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Original poster

How did you choose your house?

40 replies

suebfg · 09/01/2013 21:20

We have been house hunting for ages and can't afford to keep chucking away money on rent. We have seen so many houses now they are all blurring into one.

We've recently found a great house (it is immaculate) but it backs onto a busyish road which is a major offputter as it can get quite noisy.

On the other hand, there are two reasonable houses for sale in very desirable locations but the downstairs space doesn't quite work for us in these houses. Neither have utility rooms and the kitchen diners are smaller than we would like.

Am I being too fussy? How did you choose your house?

OP posts:
GoldPlatedNineDoors · 09/01/2013 21:23

We were exceptionally fussy. we looked around but narrowed our search down to.one street. we bunked at my parents for a year saving for a deposit and until something came up on this street. we bought the first property that came up for sale since we had started looking (a year we waited!).

Could you re-jig / extend the properties that arent on the busy road?

nocake · 09/01/2013 21:25

It sounds like you're looking for the perfect house, which doesn't exist. Start thinking about how you could make houses work for you or how you could change the way you live to suit a house.

GoldPlatedNineDoors · 09/01/2013 21:25

Also, an immaculate house means you are paying a premium for work that someone else has done. I like the ability to stamp 'us' on a house.

whattodoo · 09/01/2013 21:25

Looked at loads to work out which location we most loved.

And to agree on which features we would not compromise on (eg parking space, size of kitchen, potential to add value etc).

Then we walked through the front door of a house and fell in love with its character before looking at any of the rooms. Went through hell to get it, but its finally ours. [Happy sigh]

Original poster
suebfg · 09/01/2013 21:29

The two houses in the desirable area are actually next door to one another. The first one hasn't been extended - you could put an extension on it but it has got one of the smaller rear gardens on the estate. The other one has been extended already but it is an extension behind the dining room rather than to the kitchen. So the space isn't ideal for us but it does have a bigger garden than the other house.

If we could choose anywhere in the area to live, it would be this street but we are struggling to find a house there that suits us. (Property hardly ever comes up for sale here).

OP posts:
GoldPlatedNineDoors · 09/01/2013 21:31

Could you do some internal re-jigging in the one with the bigger garden , maybe swap the rooms round.

GoldPlatedNineDoors · 09/01/2013 21:31

Oh, put some links up!! People will be able to suggest stuff you might not have thpught of.

OP posts:
GoldPlatedNineDoors · 09/01/2013 21:38

Wow! They are both very impressive! Not sure if its the photos but the first one strikes me as being much lighter and arier.

Original poster
suebfg · 09/01/2013 21:41

I think it's the photos - the houses are the same except that the first has been extended downstairs and upstairs to the side.

OP posts:
NoMoreMarbles · 09/01/2013 21:41

We went by feeling. You can change a house but you can't change how it feels to be in YOUR house Smile

We looked at ALOT of houses and as soon as we walked into our house we both knew we would buy this house and we hadn't even looked around!

I say go for the one that makes you want to look at it again and again. If that isn't how you feel about any that you have seen, look elsewhere...

It is frustrating when you just don't come across what you want but as the saying goes "you have to kiss ALOT of frogs to find your prince" men and houses...

cece · 09/01/2013 21:52

We went by feeling too.

Looked at a lot of 4 bedroom houses.
Ended by buying aa 3 bedroom house upstairs. The 4throom was downstairs. Not ideal, but we just loved it as soon as we walked in the front day.

cece · 09/01/2013 21:54

Out of those two I'd go for the most expensive of the two. For a little bit more you get an extension and a bigger garden... You can always move the kitchen into the extension and have the old kitchen as a utility room.

Millais · 09/01/2013 21:59

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

AnneEyhtMeyer · 09/01/2013 22:17

Agree with Cece. It also has a bigger garden.

Badvoc · 10/01/2013 10:55

Decide what is a non negotiable requirement...eg:garden, off street parking etc and then what you are prepared to compromise on.
Because you will have to compromise. The perfect house simply does not exist. You have to make it perfect for you.
Good luck.
(And I would go with the one you can extend yourselves)

Badvoc · 10/01/2013 10:56

...we were looking at 3 bed semis and bought a 3 bed detached!
:)

specialsubject · 10/01/2013 11:17

my suggestion is the house with the 'but' that is only for you. A noisy busy road is a 'but' for everyone - and it will only get worse. That means if it is wrong and you want to sell it, you have a problem.

the not-quite-right layout can possibly be sorted.

Rhianna1980 · 10/01/2013 11:49

Agree on not buying a house on a busy road. My In laws bought a house few years which was gorgeous in every way you look at it , only to find out it was liveable due to the noisy road near by . They ended up selling it straight away.

HappyAsASandboy · 10/01/2013 12:07

I saw it on rightmove and knew I love it (from three photos!). Emailed the link to my then DP (now DH), who send a one word reply - wow!

We looked round am it felt like home, despite being an absolute wreck. When we finally moved in, people kept asking if we'd settled in yet - and I was always unsure how to answer. It was my house and I was settled in from the first time I crossed the threshold.

Happiestinwellybobs · 10/01/2013 12:14

We went on gut feel after a 15 minute viewing.. Nothing had been done to it for years, but it ticked the important things for us (3 bedrooms, near to parents, and south- facing). We've done a lot to it over the years and I'm never leaving :)

I personally prefer house number one - with the bigger garden :)

BlueberryHill · 10/01/2013 12:33

We didn't love either of ours from the beginning. Quite underwhelmed by the one we are in now but it is stone on the outside and has a huge window on the stairs that I liked, we went with it as it was a good value for where we our. I love it now, we are in the process of updating it, I love the garden and the window still. We bought it based on our head but knew we could turn it into a home.

Mandy21 · 10/01/2013 13:16

I agree that perfection in terms of a house is v hard to find. There will always be a compromise somewhere.

Agree that the 1st one seems the better deal - I'd knock down the walls between the garden room / dining room and kitchen and have one big space. Having said that, I think the double garage is a bit of a waste of space - I think it leads to unbalanced houses - bigger upstairs than downstairs so you could look to convert part of that at some stage down the line if you need more space.

We were renting in the village we wanted and watching the market like hawks having identified a few roads that were within our price range / had big enough gardens and offered potential to extend. Had a list of must haves (not a very long list to be honest) knowing that we had to compromise massively to get the location we wanted. We have been in the house for 3 years, I don't love the house (but I will one day when its been modernised and extended) but I love the life it has given us - close to school, village centre, fabulous neighbours etc.

duffybeatmetoit · 10/01/2013 14:03

We had a list broken down into must haves, nice to haves and don't wants. If a property didn't have everything on the (short) must have list we didn't look at it. It did help focus our minds on what was really important. (For us 3 beds was a must have, 4 beds was nice to have. Downstairs loo - must have, ensuite - nice to have. Etc)

The estate agent we were dealing with had a look at the list and doubted that we'd achieve it but we did. He had a real thing about people rejecting property because there wasn't enough room to seat family/friends for a meal. He thought you'd only have large numbers at Xmas and so it wasn't important if you could only sit 4/5 people at one time. We have people staying regularly and not being able to feed everyone at one sitting wouldn't work for us. So you do need to think about how you live in the space and what your alternatives would be if the house didn't provide for it.

noisytoys · 10/01/2013 14:17

We bought in the South East close to London so we bought the one house that had enough bedrooms and was within budget. It was a state and is a slow working progress to make it habitable but we are getting there Smile