What would you compromise on?

[BadPoet]

If your budget allows all but one of the following:

*nice view/outlook,
*location near school and/or station - dh commutes
*the perfect numbers of rooms (enough for a study which is essential as we both WAH PLUS a spare bed)
*decent well laid out garden

which would you compromise on?

We've seen a potentially bargainous house which has the 1st three but a weird garden - v wide and shallow (ie not much distance from back door to back fence) and a steep slope at the back. It's big but needs imagination and work and even then not sure how it would be. Dh very put off by this.

I know it depends on all sorts of things but wwyd and what questions would you be asking yourselves? Humour me!

Thanks

Personally, I'd compromise on the garden IF it was something we COULD do something with given time, imagination and effort. Things like location, number of rooms etc are all much harder to replace.

I'd probably also compromise on view if I had the perfect house - if I love the inside and outside of my house, do I need a good view to be happy?

I would compromise on the garden, but I'm happy to mess around & design my own. I would also compromise to some extent on the view.

You obviously need a study/area to work in & commuting is bad enough without a long trip either end.

In order of preference, I'd go for
Perfect number of rooms
Location
Decent garden
Outlook.

I think in your case if the rest of the house is perfect then I'd go for it. If it's otherwise not your dream house then keep looking :)

Is there any scope for buying up land behind/alonside the property?

Depends what you need a garden for.

Does it need to house a climbing frame/mini football pitch? Or just a nice sitting/eating out area and a few flowers?

If it's very wide then you stil have the space - just needs landscaping to your particular needs.

You can often extend a house to get extra rooms.

From what you've said, I'd go for this house!

In my view I'd go

Location - NEVER compromise espcially if there is a commute
Garden- but then that was part of the reason I moved to this house
Rooms - you could have the room as a study/spare room lots of people do
Outlook

I'd compromise on the garden if there was a park or some green space nearby. I'd also compromise on the outlook to a certain extent. I could live without views of rolling hills but would struggle with a view of the loading bay of a supermarket.

As a commuter I couldn't compromise on proximity to the station.

Thanks everyone, food for thought there. The consensus more or less seems to be, compromise on view or garden which is what I expected I think!

I should clarify that we live in a small town so nowhere we would live would be more than about 20 minutes walk from the station anyway. It's just that we are currently 3 minutes - the house we've seen is maybe 5. I know that 15 minutes makes a big difference on cold wet nights!

TonariNoTotoro - there could be. It does back on to a field which is used for grazing sheep. It's higher than the garden though (that's where the bank slopes up to).

PollyTechnique - good point about what we need the garden for. It needs to be child friendly and have an area for sitting out. However our garden here is an awkward shape too (sloped and terraced - but we didn't do the terracing!) and we don't have room for play equipment bar a mini trampoline. It has never stopped them spending hours pottering out there...

The view is rolling hills, and glimpses of sea versus just other similar houses. We currently have a gorgeous view but had always thought it would be something we would lose when we moved.

None of these are really our DREAM house btw - that's a big rambling farmhouse with period features . That's way out of our league so we are only looking at houses up to about 20 years old.

Shall tackle dh tonight!

We're about to move (hopefully!) to a house where we are compromising on exactly that - a weird wide shallow slopey garden. There's enough space for the kids to run around a bit and for us to sit out, we're not massive gardeners and there's a rec down the road. We're happy with the compromise because house size is more important to us.

Let me know if you have any ideas re: what to do with the garden!

If you have any spare money you could try and buy the land but it would remain agricultural.