Anyone regretted buying a house?

[IMayBeSomeTime]

And did you come round in the end or did you always hate it?

We have just exchanged contracts and I think we have made a terrible mistake. Didn't love the house but thought it was probably the best we could do on our budget. Having seen a few things that have come up subsequently I'm no longer sure that is true.

Bitterly regretting it at the moment, but have lived in our current place for a long time and not great with change, so wondering whether it's all part of the process.

V grateful for any experiences.

I've got a happy ending. We bought our house when I was extremely pregnant, literally moving in just before I gave birth. We wanted to live in this area but houses were few and our tiny one-bed flat couldn't even fit a Moses basket in the bedroom. So we didn't have too many choices and rushed our decisions.

Anyway, so we bought this house which needed "a bit of work". Except actually it needed gutting and we were fooling ourselves. When we moved in and saw the reality living here we were very upset and wished desperately we had not chosen this house. It honesty was a shit hole, not "a bit rough" like we thought.

I disliked everything about it: the room sizes, the layout, the garden and so on on.

Two years on and we have made it ours. Problems that seemed insurmountable have been fixed. I have been able to put my own stamp on the house and learn a million things along the way. A brilliant builder has helped by suggesting things that make the world of difference.

Are there things I would change? Probably. But I have never been to a house that for me would be ideal and too perfect to change in any way.

It helps that property prices have risen round here and even though I still think we overpaid given the state of the house, we won't sell for less than the overall cost of all the work.

Now I really love it. The thought of moving elsewhere to a less loved house makes me feel sad.

5 years ago you'd have been paying top of the market prices and probably could not have afford this house.
A house is 4 walls and a roof, it is not a lifestyle statement about you or a project it's shelter from the rain. I find looking at it that way very helpful indeed

Although it's not a house, when DH went with my DB to buy a car at a big auction market, he said to walk away after buying, not to look at other cars coming up. Some of this applies here, too.

I've never been back on the net to look at other houses since we bought, though DH took some time to come round on the house, while DD and I liked it straight away. It has its shortcomings/areas for improvement, but we love it now, and have had loads of compliments about the garden we've slaved over, and the unreconstructed late 70s feel it has.

IMaybe

I wouldn't worry. That said as soon as we moved into our last house I got huge buyer's regret . I worried constantly we had done the wrong thing. 10 years later we sold it and I had massive seller's regret. Loved the house by then and worried constantly we had done the wrong thing.

Not for nothing do people say moving is up there with divorce and bereavement as very stressful. I would try to tell yourself your feelings are normal & I wouldn't be surprised if they pass and you end up very happy.

Good luck with it

Mrs WFT

Thank you very much MrsWood. I am feeling pretty grim about it all. I feel as though all the strength has gone out of me and I'm wondering how I'm going to do all the things that need to be done. But I suppose we will get there somehow.

I definitely agree with what someone else said about focusing on the positives! We bought our house 2 years ago, and whilst I love the space that we now have, we cannot afford to make any of the changes that desperately need to be done.
So, for now, we have a house with oodles of room but a weird layout, uneven freezing floors, drafty windows, bathrooms that are falling apart and a garden that looks like a tornado's hit it.
The kids love it, and if we ever have the money to repair stuff, it will be fabulous, but with dh currently out of a job, that may be some time.
Houses, endlessly fascinating but a real pain sometimes :)

I bought my house 3 years ago. It ticked all the boxes but I hated because it was old (as if I did not notice it was old when buying :D) and had much more issues than anticipated. Redecoration helped only a little. I started warming up to it once the major issues were fixed. I love our quiet road, massive kitchen/diner, big space, light hallway, compact garden. I don't love our area, wonky floors, old structure. But now as I write this, I know we will have to move for secondary and we will not get this space anywhere else for the same money, and I am already becoming sad about it. So, positive news for OP -the house can grow on you!

I hated mine at first I could only sit upstairs and cried a lot, 10 years later we have just sold it and I'm so sad, turns out I ended up loving my house but we now need a bigger one, I will miss it

We've moved 4 weeks ago and I had a complete wobble at the last minute also. We left a lovely finished perfect house for a project which needs lots of work and was filthy. When I got the keys to clean two days before completion I spent most of the day in tears.
4 weeks on I feel much happier. I quickly realised that home is about the occupants and not the building. I'm sure you will be fine when you've settled in. Its tough in the last few weeks because the old house doesn't feel like home when you start packing. Once you have your stuff around you in the new place I hope it will start to grow on you more like it did for me.
Good luck.

