to ask what you would not choose again if moving house

[chaletdays]

Just been reading the open plan thread. When I move again I would definitely not choose an open plan layout, or to buy a place right beside a green or any other communal area where children and teenagers will gather 24/7.

What would be your no nos if moving again?

Also - re all those 'laws' - and meant in the most positive way poss - you do rely on the usually good will of neighbours in all these boundary matters etc. remember mostly people do the right thing.

You can have lol the laws in the world but if you have a complete cock living at the end of the garden with previous for malicious suing for slander, and a vendetta against trees, hedges and wildlife and a love for concrete you are on a hiding to nowhere even with the best negotiating skills in the world (my Parents situation) sometimes there are idiots.. I've come to the conclusion that you can't plan for them so you might as well not worry.... So far we're lucky with neighbours

Don't worry Guy Our house is next to a pub, on a main road, with a stupid layout involving walking through the kitchen, it has neighbours drains under our garden, a weird thing with the partition wall being in different places on different floors, three floors, as well as the garage-doesn't-fit-a-car issue I mentioned earlier. So by all accounts from this thread everyone's basic nightmare.

But I love it and would need significant (and I mean significant) bribery to move.

I'd really reconsider the price of being close to a Rail station with a fast train to london for work, vs council tax vs actual rail fares. We (regrettably) didn't and are dually shafted by the Local Authority and the Rail company. When we move, we would happily be further away, and pay to park. It would be a lot less.

A semi with crap sound proofing and noisy arse neighbours - no no no

Corner of a cul-de-sac so that drive is boxed in and blocked by neighbours either side and they don't give a fuck cos they can get on and off their drive thank you no no NO

A jacuzzi bath if you have no intention of using that function or of replacing the bath anytime soon. It hadn't occurred to us that if you don't use the jacuzzi pipes, gunk builds up in them and comes out when you are having a normal bath. Basically means our bath is unusable until the bathroom finally reaches the top if our home renovation list, which will be a long time budget wise (dd uses it but she can cope with shallow enough baths not to reach the pipes).

Def would never touch a leasehold property again after being trapped with a leasehold flat that we struggled to sell because our freeholder (downstairs flat) was a total knob who hated us but refused to co-operate with the sale. We lost so many buyers because he would drag everything out for months and months.

Also would avoid a house without a garage or space to build one and I couldn't cope with a house that felt hemmed in by the houses around it. Our current 60s terrace is in a corner of the estate so is very open at the back with huge trees in some of the other gardens.

No shady garden. Full sun all day for me in future

I would have a septic tank again, despite ours failing. It turned out it wasn't nearly as expensive or disruptive to fix as I'd feared and is generally very easy to live with.

I would also buy another house with textured wallpaper, but I'd be knocking thousands off the asking price first!

I wouldn't buy a house with a north-facing garden. I don't care if most of the garden gets sun. The bit I want to drink wine in doesn't. It's the only problem we haven't been able to 'fix'

I would also remember that rural and farming sometimes equals millions of lorries at 5:30am. I think we're used to that now though...

My parents' house backs onto woodland and for the past 10 or so years I have harboured a bit of a dream about living in or on the edge of a wooded area. I do appear to be having selective amnesia regarding the mouse-sized spiders such properties attract though.

I'd also take more note of subtle clues when talking to the original owners. When asked about our neighbours (who are a pain), the last owner sighed and said, after a pause, "oh, well. They're alright". There was a volume of information in that last word!!!

We asked the previous owners the same question. We didn't think much of it when they answered with "they keep themselves very much to themselves". We've been here over 4 years now and I can count on one hand the number of times they have spoken to us. The most recent of those was to shout at our tree surgeon for lopping some of the branches off our tree (on our side of the fence, but apparently they liked to look at it and now, if we were to hang out of an upstairs window, we could see into their garden). Weirdos.

I once owned a 200 year old two up two down cottage with outside loo.

It was a twelve feet wide mid terrace.

It was our weekend home but our neighbours permanent home.

She was a bit arsey with us because she wanted our house but the owner wouldn't sell it. She bought the one next door and then he put ours up for sale and we bought it. so she wasn't happy.

We had right of way over their garden which meant she couldn't build out like we did to make a downstairs bathroom and bedroom. Kids had the upstairs bedrooms.

They gutted theirs completely. They were just left with the adjoining walls and the roof. The upstairs was made into two small bedrooms and a bathroom.

She had to be really nice to us because in order to get her staircase attached the wall it had to come out in our upstairs bedroom ie the ties to tie it in and make it secure.

She couldn't have done what she did without our consent. Being nice people we let her do it.

Then when our extension was built she started rattling her sabre saying our extension was 9 ins on her property. Remember these cottages were only 12 feet wide and the gardens weren't straight ....a bit like a dogs hind leg.

