AIBU to think a big house is a lot of work and expensive to run.

[Thingsthatgo]

We have outgrown our little terrace house, and have found somewhere to buy which I love. I am very excited about having more space. Other than when I was a child and living with my parents I have always lived in places that I have considered too small; tiny basement flats and little terrace houses.
Is a big house going to be a huge amount of work/upkeep? My dh is great around the house (better than me), so it will be shared responsibility, but I want to be prepared for the money and expense involved. It is 100 years old, and will be expensive to heat I imagine, plus more council tax. What other things might I need to consider?

@ElanaD

10% are you insane?

@ElanaD

A good guideline is to budget 10% of house value per year for upkeep/repairs.

I spend half of that and I'm doing some pretty extensive renovation work.

£450 a month on gas and electricity here
To replace the windows close to £100,000

We're in a 300yr old big house and I can confirm that:

• it's cold in winter, genuinely cold
• heating is expensive
• electricity use is high despite our frugality
• everything is complicated, all trades say 'oh, I've not seen a system like this before'
• replacement parts cannot be bought at B&Q
• your standards will need to drop. Spiders everywhere, open fires = dust,
• if you haven't gone into a certain room or part of the house for a month or two = unexpected surprise when you do.

But it's beautiful and historic and I love it.

@ElanaD

A good guideline is to budget 10% of house value per year for upkeep/repairs.

Are you sure about that? That would mean my budgeting 45k each year.

I live in a larger than average 5 bed detached house, yes it isn’t cheap to run or keep. But it has been a lovely family home to raise our children in, no regrets, we have just put our house on the market as we are now looking to downsize.

I made a similar jump. I love our big victorian house but had to find money for:

Heating (bills are £150 per month averaged across the year)
Council tax
Custom made curtains as off the shelf curtains are not long enough, and 2 pairs are needed for each bay window.
External painting
Renovation and double glazing of sash windows
More, and bigger, furniture
A new roof which didn’t show up on the survey.

In terms of upkeep, cobwebs, fancy skirting boards and mouldings etc are harder to clean than plain flat surfaces
The whole house gets really dusty because of open chimneys
Cleaning multiple rooms and bathrooms takes extra time

Totally worth it though, if you don’t mind it being a high maintenance moneypit

@ElanaD

A good guideline is to budget 10% of house value per year for upkeep/repairs.

Nope, it's 1%.

My parents were envious of my small cosy terraced house when they were living in their huge, freezing Edwardian money pit. They downsized to a new build when they retired, low maintenance and easy to keep warm.

A good guideline is to budget 10% of house value per year for upkeep/repairs

Lol. It’s one percent, not ten. Ten percent would be batshit. Even one percent is very high for most properties.

£450 a month on gas and electricity here

How enormous is your house? I'd only expect that kind of bill in any sort of 'normal' sized house if the occupants actively pursued their keen interest in cultivating 'herbs'.

Trying to think what % we spend on ours.
In 3 years we’ve spent £3000 on new front and back doors, £1000ish on the garden, £800 on repiping two showers and £500 on some roof repairs. Maybe £1000 on general decorating. So a fair bit less than 1% of the value annually.

Heating is going to depend a lot on actual size, building material and location. A stone house on a hilltop is going to be colder than a brick building in built-up area. Our 3 bed semi is just over 100 years old and not freezing cold at all; the only draughts have been caused by subsidence in the 70s. We did replace the original windows and insulate the loft but over quite a long period. We've had some repointing done, and the paintwork gets done about once a decade.

This obviously isn't a large house like yours, but I did spend my teens in quite a large 5 bed house. My mother always said it was a lot easier to keep clean than the small house we had previously lived in. The garden was low maintenance, mainly conifers that needed nothing done to them, and small patches of lawn.