My house doesn't make my heart sing but as, it is the perfect house for us at this stage of our life, I try & overlook the fact that I haven't fallen in love with it. Its a slightly odd layout which meant we got more space for our money than the other houses we looked at and, with two young children, space is what matters and we've set the rooms up so the space works for us now and should continue to do so as they get older. Its also in a great location and we have wonderful neighbours including some with similar aged children and we've already joked about how we'll be sharing the school run, drop off for brownies & other activities etc. The house wasn't at the top of our budget which I'm very glad about as its meant we have had some spare cash for doing things which I hadn't noticed when we looked around but turned out to rile me (alter the fireplace, do some major landscaping). I've also realised its worth spending some money on the little things ... my previous house was a Victorian terrace so the sitting room had a mantelpiece & alcove bookcases which my Christmas decorations & ornaments fitted onto perfectly and last year I got really upset that I didn't have anywhere to put them. This year, I'm just going to go & get some new decorations which will work with the space I have.
So, its not my dream house but it does work for the four of us. When the children have left home, maybe DP & I will move to an older house in the country but, for now, that just wouldn't work as well. What matters more to me now - being within walking distance of pre-school, outstanding primary school, bus stop for secondary school, the village hall with various activities and the local shop and having fantastic neighbours or being somewhere which is pretty?
Oh, and yes, I think regrets at this stage are all part of the process. We've just put the deposit down for a kitchen and I'm currently regretting choosing the one we did despite being certain it was the right one at the beginning of last week!

IMaybe

I was exactly like Googleberry.

No house is really perfect and you will always see one you think may be nicer but think how you regret now not having bought earlier . In 5 or 10 years time , whether it's this house or another you'll be saying how great that you bought now . I bet any doubts about the windows will seem trivial compared to your regret about not having bought earlier.

It may be the change of area may be more the problem than the actual house. I felt better after we had as a family found out what there was to do / amenities etc near the new house and started using them . As and when you feel rubbish think about people like me and think , other people have felt like this , this is pretty normal .

We are moving into our new house sometime after Christmas and I have cold feet . It needs a lot of updating so I do get exciting bits like choosing a new kitchen but I still sometimes dwell on the downsides (or indeed downsize as that is what we are doing) .

My downsides are -

Small - less than 1/2 size of old house
Tiny garden (more like a balcony really )
Different area - still close so more psychological than geographic
V little storage

Upsides
arguably a better area
can walk to a great range of shops
more manageable

I think I'll be better off this time though knowing I felt like that last time and it turned out OK. I need to concentrate on better location , can walk to shops etc etc and not on what I have left behind .

Sorry if it sounds platitudinous but HTH

MWFT

Thank you so much everyone. It's so helpful to hear all these experiences and words of encouragement.

Good luck with your move MrsWoodForTrees

I know this thread has probably answered your questions OP, so you can ignore this one. It's interesting to hear how common the feeling is and I feel like a little moan.

We bought our house in desperation after having rented for nearly two years. I never 'fell in love with it' as I have with other houses we've bought. Felt like there was no choice. In the end we paid £20K more than top of our budget (which pushed stamp duty up by another £5K) and have a wacking great mortgage in our 50s. Madness. Said all along the move was for between 3 and 5 years, then we'd sell and buy smaller. Madness, another move coming up!

However what's done is done and it's not all bad
Good:

• location fab, DD v close to school, shops, buses, river, park..
• Great road, nice neighbours
• Upstairs is lovely and spacious

Bad:

• in a state - dirty, loo broke immediately, boiler hopeless, door handles fell off or were missing, fire grate taken, nightmare to move in to when you have NO money left
• tiny garden
• no second loo (an 'essential requirement' for us)
• actually it's much bigger than we need (spare room in London!)
• dark Victorian kitchen loomed over by next door's walls
• don't have the money or desire to do any of the make it nicer work
• social housing on one side with four bedsits rented out to young people who have short lets, so we never get to know. Some on hello terms, some dreadful or just plain noisy. At moment we can't use our spare room as window looks onto one of their rooms and they shout conversation at each other all night long. Has been worse.
• our other neighbour is lovely - but has a business mending cars all day long at front of house! (We have got used to this but not exactly a selling point)

How the last two points got past us as buyers I can't imagine.

• we have no money for anything at all due to mortgage and feel 'poor' despite perfectly good salary. That is the stupid bit I know realise. But you live and learn.

I'm not sure how long it will take to sell!

Thanks Iloverhubarb. Good to know we're not the only ones making dodgy decisions on a massive scale.

Good location worth a lot though, no?

Yes, I have regretted buying my house. It is a period house and I have never liked period houses (perhaps only to look at, but not live in). I only bought because it was a good investment with a potential and character features. Only later I realized that I am not cut out for that and I am longing for a modern (well, 1960s) house. Everyone thinks I am crazy but time is passing and I still regret. I need to make the move.

Wonder if the OP has grown to love her house.

