To share my property porn peeves

[Canigetaoooh]

I love nothing more than a relaxing nosey on rightmove.

but want to share my dislikes.

new homes. Nothing wrong with them to live in. But we see nothing interesting in themes. They all look kinda “same”.

islands with a cooker or the main sink in them. Happy with a prep sink in them though

stairs in the living room

fully open plan

bedrooms off of the kitchen table or utility room

Surely a lot of these peeves are simply budgetary? You'd hate my house - it's a back to back, so no porch, door opens straight into the (one room) downstairs, with two sets of stairs in the same room, one going up to the first floor and down to the cellar.

But that's the nature of a small house.

Definitely wall mounted TVs. I don’t want to break my neck watching tv.

Pops of colour. Looks a bit shit.

Vinyl flooring.

Feature walls/ glitter paint/ wall stickers.

@garlictwist absolutely. I live in a very similar house. Everything else is personal choice.

All open plan-living area, kitchen, dining area- no separate room with a door
Four bedrooms but not enough living space downstairs
garish wallpaper and carpet
no downstairs toilet
brick fireplaces

Agree with toilet off kitchen. SIL had her kitchen extended a few years ago and added a small downstairs toilet. I hated the idea of just a piece of wood separating people eating their dinner from someone having a dump😅 If it was quiet, you could hear everything. We all used the one upstairs when we stayed, much to her annoyance.

@garlictwist only if people are looking for a certain size house. My partners house he sold last year was a similar layout to what you’ve described and it was a beautiful house. Sold within a week!

Plastic grass, galley kitchens, separate kitchen and dining rooms that are nowhere near each other, wallpaper everywhere

When they stretch the pics i count the kitchen cupboards to get a better idea

Stairs that lead directly upstairs from the kitchen, I don't like stale cooking smells wafting upstairs.

Completely open plan - I have to factor in the cost of reinserting dividing walls and doors. Open plan layouts cost money in heating bills and there's no privacy, you can't watch TV without being disturbed.

The phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ comes to mind.

It really annoys me when people try to engage me in conversation when I’m cooking and multitasking. It really disrupts my train of thought.

Suppose it could be different when hosting and cooking at a leisurely pace.

Those huge, usually velvet, headboards that are attached to the wall, not the bed. You know it's going to be a huge mess when they move out.

We saw one of these and the owner offered to leave the headboards in situ. No thanks hun.

Toilets by the front door. I understand why they are in that position when retrofitted in Victorian or Edwardian houses; that was often the only available space with access to the sewer. But why design it that way in a modern house built from scratch? Who wants visitors waiting by the front door to be greeted by the sound and smell of a poo?

I think most of these are individual taste, which is, of course, different in all of us. What I really dislike in listings is photos showing how uncared for a house is. Crumpled beds, clutter and mess, bathrooms and kitchens that look as though they’ve never been cleaned, overgrown gardens and grubby looking furniture.

Front doors leading directly into the main room (no hall)
Wallpaper with huge patterns
Bling type furniture
Double beds shoehorned into what is obviously a single room
Shower curtains (sorry but yuk)
Estate pics taken from a ladder to hide the fact that a room is the side of a hankie or of flowers/ornaments - a waste of time

• Period houses where they’ve dropped the ceiling so they can insert downlighters.

• modern houses that are littered with inserted downlighters

• downlighters

I dint like it when most if the pictures on a listing are selling a life style rather than showing the whole room. Lots of door knobs at an arty angle, or a nice fruit bowl with a soft/blurry kitchen in the background. Then a close up of half the woodburner and some logs. Then the next picture is basically the bedding at the foot of the bed with a nice dressing gown hung up.
Just show me the whole room.

Well, DH is different. I’m not bothered either way, especially as I do very little of the cooking, but he finds cooking relaxing, and liked having a cooker in the island in a house we rented briefly in 2020.

I hate it when the Streetview link randomly takes you into some shop or restaurant and you can't escape out onto the street. Thought it was fun at first but now it's just annoying.

Me too! Always feelmlike an old public loo when i see them, or grotty underground station. Thought it was just me!

Mine are when somewhere is only a given time from the centre of the town or city concerned. Which is probably only if the trains are on time (so about once a month) or if travelling by car, all traffic lights are green and there is no-one else on the road.

Open plan. Sorry but I need somewhere to storm off to! 😂

When you can see on the floor plan there's loads of rooms but only photos of a few of them.

Advertised as having X number of "double bedrooms" but when you look at the pics at least one of the rooms could only fit a double bed in if you put nothing else in there.

"Detached" houses that are so close to their neighbours you might as well be Terraced.

Bathrooms photos - When the loo seat is up on pictures if bathrooms...why would you leave it up for the photo? And the Toilet Duck and bathroom spray are.lined up on the bathroom window sill. Just why! Wouldn't if course put me off looking, just get frustrated at the estate agents who are probably getting paid £££ and not sorting that out for the photos.

Actually just crap estate agent photos full stop irritate me. They are supposed to be offering a professional service yet can't even take a decent photo.

Massively high ceilings, e.g. in barn conversions. I always worry about spending a fortune to heat it all. And when there are beams up there, they must surely gather so much dust?

Plastic grass doesn't bother me because you can get rid of it easily. I can always tell when photos have been stretched.

Nope, me too! They remind me of public toilets.

All open plan downstairs.

When the number of bedrooms doesn’t match the downstairs space.

The habit of new builds each having an en suite in the bedrooms.