Anyway husband at the time told her if there was any more nonsense from her we would get her stairs removed from our bedroom.

I dont know, sometimes you give some people an inch and they take a mile.

She was cordial to us after that ie we exchanged hellos and I can understand her annoyance but it wasn't our fault.

Disagree with you about the green. Ours is lovely (in a modern estate) and is much nicer to look at than a road. There are kids sometimes but they play nicely and are certainly not hanging out smoking weed!

Victorian house-I didn't realise how little natural light there was downstairs -I would check this and wouldn't buy anywhere gloomy.
PS probably qualify as an old person-don't give a fuck what my neighbours are doing as long as they are quiet between midnight and 7am, so don't generalise. Not the case that I have nothing better to think about.
I have seen youngish people on here moaning about people mowing their lawn at 7pm on Sunday.

We have a 60s chalet bungalow, its very fugly (yellowish block brick on the outside,) but lovely inside as the previous owners made it open plan!! ..

The 2 bed rooms upstairs are very, very small as they are in the roof, and we only have the one bathroom...

But open plan is fine for us as we no longer have kids at home, but its a bit of a pain when people come to stay ..(as we have no doors downstairs ..)

I'd never buy a house again that didnt have room for a downstairs shower /loo ( we cant fit one in) , and I would like to get rid of all the laminate flooring the last people put in as its cold and just horrid really (id like sisal but cant afford that)

And, although this is a bit of a stealth boast I realise) , if you ever dream of the country , remember that huge garden takes up all of your time! (oh and you get 'country smells' and noises and lots of mud coming into the house from boots and pets )..

The bus service is non existent and shops are miles away except for the local expensive co op petrol prices are high also out of town so you mustnt get caught out with an empty tank ..

but I do know how lucky I am and I love it here ..

Takeaway Gerti ? Ooh i remember those!! (ive learnt how to make mean curries and chinese-y things now !!) and when we go visit friends in town for the weekend we always suggest getting a curry

South facing large french windows ... almost one wall of dining room ... lovely i thought.

Two minutes in there trying to eat or anything and you end up looking like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Corner shop very near to house - a minute at most
Handy for transport and schools and a park
Countryside accessible
Good local high street ten minute walk away ideally
Fireplaces
Garden with enough sun, big enough for having people over and BBQs
downstairs loo and upstairs bathroom
eat in kitchen
Space to extend so you can dream....

I'd be happy.

Living in the middle of rural nowhere isn't everyone's cup of tea.

But living in the countryside means you live and breath the countryside every day of the week. It ceases to be a place you visit when you get the time. A buzzard, a barn owl, a deer, a badger become a part of everyday life.

Our young children have an intrinsic understanding of the seasons as they watch the fields change. They see the lambs and calves appear in spring, then disappear shortly after, and the crops being harvested by the truck load. They know where their food comes from. They also know a JCB from a John Deere from a Massey Ferguson!

We're looking for a new house right now. We've tried to persuade ourselves that being close to facilities is a good idea. But when I'm surrounded by buildings 360 degrees I start to feel seriously claustrophobic. I really need to be able to see the horizon.

Just had an offer accepted on a house with lots of hideous textured wall paper ??.

We are moving from a house with shit neighbours, no parking and I would definitely never buy without a double driveway again. Made the mistake with this house of being sidetracked by decor and not the actual size - it's tiny and has no expansion potential. Have learned my lesson now though as aside from textured wallpaper, new house is big, lovely and can be extended.

Textured wallpaper CAN just be taken off... can't it? Eyes up the hall/landing wallpaper

Live in a 60s semi chalet-style - fairly ugly but warm (low ceilings) and light (big windows).

Kitchen was a very small galley - we couldn't even have units along both sides - had to extend the kitchen 1ft into the computer room to achieve that.

We live on a corner so have a big garden compared to others - front, side and rear. Great for our kids but it meant we sometimes got taken advantage of by piss-takers who thought it was a public park and we were free child-minders for their kids.

On the whole I'm happy. It is in a low-lying area but has never flooded (yet). If I was buying again I would pay more attention to that.

My top 5 essentials are location, schools, space, transport links and a good high street. Everything else I'm prepared to compromise quite massively on (as I did when I bought my fugly house).

But some of the compromises have been harder to live with than others. Next time, I would definitely want:

• a hallway (hate hate hate having the front door straight into the living room, which is also the route to both stairs and kitchen. It's really hard to make it feel like anything other than a corridor, and keeping it warm is impossible).

• 2 storeys, with wide stairs (3 storeys really rough on my arthritis, and we're always falling down them).

• a small garden (I hate gardening).

• kerb appeal (inside is looking quite nice, but outside still fugly and would need a lot of work and cash to change that)

• a NICE utility room, without a crappy flat roof, spiders and slugs.

• high ceilings and big windows.