I didn't love our house when we bought it. It was an ugly 70s build in the wrong part of the village. We were under pressure to buy as or landlady was terrible and going bankrupt!

We chose the house primarily for the space it provided, the reduced price due to the length if time it had been on the market and three fact there was no chain and we could move in quickly.

We knew it needed work but saw it as an opportunity to add value and our stamp, however we had no idea just how much needed doing.

The day we picked up the keys i could have cried. We opened the door and the place was filthy, stunk of smoke and the kitchen and bathroom were so dirty it took us three days to clean them.

We discovered that many jobs had been botched, the boiler was faulty, windows rotten and the owners had even painted around their furniture rather than move it.

This was three years ago and i honestly thought we had made a huge mistake BUT..

The house us now clean and We are slowly doing up the house room by room. We have replaced the windows and boiler, fixed the roof, painted, corrected bodge jobs etc. we have had a ds and i really appreciate the extra space the house gives us.There is still loads to do and the big jobs like the kitchen and bathroom are at least 5 years away.

Or neighbours are lovely and much less snobby than any of the people i have met from the naice part of the village and i have met loads of mum friends who would have green much more difficult to access had i lived in my preferred area

I don't think we will make millions on our house when we sell but the extra space means that we may not need to move. I find myself looking at bigger houses and realising that i love my house and lifestyle too much to make that jump.

My house also had ugly pvc windows which we put in but the house was freezing with the pretty rotten single glazed windows that were in when we moved in, and 70s houses are generally ugly anyways. However the windows are huge and the property is light and airy because of this. Plus once you are in and have curtains up, you pay less attention and you don't live outside your house constantly seeing the ugly facade.

Anyways i have waffled on, but basically i just wanted to give a positive sorry of someone who has grown to love their house!

That's great, Coffee.

When we came back to the UK we hadn't sold our house in Spain so we were restricted in what we could afford, we rented for awhile but finally decided to buy as we had no idea how long the house in Spain would take to sell. We managed to get a detached place in a lovely road/area within our budget (and for a good price) but it's smaller than I would like.

Just before Xmas we sold our other house (thank the lord!) and now have enough to allow us to buy the sort of property we would really like.

However, I have grown to love my house, after making some changes and can't decide whether or not to move as we have lovely neighbours and live in a great spot. Just wish I had another room and a bigger kitchen.

Hope yours all went through and you grow to love it.

Threads like this never gets old ? I am another ?regretter?. 4 years in my house and I regret buying it. If I could rebuild it to the current building standards and the same layout, I may love it then, but living in an old, wonky house makes me feel uncomfortable. I am from modern European tall concrete flat tower upbringing which does not help. I already tried selling up twice, but could not find a house I?d like to buy or afford. I just gave myself a promise to stay in my house for min 3 - max 5 years and save like mad to be able to afford what I like. In the meantime I just need to focus on positives (nice house, good commute, quiet road, near park & schools) but I keep searching threads like this and feel unhappy because I don?t feel settled.

I am a bit ambivalent about our current house. I wanted victorian or edwardian, got 1930s (with no original features at all). I wanted North London, got Redbridge. Wanted a commute under an hour, it takes me an hour and a quarter at least to get to work.

BUT slowly but surely we are making it into a better house for us. I don't know if I'll ever 'love' it, but once we finish the building work it will be almost perfectly suited to a family and will be worth signifcantly more than we paid for it. So if I still don't love it, we will at least be able to move.

Recently pulled out of a renovation project house purchase - now bitterly regret it

My bf and I recently pulled out of the purchase of a renovation project in Clapham due to his concerns about house prices crashing in 2021, my ability to sell my own flat (we’d need the cash to finish the works), resale value post renovation (query whether London postcodes will be aa desirable post covid), etc etc. I felt more relaxed about proceeding than him, as we both hace secure jobs etc. however his and his families anxieties about the economy / market in 2021 kept niggling away. Now, with house prices at record highs, we’ve decided to wait at least a year before looking to buy again. I am hugely frustrated by the delays and I feel that, in pulling out of the purchase. we’ve wimped out and missed an opportunity to move on with our lives. We want to start a family soon, and now we’re going to have to rent for at least the next year. Has anyone else had similar regrets and did things work out in the end? Need some positivity! Thanks all

No one knows the future. What’s happening with the current demand and supply of houses at this time was not predicted.

Prices may fall but that may be for some areas and for certain house price brackets. House prices work on simple supply and demand. If job loses are mainly for those who are renters and who were not going to buy, then the demand for houses may not fall dramatically.

The government has a huge problem interest in keeping people in jobs. As long as unemployment is kept at bay, the fall in prices will be reversed as confidence in the market returns

A huge interest. Not a huge problem interest