Title: Renovating to sell in 7 years: would these changes put you off?

[Createausername1234]

Hi all, we're planning some renovations on our house with a view to selling in about 7 years. The area is mostly young families and older couples, so I'd love a buyer's view on two things.
1. Bath vs walk-in shower. Our spare bathroom has a bath, but a walk-in shower would be much more convenient. Would a house with no bath at all be a dealbreaker? We considered putting a bath in the ground floor extension, but DH thinks a ground floor bath would put people off. What do you think?
2. Double garage. We're thinking of using part of the garage as a room and building a large storage shed in the back garden. The driveway has plenty of parking. Would you be put off by a house with smaller garage(with a lot of wall storage faciility) if there was a decent shed in the garden and lots of driveway parking?
Thanks so much, any honest opinions welcome, especially from anyone who's recently bought or sold!

any purchaser with kids under 5 will want a bath for the kids, upstairs in the family bathroom. Many adults also like a bath. Is there only one bathroom upstairs?

Garage to park cars is unnecessary. Garage for storage can be useful, depending on the configuration of the other rooms in the house. what room would you be putting in the garage?

Bath and walk in shower are both essentials, as is a large garage. We never park on the drive and don't use the garage for storage.

I would be fine with the garage change as long as part of the garage was remaining. Sheds are not a perfect replacement as things go mouldy in them.

i echo the need for a bath somewhere in the house. Could you steal some space from another room to make a larger bathroom upstairs for a separate shower?

Tbh if you’re planning to sell in 7 years’ time, the bathroom is probably irrelevant as the new owners will likely want to replace a 7-year-old bathroom quite soon anyway. Plenty of people do things like that with the garage so there must be a market but I wouldn’t want a garage like that personally.

I would discount a house with no bath unless it was perfect in every other way and there was space to install one quickly

Small kids need a bath.

you can get them clean in a walk in shower but it’s fiddly and annoying.

Personally I'd want there to be a bath, but we've previously bought a house where there was only a shower and putting a bath in was one of our first jobs. So it wouldn't put me off viewing.

The garage wouldn't bother me either, especially as it's a double so even taking a portion off to create a room should leave a decent amount of storage space.

We've never used a garage for the parking a car - it's always been a bonus storage area for us. Currently we have a period cottage with a completely incongruous integral garage which we've split into one third storage and two thirds office. Eventually we'll relocate the lootility to half the office space, but will retain the storage part for DH's tools that need somewhere drier than a shed.

The lack of a bath would be off putting for me but not a deal breaker. I'm not sure about the garage - the extra living space might be better than the bigger garage, so I might see this as a positive but it's hard to be sure without seeing it.

I never have a bath and wouldn’t live without access to a good walk in shower for 7 years to anticipate someone else’s preference. Since a shower is easily swapped back for a bath by buyers. As a buyer if the house was right I wouldn’t turn it down on the basis of a shower that could be swapped.

People used to put their cars in garages when car paint was less robust and cars rusted. Good drive parking is enough. Storage is important to me, not paying for indoor space to house my car.

I wouldn’t buy a house I couldn’t have both a walk-in shower and bath in. I don’t think the garage changes would be a deal breaker.

I don't know anyone who actually parks their car in the garage so a garage as storage, and other storage, and an extra room is a win.

I would never want a house without a bath. But it wouldn't be a deal breaker for me as it's relatively easy to add one usually.

Both or either changes would be deal breakers for me.

I wouldn't care about the garage provided there is plenty of other parking outside the house. I would love the storage space.

I would not like either a bath downstairs or a house without a bath. Though it wouldn't be a total dealbreaker, it would mean me redoing the bathroom asap once I moved in with the attendant disruption and cost. So it would put me off a bit if there were other equally nice houses with baths around.

DC at university so I guess we are pretty middle aged, verging on older!

The bath / shower is asked often on here and there is always a split of opinions.

For me, no bath would be a real negative, but not necessarily a deal breaker if the rest of the house / location worked well and it was something I could rectify (ie, you hadn't stolen space off the bathroom or something). I'd reflect both the cost and inconvenience of having to replace the bathroom in any offer price.

However, if my dd were viewing, she'd look at it from the opposite pov.

So the answer with that one is do what suits you for the next 7 or so years. It is too long a time to be living with something you aren't keen on, because 1/2 the population have a different preference from you.

Garage would be fine with me, but then I've live without a garage for 25 years, so it isn't really on my radar. Many houses' garages were built for smaller cars and don't fit a car anyway, so in many parts of the Country it isn't something on people's radars.

If you need to put something in your back garden would you have to walk through the house to get there, or would you still have external access to the garden ?
No external access to the rear garden is a deal breaker for me.
Not too bothered about shower/bath as can be easily changed.

You’re going to be there for seven years. What do you want? A bath is a couple of hundred quid. I really regret getting a bath when we last renovated. It just sits there taking up Half the bathroom and nobody has used it in at least 5 years. We’re renovating it again next tear and we’re replacing it with a big luxury walk in shower. You can get a bath fitted when you want to sell rather than compromising on your own preference.