AIBU to ask why so many £1m houses....

[Locationvshousevsgarden]

..have very old bathrooms and /or kitchens and need updating ? We are house hunting and I am genuinely perplexed by the amount of houses in this bracket that still need money spent on it ! I would have thought that a lot of houses in this bracket would be immaculate and only require new flooring or one bathroom or painting throughout but no.... out of the over 15 we looked at over 10 of them require significant work and updating. It just baffled me and I suppose I thought at this level and price most places will be in excellent condition or move ready.

Because they weren’t bought for £1m. My house cost £1.3 but the seller had bought it in 1973 for less than £100k. She worked in admin and he sold cars… they weren’t rich enough to be able to do it up every decade so the rooms aged.

It needs a good £200k of work to make it a good modern home.

Yep.

We paid £995,000 for our house in 2015. Was on for £1,150,000. 6 minute walk from the station, 35 mins to Victoria/London Bridge, 12 miles from Central London. Awesome state schools albeit irrelevant to us and adjacent to a nature reserve.
.
It had swirly carpets, red velvet curtains, a pink bathroom and a blue bathroom and the kitchen was two tone khaki and mustard with mustard tiles with a three tone hexagonal pattern. 3500 sq feet, arts & crafts house and unsullied.

We spent £375,000 renovating to perfection and it's worth about £1,800,000 now.

I see a lot of expensive houses that look very old fashioned, it had me thinking a lot of them were homes of older people who haven't had the energy/motivation to update and have now died or gone to a care home.

Maybe they’re happy with their kitchen and bathroom and are not like the fly by night lot who want it changing every 5 years because “fashion” changes. Proper wealth doesn’t change every 5 minutes.

We house hunted last year for larger houses where sellers tended to be empty nesters downsizing. Large price tags. Almost all of them would have needed new kitchens and/or bathrooms in the next couple of years. I think people do that stuff when they first move in and then stick with it.

New kitchens and bathrooms are expensive, lots of effort and might not add much to the sales price.

Why would you think houses in this price bracket be immaculate? My DD’s partner is buying a 2 bed flat for over a million and it’s anything but immaculate.

Because you’re looking in a location dominated by older houses perhaps?

MIL lives in a £500k house in a trendy “up and coming” neighbourhood. She bought it from the council for £28k in the 90s.

Not only does she not have the money to do it up, she wouldn’t want to. It’s her home & perfectly serviceable as it is. She’s from a generation who didn’t really replace things until they stopped working!

You can get a lovely unmodernised two-up, two-down in my area for a million pounds.

Location, location, location…!

We bought a house worth £1m and put a new kitchen in. It cost £50K because it’s a massive kitchen. I doubt we’ll ever replace it and when we’re old and looking to downsize, buyers will bemoan the state of our old-fashioned kitchen.

Our smallish, three bedroom was almost a million pounds and every room in the house needs to be redone. As well as the boiler and the electrics. Garden was a disaster too. You’d be very disappointed OP. 🤣

A lot of what are now 1 mil houses were owned by ordinary not particularly rich families who needed enough rooms for their children, and to have a garden. It might even have been that the mothers did not work.

If those people have now retired they certainly won’t have money for refurbishments. PP are talking about £200,000 + improvements!

If someone did go to the expense of a kitchen, they expected it to last too.

Same!

This strikes me as a very naive post. Our house was £1.5m and needed a complete renovation. Surely you understand house prices have more to them than the state of the interior decor, OP?

You are buying the location, plot size and building size. Kitchens and bathrooms can be easily updated.

Easily? If you have the money and/or the expertise and qualifications to do it yourself? Yes. Without it? Obviously not.

Fucking hell, where I live that would get you half the county 😄

A period house of a good size in a nice location will command a good price regardless of crap decor. BTW round here 1m is a v cheap house but realise it could be a lot where you are.

Because they weren’t bought by people with 1m, they were bought for far less decades ago and people got old in them and didn’t do the work

Because they were brought for £250k more than 25 years ago. The owners don’t have disposable income needed to update interiors.

Many of the houses in that price bracket in my area are listed and sometimes the listings includes inside the building. You can't even fart without informing the listed buildings officer from the council.

It's far better for the planet not to constantly upgrade kitchens and bathrooms
Our house is well over £1m but I can't see the need to upgrade bathrooms and kitchens that function perfectly well
Same reason I drive a small 8 year old car because it's still running perfectly fine.

We could constantly upgrade these things but it's a hugely environmentally harmful behaviour

Are they actually selling though? And at those prices? We are house hunting and a lot of the 700k+ houses just sit on the market for a very long time and then come off unsold 9 months later, to go back on with a different estate agent. It's a funny time to be buying and selling a house. Mortgage rates not good so people not wanting to splash the cash, building work and diy materials super expensive so doer uppers less appealling, stamp duty is ridiculous as the thresholds never changed despite average house prices going up ridiculous amounts, and house prices seem to have stagnated for the past 18 months but certain optimistic/pushy estate agents are still valuing as if houses have continued to go up in value at similar rates to the post covid boom.

But also what everyone else is saying, if you got your bathroom done lovely to your taste and it has become dated as trends change, how often are you going to go through the rigmarole of getting it all redone again?

In fact it seems insane to question why people don't try and constantly conspicuously consume when we've just had a run of record breaking temperatures that have closed schools and caused havoc in schools.and hospitals

You are on the wrong thread..... I am sure there are lots of threads about the weather and what causes it..