Homes Under The Hammer Selfish Ruiners of EVERYTHING

[LNPW]

AIBU to really hate people on HUTH who buy beautiful Victorian family homes and turn them into scruffy flats set for a life of minging curtains and a million wheelie bins parked outside?

I know it makes financial sense to do this if you buy a big property but ffs ... leave the Victorian shit alone!

I watched one where they bought a gorgeous 5 bedroom Victorian terraced house. Huge original fireplaces, stain glass windows etc etc ... it needed a lot of work doing yes but the building itself was amazing.

“So, what are your plans for this gorgeous property”

“Well I’m gonna turn it into flats innit” fuck off

I've always hated the program. Developers snapping up cheap properties with their (at that time) cheaper buy to let mortgages, and depriving families and couples from actually getting on the property ladder. Very unflat playing field at the time, and now buy to let owners have made so much money and have so much buying power, they still have an advantage over buyers who actually want to live in a property.

Not too bothered about the large old properties being turned into flats, as they are much more affordable to buy for first time buyers, although the buy to rent people still annoy me.

Guilty pleasure though looking at all the before and after pics

I watched one and nothing had been done THREE YEARS later! Waste of my fucking time.
My opinion exactly @Mammyloveswine :)
I get the rage when that happens.

@CarolefeckinBaskin it really winds me up! Especially if it's the last reveal on the show

@MrsDoylesTeaBags

I'm howling!
Your description of the musical interludes was so much better than mine

I loved the episode where a newly engaged couple ( I think she was a pub manager) renovated a 1930s house beautifully . And there was an episode where a carpenter made everything himself . Window frames , doors everything . It was unique . Both renovated as their own homes tho .
I can't stand the ones ( mainly location location ) where a young couple view an amazing house and the women starts sobbing because it's not perfect . The kitchens too small or it's too far from her friends or her favourite area . And Kirsty says " I really feel for Lucinda" I don't !

Everyone seems to live so minimalist on grand designs actually they prob keep the caravan and fill it to the brim with all their "stuff" an hour before Kevin Mccloud arrives

Get such inspiration from the 50 year old men on there who still think the year 2000’s Changing Rooms is the look to go for, brown carpets, laminate and magnolia galore!

Yes bread OR they've stuffed sooo much into their fitted cupboards , that the whole lot would crash out if they opened them.

I HATED minamalism and I still do. It's a non pile of shite!!!!! Give me a HOME with some bits lying about well more than a few bits in our house but we like it!!!!

Well now you've enraged me even more:

first - HUTH, home of the unimaginative get rich quick dull as dishwater property "developer"

second - Escape To The Country, very silly (mainly older) people imagining lovely things about country life without considering any of the downsides

third - Grand Designs!! Kevin and his ludicrously pretentious pieces to camera and all the mwah mwahs with the wife of the family. And ridiculous vast empty kitchen/dining/family rooms with about as much originality as the magnolia walls and grey carpets of 3 bed terraces in Derby.

Perhaps I should give up on property programmes altogether

Hah, I love HUTH but ETTC is ridiculous. "We want to move from a busy town in Essex to the edge of a village in Wiltshire: we only need a shop and a pub." You'll be bored out of your mind in 3 weeks. And I live in Wiltshire!

Also agree that they always want a massive garden despite being retired. I think they imagine pottering about with a trowel in summer rather than 2 days a week of weeding and squashing an acre worth of grass cuttings into a green bin that's emptied monthly.

Thanks @Dieu Its my favourite bit, I just sit waiting for the comment and guessing what the song will be.

Grand Designs just really offends me. I quite liked the very early ones which were quite original and creative but now people just seem to build ridiculously large show homes that noone would ever be able to realistically live in.

There was one on the last series where this family had a beautiful house right on the sea in the south, but the guy had this fantasy of building something out of a Bond movie next door. it took years and he still didn't finish it, he lost all his money, his wife and his kids ended up cutting him off he became so obsessed. and just had an empty, half built crumbling wreck to show for it. Really sad.

