and Internet.

The house in the photo look really bland and safe design wise. Which seems to be the current vogue.

Quite big and a good size garage but really non descript.

You must be somewhere really cheap, then, as newbuilds around that size in my notoriously cheap bit of the north are not anywhere mear half the price of Derbyshire, which is where Ashbourne is.
4 bedroom detached house for sale in Lionfields, Lambton Park, Chester Le Street, DH3 4DS, DH3 https://share.google/2cXPVV6r9ldHUq6mz

Hahaha this really made me laugh. Mine is all of them depending on the day of the week (minus the doily & dead aunt I have to admit )

Staging isn't really a UK thing. At any level. Certainly not to anything like the extent Americans go for. Our system for selling houses is completely different from yours, as are the expectations for how to go about it.

structurally it’s a lovely big house. It says “prosperous family” to me. The furniture is bland, tick box contemporary, cheap-ish looking. Not what I’d call stylish at all. But that’s not the question we were asked, I know.

House looks pretty from the outside, but the interior looks a bit Argos to me.

Yes I agree. Most new builds near me are all 10ft by 10ft bedrooms (and at least one single room) and smaller gardens than this.

It's a nice house. Good room sizes. Plenty of them (for a modern property). Not sure about middle class as it's not really about the house is it but middle earners definitely.

A house cannot be middle class. Its occupants could be, though - or any other class, for that matter. If you mean is it a house where affluent people are likely to live, then my answer is yes. But you can't draw any interpretations about their so-called class or background (whatever class means these days).

Can people please stop calling each other stupid? It's so rude, people just have different opinions and views. No-one is wrong, or right, or stupid.

Peace man! ☮

It’s much,much bigger than the average new house!

What the fuck are you even on about? I’m not saying books are clutter in general, but when you’re trying to showcase a space, yeah—they go. That’s literally how staging works. You strip out anything personal so people focus on the house, not your life. Would you leave dog beds, laundry, or random piles of stuff out? No. Because then it looks lived-in in a way that doesn’t sell well.

Taking out dog beds and kids’ toys doesn’t mean you don’t have them, and removing books doesn’t mean you don’t read—it means you understand basic marketing. It is genuinely embarrassing that you think a marketing brochure is a window into someone’s soul. Also, houses are often staged after the owner has already moved out because not everyone is so financially squeezed that they have to live in their old house while selling it like you probably would.

When my parents sold their multi-million dollar property—in an area far beyond the reach of most people on this thread—their realtor swapped out even their curated furniture for neutral pieces, recognizing that my parents’ personal style is not universal, only keeping a few things like their Hermès armchair and a $30k grey sofa in the basement to serve as neutral anchors. I did the exact same thing when I sold my last house; it’s standard practice for anyone who actually knows what they’re doing in a high-end market.

ETA: I had a quick browse on Rightmove and yeah… if you’re used to looking at low-rent listings where people leave all their shit out and take photos on an iPhone mid-chaos, then I get why actual professional staging is confusing to you. You’re literally too small-time to understand the market you're judging.

And yes—realtor. I’m American, calm down. AIBU genuinely has to be about 90% rage-bait at this point, because there’s no way this many people are truly this far out of their depth 😭

Rooms are small, back garden’s pokey - like most new-ish builds, they’ve tried to cram too much into too small a footprint. It’s not bad but I wouldn’t pay that price for it - I was shocked by the high prices and relatively poor quality of new builds when we were looking. But then, I’m northern so got our 5 bed detached with a massive garden in a lovely market town for less than half that 😂 Southern prices are insane!

Swimming pond

Ah I see.

A house, regardless of occupants, or it may even be empty, can certainly give off an air of being middle or working or upper class.

No one is walking through The Bishop’s Avenue thinking it’s a council estate.

No, I keep remortgaging to improve the place. It's not a palace but is quite nice.

You haven’t paid it off yet?