We moved to a much bigger place and there are more jobs to do such as more bathrooms to clean, more floor space to clean, more windows etc. But we (I) did my best effort to Marie Kondo everything when we moved in and made sure everything had a home. We went really minimalist, chucked (recycles/charity shopped) a tonne of stuff, several trips to the civic amenity centre, etc. The garden is also much less work - previous owner had decking, astro turf and gravel path - so much less work that we had. It's therefore not much more work apart from cleaning the bathrooms - and everything stays pretty tidy even with 2 late teen DC. We also have the robot vacuum cleaner.

So provided you set it all up to be low maintenance from the start it won't be tons more work.

Are you really sure that moving to a big house where you will be “broke” is a good idea in a pandemic?

Our house is over 100 years old, it throws up the odd curve ball and none of the walls are completely straight but it's solid, spacious and actually has character. You might want to think about a cleaner if you both work full time

I have a large home and it is a nightmare since constantly need to replace/repair/repaint. I will downsize in a few years

@cjpark

Can I ask how a wooden gate cost 2 grand?

We have a place with 18 acres so I'm no stranger to a gate.

A simple 12 foot gate from a country store costs no more than a couple of hundred even with 2 massive strainers.

Was it hand carved from oak or something?

10-20% to maintain ridiculous

Yes an actual big house is and especially a large period house. Is the house you’re buying large in comparison to your current house or actually large?

For ref we have a large (3 floor, 5 bed, extended kitchen + sep dining room and sitting room, several bathrooms/toilets Edwardian house) not a stealth boast, we just do, it’s going on the market in the next month and a big part of that decision is that it’s just too much to maintain. Firstly in terms of day to day keeping it clean and tidy (there’s so much F’ing house, landings, passageways etc. which you don’t get in a newer/smaller property but which have to be kept clean just like rooms - I can’t just nip round with the vac - there’s 3 staircases and 3 landings!!!!!). I want to work and even with a cleaner once a week it’s too much for me with children to look after as well. And yes I know this is first world problems and people may roll there eyes but it is the truth and is really something I wish someone had warned me about before we bought it.

Then there’s maintenance of a larger period property. Although this gets better once it you’ve modernised.

@ElanaD

A good guideline is to budget 10% of house value per year for upkeep/repairs.

What the fuck? So a £400k house needs £40k a year spent on it?

This is utter bollocks. £4k, maybe.

We are in a bigger house - approx 50 years old so not old but not modern either. Plus points are loads of storage space and because bigger clutter seems not as obvious.
But takes much more work to clean than our 4 bed small modern new build. I could whisk round that in a morning and be tidy and clean. Outside space is never ending to keep on top of.
My biggest thing though is that it is cold in winter. We have got a wood burner but it is still cold. Has anyone found a solution to this? Would a better boiler help?

£450 a month on gas and electricity here

That makes me feel better about our £328 a month.

Not counting wood and coal for the sitting room fire, lit most evenings during autumn, winter and spring.

@Teenageromance we updated our boiler and heating system and new rads and it made a massive difference. The radiators on the furthest away from boiler were never going to get very hot because what the prev owners had was a standard combo boiler like we had in our 2 bed terrace. Got a condensing boiler and it’s made a big diff.

Also moved the rads away from windows and made sure they were the right size for the rooms. Most of were too small - there’s templates for doing the calculations online.

We moved into what is now a 100 year old house 20 years ago, We got it cheapish because it needed a lot of work done to it,

The biggest things before we moved in were re-wiring and re-plumbing both of which needed doing to make the house save. They cost a lot and made a HUGE amount of mess.

Since then the things that have made the biggest difference have been:

1. A power flush of the heating system. This is still the best value for money I have ever spent. We went from having the heating on 24 hours a day with added fan heaters and an open fire to being able to take off coats and jumpers.

2. Double glazing. We had old Crittal windows that let blasts of wind in. We had them replaced with new steel double glazed windows that look almost the same but mean that the heating comes on much less than before.

3. A new boiler. The original boiler was ancient and replacing it lead to a drop in our bills.

4. Loft insulation. There was none so we put in loads for not too much expense. When it snows our house is now the last one to lose the snow from the roof so it's working.