What type of house would you never buy?

[PinterandPirandello]

Just looking at a thread where properties are being recommended for £750k. One of the houses was completely open plan downstairs which we would hate as a family. Dh likes to sit at the kitchen table and have the radio on (loudly), dc like to game and I like to watch telly in peace. Plus the dishwasher and washing machine on. So we prefer at least a couple of separate rooms. However, I can see open plan could work with small kids but I’d still want private space.

Flat. For many reasons due to issues with liabilities and leasehold.
Any leasehold property.
A three storey townhouse. Just ugh.
A house with a walkthrough lounge. It's a corridor.
A Victorian property. Money pit.

At £750k I'm going to be fussy.

I'd never buy a new-build. The 'youngest' house I’ve ever owned was Victorian; currrent house is c. 400 years old. I like quirky places.

ETA - quirky places with history, even better.

Money is the biggest factor really. I'd love a driveway, garden, upstairs toilet etc but I have to live where I can afford. There are some areas in my town that is definitely avoid though.

Me neither. Many houses on my street have been rendered and painted grey. It's so dreary-looking.
Grey road, grey pavement, grey houses and grey sky.

Absolutely! And add grey cars.

I read an article about colours in our life and the older you get the less vivid colours your eyes see. But then! We also actually lost colours in real life - eg colourful cars, colourful houses, plants etc.
They did research on how bleakly coloured our lives are.

Mos of the cars are black or grey (silver, charcoal etc) or white.
The people mainly wear black.

I always said I'd never live on a main road, but now I do and I was surprised how quickly I got used to it. However it's a main road that goes through a village and very different to the main roads in the highly densely populated city I lived in before. The little row of cottages I live in is well set back from the road, behind hedges, with good size front gardens and tbh I barely notice the traffic sounds in the back garden.

I also have cause to be grateful to it as it's enabled me to live in the kind of quirky, pretty little cottage I always dreamed of and in a vastly nicer environment! If my home was further from the road it would have been too expensive for me. It's all about compromises and this one has proved to be well worth it for me!

Anything newer than late Victorian.

You're potentially missing out on some beautiful Edwardian houses.

Would love to be able to afford anything, been renting for years now retired so unless my lottery numbers come up I won't have to worry about what not to buy

Quirky and/or old can be money pits too!

We've got the bank-balance to prove that but we still love them!

They don't have cellars (well not where we are anyway) - and I love a cellar.

A terraced "town house" with three floors. Not only lack of space/privacy and the potential noise from neighbours, but the constant up/down stairs would drive me insane.

I've stayed in a couple of 3 story narrow "holiday homes" (basically domestic dwellings on estates etc) and really hated them. Main bedroom on top floor, so constantly up/down three flights of stairs. No thanks!

Even worse are the ones where the living room/kitchen are the middle floor, so you have to drag your shopping, pram/kids, etc up a flight of stairs when you come in every day.

Not all Edwardian houses are the same. Ours does.

I couldn’t buy a house that was built between 1930 and 1990! I need full on character- so Victorian or Georgian. At a push I would take a new house that was amazingly well designed.

Nothing semi- detached or terraced as I need space and no noise. Need a garden.

It must have a garden. I could be content with a small courtyard but having some outside space is a non negotiable.

It also must have its own driveway. I hated living in a little terrace house with on street parking, coming home from a long day of work and having to drive around the local streets to find somewhere to park. Nightmare!

I wouldn't buy a house without a separate living room..... I want to be able to shut the door on the kitchen. Or where the living room is a glorified corridor and you have to walk through it to get to the kitchen or other rooms. We had that in my last house and I absolutely hated it.

Dd2 lives in a 3 storey Edwardian (no cellar) semi and she has the living room on the middle floor. It does mean most visitors stay in the kitchen/dining room!

Don't they always no matter what though? We have a big open plan kitchen-dining-room-snug and a proper living room on the same floor and I have to practically force people out of the kitchen and into the living room when we have people over.

@user112256479 that's true! Dd2 doesn't really have any comfy chairs in her kitchen/dining room and after a few hours they start to feel very hard. Also as so few people go upstairs to the living room it isn't really set up for guests. There is another very large room on the ground floor but they keep that empty so they can dance in there.

@Manthide " another very large room on the ground floor they keep empty so they can dance in there " is the best, loveliest thing I have read on MN all day.
Just great.

Haven't rtft but one of those lots of glass, open plan houses that always seem to feature in murder/psychological thrillers on TV.

I'm looking ahead to older age, so location is top of the list. I wouldn't look at anything not near to shops, restaurants and bars, GP, library, public transport and so on. So basically in a town centre.

I wouldn't buy on an estate.

I'm not keen on en suites - maybe one in a guest room, or if I lived alone, but I don't want to share a bedroom with a loo in it.

No open plan. Maybe a kitchen diner at a push (although I prefer a dining room, so it can be another sitting room when we aren't eating), but definitely a separate sitting room.

Agreed about stairs in the reception rooms. I like a hall.

No downstairs loo would be a probable dealbreaker.

I don't care whether it's terrace/semi/detached. I've lived in terraces that are much quieter than modern detached houses with attached gardens, but I'd want one with a back lane that bin men can access, so there's no need to drag a wheelie bin through the house or have it at the front.

Some sort of parking space is necessary. Preferably a garage - not so much for a car, but for husband's Very Important Things that he never uses but would have to be stored in the house otherwise.

A massive garden would be scary. I want enough to keep us off the road, so nobody can look in the windows, but I'm not looking for gardening maintenance.

Must have a big enough kitchen to eat in comfortably or a seperate dining room. Utility room is a must. Having a bath is a must .Don't want people looking into the living room from the street outside or neighbouring houses.
Must have a garden I can sit in that isn’t North facing or overlooked.
Must have a decent sized bathroom not a poky shower room.
I don’t like open plan or open tread stairs or poky bedrooms with no space to swing a cat.
Must have storage and a loft and garage.
Don’t want to live near a main road or airport.
Sunny light rooms essential.
Own drive essential.

A bungalow. I need to be able to have bedroom windows open at night - more than just a crack - and in too many places it just wouldn’t be safe.
So ditto any ground floor flat.
And any house with an open plan downstairs.