Would you buy a house with no central heating?

[moresunnyeveryday]

Help! Had an offer accepted on what we thought was perfect family forever house - good location, good size four bed, good size garden, quiet road. went round to look again today mostly just to take photos and realised it has no central heating - the present owners use gas fires downstairs and plug in oil heaters upstairs as needed. there's an immersion heater for hot water.

we have small children so one attraction of this house was that it didnt have anything obvious that needed changing.

obviously feel an idiot for not having noticed this before, but that aside….

would this be a deal breaker for most people? anyone know how big a job it is to put on central heating?

and can anyone tell me where I've left my brain?

is it on gas mains? assuming so if has gas fires. then not too big a job if you going to redocorate anyway. tehy need to lay pipes fit radiators etc. you might need a new boiler? get a quote from British gas as a marker price then try local firms.

Yes I would, so long as I had room in the budget to fit it.

Cost is a low long is a piece of string thing really. You could go budget and basic or you could spend endlessly on a smart system with zoning and a load of nifty features. It is a messy job with pipes chased into the wall and floorboards coming up. Actual prices, I can't help, I had it done years ago in a tiny 2 bed so totally irrelevant!

how does the water heat up for a bath?

As long as I could have central heating fitted (and had the money to do so) otherwise having lived in a house with no heating as a student my answer would be 'hell no'

yes, and it would give me the opportunity to install a good system of my own choice. You mention it has gas fires so presumably an adequate gas supply.

Obviously I would expect the price of the house to be some thousands lower.

I would also start to suspect the house would benefit from a rewire and perhaps other updating. Personally I would stay in a Travelodge for a week while the dirty work is done, before unpacking.

if you are buying at this time of year you have plenty of time to sort it out before heating engineers get busy and prices go back up, because most people turn their brains off and ignore their boilers until the weather gets cold.

We can recently moved into a house with central heating that was so old it had to be ripped out and a new system put in. It took 8 days and was no where near as bad as I expected. Cost for a 4 bed townhouse in south east was 8-9k depending on specs. We kept some pipes external where they couldn't go under the floor.

I'd expect the price to reflect the work that's needed & the inconvenience of having it done.
Avoid British Gas for quotes they are usually 4 times the price of everyone else and no better.
I wouldn't if it wasn't already connected to the gas.
Yep I'd agree with not being around whilst the work is done, we had to be whilst ours was done and it wasn't much fun.

We bought a house with only central heating downstairs and none in the bedrooms. Paid about 2k in Midlands to have the 4 beds and 2 bathrooms piped up and the heating extended and some extra radiators put in downstairs as well. Messy job but we were gutting the house anyway!

Please whatever you do do NOT use this company either. Reviews speak for themselves.

www.facebook.com/pages/Liberty-Gas/381603068598221?ref=ts&fref=ts

thanks everyone, all good points. I think it might be a deal breaker - our offer is the top of our budget, and leaves us nothing for this kind of work, but we were willing to spend it for something absolutely right. My son has asthma and the baby might too, and I just can't see us living with plug in heaters for a few years while we save the money.

I take the point about the opportunity to put in what we want - I'll try to see if the sellers will come down in price to let us do that but in my heart I think we might be back to the drawing board (and everyone else in our chain too - ouch).

At least we found out before we paid for the survey!

it wouldn't come up on the survey BTW - can't comment on the condition of what isn't there!

those gas fires; are they mains connected or LPG?
if there's no mains gas you'll probably want to use oil heating, currently a lot cheaper to run although that may change.

the house should be cheaper than other similar ones with no CH.

Presumably the house is priced to reflect the fact that there is no central heating?

If it's your perfect house, I would push the budget that extra bit. I appreciate quotes like £8k are probably making you wince, but think forward 5 years and considerbif you would regret it if you walked away.

In terms of a house purchase, £8 k is a relatively small percentage. If it was for a house I really wanted, and ticked all the other boxes, then I would forgo holidays for 2 years to fund the heating. But you need to decide your priorities.

If it really a deal breaker fo you get a quote and knock your offer down by the cost of new heating. You couldeen ask that they accept it is done before you move in. Everything is negotiable.

yes I did, having it put in was much less hassle than the rest of the work expected.

It wouldn't bother me for a minute, it is all about price. I think you need to look at what else you'd get for the money, and what you can afford in total (in a lot of cases, sticking 10k on a mortgage is no biggie, especially at current rates but obviously I don't know your circumstances)