I remember specifically watching ETTC because it was near me! however they told so many lies about how close to the train line all the houses were it was ludicrous!

I've always hated the program. Developers snapping up cheap properties with their (at that time) cheaper buy to let mortgages, and depriving families and couples from actually getting on the property ladder

Tbf a lot are unmortgageable properties that a Ftb unless they were cash buyers couldn’t buy anyway and the ones that are on which are mortgageable there isn’t anything to stop a ftb bidding and buying as long as they have their mortgage sorted before hand.
They are public auctions any one can attend and put in a bid

There are loads on Hammer that are unmortgageable. Non-standard construction or no kitchen or both.

Chic But there was ONE Grand Designs (I'm not sure it was on that programme) in France where they and their friends built it all out of reused tyres , and wattle and daub, insulated with hay bales (i think) beautifully. It blended into the hillside well. They revisited it too. it was still lovely.

I sometimes wonder what becomes of the kids of the couples in GD. They seem to grow up in houses that are more like industrial warehouses ('Love the use of bare concrete!' - Kevin).

Do they end up going round to schoolfriend's houses and staring aghast at the walls and carpets and wondering how the family manage to cycle from living room to 'study' in a house so small?

Yes Zaphod and the thought of the toddlers falling over onto bleedin' 'bare concrete" floors or walking into those toddler height glass coffee tables.

Like living in a cold tomb. Hell on earth. (Can you tell I don't like those Grand Designs) .

ppeatfruit - and all those 'mezzanines' with balconies that are just begging a ten year old to climb up over and swing on, twenty feet above the concrete floor of the living room?

The mums must spend a LOT of their time just trying to make sure that the toddlers aren't dragging chairs and climbing up and over the teeny tiny little ballistrades and balconies.

And don't get me started on the trendy 'open plan' staircases...

Have been watching a lot of Fantasy Homes by the Sea as a way of watching seaside towns on TV. It always amazes me how some young couples have so much money to spend. “We are in Dorset with a young couple in there early 20s who have £600,000 to spend on a holiday home. In 2013.”

@ppeatfruit I really liked that one, but the BEST was the one built in the woods by a bloke and lots of volunteers, from trees and bales and things. He'd been living there in a tent before, but when they went back to visit, he was married and had a family, and it was SO beautiful.

My ds and his partner renovate houses that are currently in a very bad state/uninhabitable. They do it carefully, turning the property into a safe home at a fair rent. They do all the management and maintenance themselves.
However, the first property they did was rented to people who destroyed the kitchen, burnt the carpets, window sills and work tops, flooded the bathroom and brought bedbugs.
They were HCPs.
Not everybody who renovates property is bad.

Somebody on here ruined HUTH for me.

They mentioned that when they revisit the done-up property, 9 times out of 10 they've painted it beige and put in a brown carpet. I can't unsee that now.

I can't watch it now as it's true.

A lot of youngsters inherit thousands from grandparents etc. Some friends of mine had an 80 k inheritance in the 90s! They got on so much better than me and my dh who had nothing much. I'm sure many start out like that.
I always moan about these shows but I end up watching them! ( especially now there isn't much on ! )

Do you remember that Grand Designs where it was basically a concrete box with sliding room dividers for 'his & hers' sections? Bloody awful. And why do most of them end up looking like primary schools?

The one in the woods was my absolute favourite. The water tower one was good as well.

And sometimes the people are so awful I'm secretly hoping everything goes wrong. I mean, WHY buy £80,000 windows imported from Germany and then wonder why your budget has run out?

Does Kev how round poking holes in the bloke's condoms and swapping the woman's pill for Smints? It's the only reason I can think of for everyone getting pregnant .

Everyone waxes lyrical about Ben in the woods but tbh, whilst it was cute, it was a bit too earnest for me . I’m aware that’s not a popular opinion. I don’t like the big, soulless concrete modernist jobs either. Grand Designs and licky lipped Kevin aren’t really for me.