Shitty homes

[madcatladyforever]

AIBU to think that if you have bought a huge investment i.e a house you should take take care of it?
I've moved 300 miles from home with work and I'm renting a bedsit while I look for a house to buy.
Every single one I've looked at is a shit hole. Dirty, not decorated in years, a mess and overgrown garden. I feel so despondent.
I don't want to buy a house I'm going to have to do tons of work on and start from scratch in the garden
My own house was modest but it was nicely painted by me, the garden with a bit of hard work was lovely and it sold in 2 weeks after going on the market. The buyers said it was the nicest house in the price range.
I really don't want to buy some shit hole and spend the next 5 years doing it up and having to deep clean it at my age.
Houses here are much cheaper but just so run down and dirty.
If you had an expensive investment would you not want to maintain and look after it inside and out? I just cannot understand the mentality.
I had a look at what should have been a lovely bungalow today in an area of oupstanding natural beauty owned by a sinice bloke and it would have taken several big skips to remove all the crap from the house and Garden before even starting to refurbish and he wanted top dollar for it.

You are describing my house.
I am usually able to keep the garden neat, but couldn't this year as I have been away too much, due to family matters in another country.
The house needs some work, I have saved up a very good amount to get this done, but I cannot find anyone to do it. Or I am given completely ridiculous quotations, which make me think they do not actually want the work, presumably because an old house is more challenging than a new build?
I am not houseproud, to me it is a place to store my clutter whilst I am away, working.

I live by myself and work full time. Sure I could use all my spare time and money doing house and garden stuff but that’s not what I want to do with my life.

I’m doing bits and pieces to my house as time, money and energy allows but it’s never going to be immaculate.

I’m also of the view that constantly ripping out kitchens and bathrooms and buying new furniture is a pretty wasteful way to live.

I'm looking at houses all over, well in 2 locations. I would say you buy a house, then whatever your budget allows, make the house your own. Paint is cheap enough, so is a carpet cleaner.

Whenever I lived in rented houses, this was a long time ago, on entering and leaving, I would go as far to run a cloth over the skirting, plus switches, etc.

Houses in my home village are crazy money, rather small, plus decorated to the owners taste. Even larger houses vary in condition. I recall apologising to the in-laws as SIL keeps a show home, I don't have the energy for that. FIL said a happy home is a lived in home. I do find SIL's house rather clinical, with many rules that make one

Another thing is many barely get paid enough to survive, so they may be selling to downsize, to use any remaining equity as part of a pension pot. Older people have a unique taste in a whole array of things, like sexy patterned carpets, the wallpaper that you curse having to strip, walls in a variety of shades of magnolia.

Maybe it could be a bartering point, that you need £5k off the price to decorate and sort things to your standards. The worst they can say is no. When looking at a house, try and ignore the things you can change, try and vision how you would make it look.

After a relative died, one of their children bought the others out. They literally redid everything to their standards, including re-plastering walls. It's the joy of being a buyer.

They do have joint ownership on new houses, plus other incentives, that way you get a blank canvas.

My DD and her new DH are looking for a forever home in which to start a family in a very high value area. The houses they have looked at are all doer uppers and would still require a very great deal of work to bring them up to a smart standard. One had a pink bathroom suite and another a turquoise one which stank to high heaven. All the houses seemed to belong to old people who had stopped improving then in the 1980’s.

This is exactly the sort of place we bought ourselves in 1984. It had seven layers of wallpaper, cracked walls and ceilings, storage heaters full of bricks, wood chip on all the walls, beautiful stair risers blocked in by hardboard, a six foot square kitchen and so on. Over time we have made it into a lovely home and poured money, blood, sweat and tears into it.

We think the DD should do the same but she doesn’t want the trouble or the expense of paying someone else to do the work and she works and plays too hard to do it herself.

It is a choice, OP. In my view I would make offers, buy a wreck and pay people to come and do it up and clean it for you. I do agree that some people are grubby and messy but house prices are based on many elements, the biggest being location and land prices, not the state of the property.

Just buy in a nice area and make the house nice yourself. In the long run, being honest and a bit snobbish, what the neighbours are like is more important than what colour the loo is or whether you have to do a deep clean before moving in.

It's not as straightforward as you think OP. Both DH and I work form home. Having decorators in would be a massive disruption to our work. Doing it ourselves would also take our time and loss of income. We could book holiday time and do it, but we prefer to spend every minute of the holidays with Dc. We love going out and about and exploring with the family and prioritise that with our time and money rather than making a show home.

Having said that, I would de-clutter and scrub the house before putting it on the market. But I might not redecorate.

If it really is a lick of paint, a scrub and a mow then why cant you do it when you buy it? It hardly costs anything, right?

This is still a bit narrow minded, some people haven't got a car to take rubbish to the dump. Or money to buy a lawn mower when it breaks or to buy white paint and rollers. I don't know if you've ever experienced what it's like to have no money but painting your walls white is not the top priority! 🤦 Not to mention being elderly or disabled or having young kids is going to hinder some people doing these things.

You said houses in your new area were cheaper than where you’ve moved from then you complain about having to pay top price for a shit hole. Which is it?

If the area is cheaper then it’s likely an area where people have less money. If you can only just afford basic living costs you probably don’t have money spare to save on home improvements.

Just spend the money you’ve saved by moving to a cheaper area on doing the house up.

The high quality kitchen I installed 15 years ago is still functioning well and looking good. It's a kitchen, not a fashion statement. Failure to replace it with a bang up to date model is not "failing to take care of my investment".

My "overgrown" garden is full of interest and is also hugely productive in terms of fruit and vegetables.

