House might have with concrete walls. Should we pull out of the sale?

[aufaniae]

Just found out that the house we've offered on is in a street where some houses are prefabs, built in the 50s with concrete walls.

Am I right in thinking that it's difficult to get a mortgage for houses built like this?

So we may end up with a house that's really difficult to sell on?

We're only intending on living in this house for a short time, will probably want to sell up in 6ish years.

Sorry I think maybe my post isn't clear! I don't mean we'd pull out at this point.

But wondering what to do if it does prove to have concrete walls?

I'm not sure about resale value, but we lived in a house with concrete walls and its in a very popular area so would be snapped up immediately regardless (we rented). It has also gone up in value significantly since my MIL bought it.

On the other hand, concrete walls are a PITA for any kind of picture hanging or DIY type work such as putting up curtain poles! Not sure if that matters much to you though.

You need to look into mortgage and insurance for a "non standard construction". It limits who you can go to.

Here is a blog on concrete houses for background info.

We have concrete walls on our house. We were slightly nervous about buying it when we found out but it hasn't been a problem. You need to find out the exact type of the construction and then check with your mortgage company. They have a list of types of construction they will accept, ours was on the list so no problem.

It's lovely and warm in the winter and very cheap to heat.

Thanks for the replies :)

We'll need a fair amount of work done on the house. Looks like it hasn't been touched since the 60s, so I'm expecting we'll need to rewire.
Also need to put in new bathroom & kitchen, replaster etc etc.

Will such work cost extra if it's concrete construction I wonder?

I'm not so worried about us buying it, but I am very worried about resale. I don't want to get stuck.

Ours is a '60s build just like the one documented by some architects here (there's some more details if you click around their site). I can't imagine that the internal work you need doing would be any different if the concrete itself it sound - anything we've had done has just treated it as a shell just like any other build type would.

We did have a last-minute panic for insurance (the people that we were going to use decided at the last minute that they wouldn't actually cover the risk), but it's easy enough to get cover if it's a 'good' type. I'd say that it ends-up slightly more expensive than cover would normally, but not by much.

The construction has meant that we got a bit more house for our money (rooms a bit bigger than they would otherwise have been around here) and the FUD over concrete houses probably kept some people away and the offers down.