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.

I’m assuming you are looking at family houses?

For any property the top determinant of price is location, secondarily size of plot, then size of house.

When you say “needs” updating do you mean problems with the fabric which will need remediating eg no central heating, 100 year old neglected windows falling out or do you mean “updating in line with current trends”. The latter is entirely a personal choice. I declined to follow the fad for fully open plan downstairs just to follow fashions. Its my home, I have it how I want it. And of course if I’d wasted money ensuring my own home was fully in sync with the latest fads I’d now be putting the walls back in as open plan is out of fashion.

If you are buying a family home to live in long time you will end up redecorating, changing kitchens and bathrooms whatever the state when you buy it.

Buy the location and the plot and you can do the rest over time.

One of our neighbours renovated and put in an open plan kitchen and in doing so lost a bedroom (large bungalow). It cost a fortune and they lost 25% of the pre-renovated asking price. And a friend of mine had a nice Victorian in London. Circa £3 mill at the time. She turned the ground floor into a sort of atrium with the second floor a sort of mezzanine affair. Two years later they couldn;t sell it at £1.2 million.

Like I said upthread. The OP thinks that having a million pound home means you have mega disposable bucks to spend. We have had our house coming on to 45 plus years. It's worth a million now and we are living off savings and DH's state pension. We are SORN-ing our car because we can't afford what it will cost to get it to pass an MOT.

I’m not sure where I said ‘houses should be kept in the latest fashion’

Do you really buy a house for the bathroom or kitchen? I prefer to rip them out and put my own in.

It’s certainly a factor if you can’t afford to change it quickly. Our kitchen was changed 5 years after we bought as we couldn’t afford to do it before. It needed to be ok in the interim.

Often these kind of houses are owned by older or elderly people who see no need to have trendy new kitchens and bathrooms. Replacing something that still works for aesthetic purposes is a fairly new thing.

Why would you think that? I don’t understand.

If the going rate for an immaculate four bed detached is £1.2 million then you are likely to see four bed detached in need of full refurbishment for £1m.

I'm (hopefully if my really annoying buyers actually hurry up) buying a house which is £1.25m. A terrace but fully extended so quite large. In a premium school catchment area. Rented out for 10 years so literally everything needs a refresh plus new windows and I think a new flat roof. Budgeting about £100k for the initial work. Yeh it's insane but what can we do. Our own house (out of catchment but in a nearby part of London and a bit smaller) lists for £900k. Not even a particularly fancy part of London. That's just what stuff costs these days.

People have no imagination they’d rather spend another 400,000 getting the immaculate put together house then do the work themselves

Yeah, this. Why the fuck should some elderly disabled person spend all their money and disrupt their lives getting fancy new kitchens and bathrooms for the person who might want to buy their house?!

They'll say it's not to their taste anyway and rip it out 9/10 times anyway.

I don't think it's just that. 10 years ago we would absolutely have gone for a fixer upper. Now our lives are such that the upheaval just wouldn't work with kids ages and our own! Does not have to be the latest bathroom or kitchen but the ones we looked at are like 25 yrs plus old so definitely not in good nick. If it suits your budget and you can live with the disruption absolutely. Many people now don't have the stomach or the purse for it

Of course they don't need to ! It's a choice. My post was merely pointing out that if you live in a 1m detached house my logic would have been you can also afford for the house to look decent and not like it hasn't been updated or flooring etc in the last 20 yrs plus! I appreciate though that in my area potentially its older people living there and don't want to or see the need to spend the money. It's made me wonder if we should move at all. We haven't had a new kitchen since we moved in 15 yrs ago and my own kitchen is much nicer than literally every house we looked at. I just found it quite interesting and not what I expected

What I’ve seen people do around here is take a rental property for six months move in there while the works being done.

I know and have thought about that also. Tbh I don't think our budget will stretch that far. We would rather have a move in ready House that we could just paint and put carpet in if needed and update slowly to our taste. My issue is I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving any of the bathrooms in the houses we looked at and the kitchens would have to follow quickly after. Oh well perhaps I want it all and finally realised its nor that easy lol

Location is everything. When you are young and buy your first house you want the kitchen that you want, that has your personality. Then you live in that house for thirty years and do little fixes to it when it goes wrong. You don’t long for a new kitchen, you love the one you brought your babies home to. It’s friendly, it’s not consumerism, it’s Home.

My house is worth well over a million and we definitely cannot afford to put in a new bathroom and kitchen. Both are very dated. Flooring is also a bit tatty. Why would you assume people can afford to do that?

So what you really mean is £1m isn’t enough to buy you the sort of house you want, in the location you want, in the condition you want? Yes?

That makes perfect sense. You will have to compromise on budget, size, location or condition if you can’t currently afford what you want.

Or take the risk of saving up for longer?

old people

Lots of people buy a house and sort out what has to be done, then nothing more for the time they live there.
Same furniture etc 30 years later

I think there is a truth in this. Consumerism seems to fade, the longer people see fashions come and go, the less they get caught up in the parade of must-have newness.

Why are some wealthy people scruffily dressed? Because some of them don't care about clothes. Same with kitchens and bathrooms - some people just don't care much about aesthetics, and some aren't into status / wealth display. Not all rich people care if others think / know they're rich. (Or think they have the right kind of middle-class taste).

Some people have a big house but not much actual cash. (Sometimes that's why they're selling - can't keep the place up any more). Some people are old and dealing with tradies seems like too much hassle.

Sometimes people just genuinely don't think there's anything wrong with the kitchen / bathroom they put a lot of effort and money into, a long time ago. My grandparents bridled at the suggestion that there was anything wrong with their yellow bathroom (WC in separate tiny room) and listed what every element of it had cost, in 1962. Silly me, to not appreciate what a very good bath that was - all these years, and not a stain on it! They were shocked anyone would consider trashing a PERFECTLY GOOD bathroom. The sinful profligacy of young people today, etc.

Sometimes they've died, and the beneficiaries just want to get it sold and the proceeds split asap.

We got our kitchen done around 12 years ago or so, people on here would probably say its 'old' and needs updating. I wouldnt update it, it looks like the kitchen I want, I would only replace it with the same one. What would be the point

Some of the kick boards probably need replacing but who can be bothered with that.

It was never decorated when we did it, we were 'getting round to that'. Hopefully we can do it next year.

I was responding to someone in reference to another poster who said they thought people should plan better financially so they can buy knew kitchens for a stranger who might want to live in their house.

100 💯 this
The majority of 1 million pound houses In my country (there are few) mainly belonged to older people and they have either passed on or funding the home to pay for their care home
Many of these houses are very old fashioned and were last decorated in the 80s if that recently

maybe if they are period houses they are original fittings