Is it really so hard to understand that for some people a house is a home not an investment, and some people may have tastes which do not match your own?

When my DH was still my DP and we were still in a LDR, he lived 100 miles away - he suddenly diagnosed with cancer in the May and by the August I'd moved lock stock and barrel over to his, to care for him following major surgery. In that time my garden went from being a beautiful haven (I'm a very keen gardener), into a jungle with 4ft grass and weeds and dead plants, front and back. My house smelt musty and dirty just from me not living in it for the space of only a few months It showed me how quickly a property can fall into disrepair in such a short space of time.

Just saying OP, don't judge people by the look of their house, there is a story behind every one of those houses that may have tragic or adverse circumstances behind them.

I don't think you're intentionally goady, but you need to look beyond the immediate

To be fair, houses in disrepair, or dirty basically, are not limited to lower price houses. I posted about it before, I saw one which was seven figures, and it had rubbish on the floor, everything dirty the smell of cat piss made your eyes water, everything run down.

And yes it was a seven figure house, but the reality was if it was clean and in a decent state it would have been on for more.

If it's a shit hole the price it sells for always ultimately reflects it.

You have a choice then . Either buy a new build, put in a low offer and use the money you save to pay someone to clean and renovate, or carry on looking.
Simple really, and no need to stress about it.

If you're saying that it's all the houses in your price bracket that are filthy, unkempt and neglected,

It could also be that styles differ hugely. Seen it dozens of times on here that people who are all into the white, grey, crushed velvet, cleaning as a hobby and air freshener everywhere people think any house which is a bit quirky and boho is "filthy". Some people want to live in a house which resembles an operating theatre where everything is sterile, white and shiny.

Others prefer a more relaxed style. It's the differing expectations more than the fact that the properties are genuinely unclean.

Looks like you need to change your budget or look in a cheaper area. Personally I would rather buy a shit hole and spend a month doing it up putting my own stamp on it. Maybe look at new builds or shared ownership if you want more than you can afford. You can’t buy a nice house round our ways for less than 400k so good Luck x

It could also be that styles differ hugely. Seen it dozens of times on here that people who are all into the white, grey, crushed velvet, cleaning as a hobby and air freshener everywhere people think any house which is a bit quirky and boho is "filthy". Some people want to live in a house which resembles an operating theatre where everything is sterile, white and shiny

This. My house is filthy. Dog hair everywhere and peeling paint. Ancient kitchen, huge overgrown garden. But it's very large, has lots of history, full of dusty expensive furniture, books everywhere, dogs everywhere. I occasionally give it a deep clean, and try to keep the bathrooms and kitchen relatively clean, but I like it like that.

More expensive houses are surely more likely to fall into disrepair though? If you own a million pound flat and you’re down on your luck, you can’t just make like OP and slap some wilkos paint on your walls - it will look unprofessional, untidy and cheap. Especially if what you actually need is plastering, damp treatment etc You can’t, as a poster above said, slap the cheapest kitchen in. You get to the point where you’re better off leaving the very expensive 1999 kitchen in and the walls unpainted (voice of experience)

Sounds like your living a middle class dream there trewser

Case in point about styles - this house has just come on the market near me,

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-65380836.html

From my point of view it's a total nightmare. White everywhere. No colour at all. Light grey carpet. Very plain kitchen. I suspect it may have been dressed to sell as there are no curtains or blinds at the windows but urgh - totally soul less and I would hate living somewhere so bland and unhomely. Others would love it.

This house is a couple of miles away and a totally different style.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-64952340.html

LOADS of colour. Lots of stuff and painted furniture. Love it. Others would walk in and have a heart attack wondering how much white/grey paint they'd have to buy.

In big cities with limited housing (Oxford, London, Edinburgh, some seaside towns) the condition doesn’t matter. The price is based on the size of the house and plot.

I don’t really understand who those houses are related to filthy homes in disrepair? There is literally no one would would rather buy a filthy house (filthy with someone else’s dirt) all other things being equal

@OtraCosaMariposa In my opinion neither is wrong.
House no 1 is blank canvas and people can go and paint it their favourite colour, add this and that.
House 2 is more my style, but painting light over dark is a pain so someone who likes lighter colours will have their work cut out.
Neither is wrong. It depends on who looks at it.
It's a personal taste.
I would though rather take simple and plain one now after I spent ages taking pretty, but not my style wallpapers off.

Of course nobody would buy a filthy house. But saying that ALL that is available is filthy houses is a bit weird. How are you defining filthy? Does the OP mean that they are in a general state of disrepair, broken windows and kitchen cupboard doors hanging off? Or does she mean that they are genuinely dirty with layers of grease and grime? Or perhaps fire-damaged? Or does she mean that the decor is dated and not to her taste?

OP appears to have an unrealistic expectation of what she can get for her money. If a property genuinely is a "shit hole" then the price should reflect that. If not, it won't sell. I struggle to believe that every single "top dollar" house is filthy and run-down.

The only way to avoid this is to buy a new build but even they have their pitfalls, as does everything in life.

They're more expensive, and are generally smaller inside and out but may be more likely to have off-road parking.

On the plus side they tend to have good insulation (perhaps too good in hot summers), loads of electric sockets, central heating, and burglar alarms. They have a ten year guarantee and shouldn't need heavy maintenance or deep cleaning.

Swings and roundabouts as I said.

If the OP genuinely is only seeing filthy hoUses they clearly dont have enough budget to buy anything but the bottom of her chosen market.

It’s not about choosing between a pristine white box and “personality”

I find it odd so many people believe themselves so full of personality they need to cultivate it though.