How hard really is it to live in a Grade 2 listed house?

[Smilingwhenrunning]

Basically found a house I love but it's grade 2 listed (no current work needed) and so DH says no way... Any experience or tips? Am I mad? Help me persuade DH 😂

Wouldn't do it again, let's put it that way.

And they tend to be harder to sell, since people are - rightly - wary of the restrictions involved to making any repairs or changes. It's not just the extra cost - and it invariably costs a lot more than it could - but also the faff of dealing with building inspectors etc: the bureaucracy of it all. And your buildings insurance only comes at a premium too, even if you go to a listed building specialist.

I do.

We’ve been allowed to extend it and convert it. So king as you respect the integrity of the property, you’ll have no problems. It hasn’t cost much more than any other building work .

Other than that it’s like living in any other house, albeit a very beautiful one!

Long not king!

We only rent ours and it's bad enough!!

Why is it bad though?

The problem is that even though no work is needed now, work will eventually be needed. For example, I live in a GII listed house and, after a while, the chimneys needed re-pointing. Just normal wear and tear over a number of years. I contacted the consultants who are involved when English Heritage need to fix something and got them to give me the age-appropriate recipe for the lime mortar. Just trying to do the right thing. 3 TIMES it was rejected and on the final submission, the conservation officers grudgingly agreed that this was ok but “will the sand be washed or unwashed?”. Aarrrrgh!

Shall I mention that when we needed a new roof (rain water was gushing through so we need to, you know, preserve the building) it took over a year and 10+ examples of tiles to get them to agree. And for the record, they agreed to the example we initially supplied.

It all rather depends on your conservation officers but in my experience, and the experience of various friends, conservation officers are aggressive, chippy, resentful nasty pieces of work whose principal MO is to work against you and not with you to protect our precious buildings.

I agree with your husband, I am afraid. I would never buy a listed building again. I am really sorry if this isnt the answer you were hoping for.

We’ve always worked well with our conservation officers although I agree they were really tricky characters!

I dunno, I guess we’ve just been lucky 🤷🏼‍♀️🤞

I live in a national park and in a listed building, as do most people who live within 10 miles of me. You just get on with it and accept it as part of normal life.

I totally don't advocate this approach by the way but lots of people round here also live by the motto that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission . As long as people aren't taking the piss the planning officers are pretty lenient.

I think it depends on a few other factors a bit. Obviously whether you need work done/would like to extend etc. But mostly I would say it’s about where it is.

Have had Grade II listed properties in two different areas. One in a very historic city where frankly, most of the housing stock in the middle is listed and grade II isn’t a big deal. There, it was really easy, we had substantial work done. Planning office was pretty helpful, were well versed in interpreting stuff in a way that maintained historicity but wasn’t onerous- as long as you weren’t obviously trying to take the piss they were pretty much fine with everything. All the local builders/architects etc knew the drill. It was fine.

The other one was in a small town in a rural area. New build housing much more prevalent than listed stuff. Local planning office were a nightmare because they weren’t well versed/practiced in dealing with these things, so took an age over everything and really nit-picked over everything out of fear of getting ti “wrong”. Most local builders etc only really knew how to do modern buildings. The few who did know how to work on older stuff were usually a lot older and had a long wait time for work. So it was either book them more than a year in advance or pay for someone to come a longer distance from a city a couple of hours away to do the work. Total nightmare to get anything done.

I grew up in a beautiful grade II listed house. I would never buy a listed house they tend to be money pits, plus finding anyone to do the sort of quality work needed is hard.

Our last house was a thatched Grade II listed cottage, built in 1600. No problems at all as in good nick, we renewed the thatch with no problems, and put a wood burner in (ie with chimney work). The building insurance was crazy expensive but I think that was the thatch rather than the listing. We sold it extremely quickly (their idea of a holiday bolt hole). We are in Devon though so not a property anomaly! We did hear that the new owner intended to add on a conservatory though, I don’t think he would have got far with that!

I wouldn't do it again. We had to replace windows to be an exact replica of the (ancient and rotten) wooden ones, and it cost more than three times the cost of standard windows.

My mum lives in a grade 2 listed. Her kitchen had modern glazing in it which was draughty. Can't be seen from street, just one miserable neighbour. She replaced like with like for back door and kitchen window and was told it wasn't good enough, had to be specific style in keeping. Cost £££ more to replace and a whole lot of hassle trying to find a tradesman

Have lived in two conservation areas and that’s bad enough. It can be incredibly frustrating to try to force things through planning that are required because e.g. the roof is leaking. I’m not sure I’d consider listed just because of the extra layer of bureaucracy

My job is to help people gain permission for works to listed buildings, so I know it can be tricky, but usually only for people who are resentful of the need to conserve the historic and architectural integrity of a building.

If you love the building for what it is and can’t envisage wanting to make any significant material changes, go for it. But if you think you might want to knock a wall through here and there to create something more open-plan, install double glazing, or add an extension (etc etc), then run a mile.

Absolutely positively do not buy it then think you will get away with making alterations without permission. You’d probably get away with it at first, but when it comes to selling you’d be completely and utterly stuffed. If the changes (and lack of permissions) came up in the surveys, which they usually do, the property would become unmortgageable and unsellable. I’ve seen this many, many times..

We haven't tried doing anything that needs permission yet, but we wouldn't have looked at the house if the previous owners had not replaced the roof! We are in a conservation area: there are a lot of other listed houses within the wider area so the conservation officers should be used to dealing with them. I have heard that one is much easier to deal with than the other and the whole experience can be incredibly protracted and frustrating. Having said that, I absolutely love our house. I never dreamed I could live anywhere like this and never want to move. This is my perfect home. I could deal with the planning irritations if I need to in the future. Not so sure about DH though.

If you love bureaucracy, paperwork and spending money on replacement fittings hand crafted by experts from Moldova who only work when it's a blue moon then go for it.

I love our house but I can't lie it's a headache when you need to do something. I walked in to it 2 decades ago and just knew we had to live here, it's weird but the house feels like part of the family.