Torn between 2 houses! Help deciding please?

[Pixiedust1973]

To cut a long story short, we offered on house 1 six months ago. Our buyer lost their buyer so we reduced for a quick sale & remarketed 2 months ago during the worst possible time to sell. They agreed to wait for us until the end of February. We've had interest, & offers, but nothing high enough to accept. We tried to get the chain to reduce by 5k each in order for us to proceed but they refused, so we continue to wait for an offer we can work with.

Anyway, found out from their EA that they have instructed another EA & are having an open day in the next week or 2. Cue me & DH go viewing yesterday & find house 2..

House 1 is the best house if you're purely comparing houses. It is immaculate, but its location has always been a concern for me. It is behind a row of houses which have a dual carriageway in front of them. It has a social club & its field behind the house. I don't mind this at all, but I worry that the days of social clubs are numbered & one day it may close & a block of flats could be built right behind our garden. It is also located on a noisy flight path, which isn't noticeable inside because it has great double glazing. Its kind of a best house, worst street scenario!

House 2 isn't so new, it is about 200 sq ft smaller & needs a few minor bits doing to it. Its further away from kids school, but they leave in 18 months so no great hardship. Journey for me in car probably wouldn't be much difference. Its location is far & away superior to house 1. It is in a smaller town on a small cul de sac & backs onto a primary school field so is unlikely to be built on ever. It is not on a flight path, so quieter all round. Its a bit further away from shops, & public transport isn't so good, but its not terrible!

We have had a bit more interest this week in our house, & people who are keen, but not proceedable, so hopefully the pieces fall in place in the jigsaw soon & then we have to make a decision, if the market doesn't do it for us of course!

Which would you choose?

Location would be key for me. Like you said kids finish in eighteen months, by the time sale completed likely to be nearer summer holidays, so less than a year commuting?

House 2 or another house altogether. Particularly if you have to get out onto the dual carriageway to get where you need to go. If there is another way out the other direction I'd maybe think about it but from your description it sounds very busy around house 1.

I'd choose house 2.

Definitely house 2.

I would choose 2.
The flight path for 1 would be a huge deal breaker for me anyway. You might not hear it in the house but you will outside and ditto to the road noise. We rented for 6 months by a dual carriage way and it was so noisy in the summer when you were having a bbq or relaxing in the evening with a glass of wine. Perhaps id have gotten used to it if i was there longer and i suppose knowing I didn't need to probably made me less tolerant!

Public transport routes, particularly buses can change but it's worth thinking about what that means for the children- are they finishing primary or secondary, would a small shared run around be an option?

Thanks ladies. We definitely like location 2 better. To be fair though the dual carriageway near location 1 isn't a major one. Think its a single carriageway on the opposite side. House is about 30 metres from the road. It also has an industrial estate very nearby & police lock up cells. It sounds like a list of things you don't want to live near to, but the house itself is beautiful & is in a gated development of 6 houses.

Another thing I'm not sure about is the parking. The vendors lied to us about The parking. They said the house has parking for one car in front of garage & 1 allocated space, plus additional communal spaces. Transpires we have only 1 space in front of garage & all other spaces are communal. It only takes an arsehole to move in next door with a big van to take up both communal spaces & I'm stuck parking my car on the short part of the shared driveway that leads to the main road.

None of that is an issue with house 2. We can park both cars on the drive & have space for more out front if the girls, who are 17 & 19 ever learn to drive.

I should of said, the girls are at college, not school. Just a habit saying school. Both are autistic though so not likely to leave home imminently & very dependent on me to ferry them around. Youngest has a free bus pass but I still drive her as she's not safe around roads.

Current house it takes me half hour to get to college from 3.5 miles away. House 1 is about 4 miles away. I'd have to go on the dual carriageway & do a right turn onto the other side at rush hour to get to college. House 2 is about 6 miles from college, (8 miles up the road from house 1). I'd also get there from a right hand turn onto the dual carriageway, but its easier & safer as via traffic lights. I reckon it would take around the same time getting to college from either house as it does now!

Really leaning towards house 2 location! Will have to hope we get an offer soon! 😁

House 2 , no contest.

Location, location, location.

If your house has not yet sold it is a decision that may be taken out of your hands as you are not in a position to make an offer on neither.
I did not begin looking at any houses until my house was under offer as it seemed pointless. Fingers crossed though.

It sounds like you’ve had a lucky escape and that you’ve been dazzled by the beauty of house one but in real terms it has a lot of quite big flaws.

Being misled about the parking suggests there is an issue with it already.

We possibly will be having a narrow escape. To clarify, we had an offer accepted & were proceeding on house 1, 6 months ago. Had surveys, searches done etc. Spent money on it. All these things are now out of date unfortunately. Our mortgage offer expires next month. Sadly our buyer lost their buyer so we decided to remarket in the hope of picking up a new buyer & completing the chain quickly. As it has happened just before Christmas there's not many people looking, & those that are want a bargain, (at least here anyway) so we are yet to get an offer we can proceed with & our ex buyers haven't got a new buyer yet either.

We only went viewing again when we knew house 1 was being remarketed. This could prove to be a costly mistake the vendors regret if nobody else wants their house & we end up going elsewhere when we get an offer. The entire chain may live to regret refusing my idea that we all reduce another 5k each to allow us to accept a low offer in order to proceed. Only reason they didn't remarket before now is because an EA told them that if they lose us as buyers they could end up getting even less so best to hold off! We were completely loyal & committed to house 1 until they said about remarketing & their EA confirmed they had already gone elsewhere & done it behind our backs!

With saying your girls are autistic, wouldn't the noise of house 1, be an issue?

Location will always sell. At some point you will want to sell up and H1 will be waaay harder to sell than H2.

It's not really noisy even outside house 1 Nursery. You can barely hear the road standing outside. Inside is quiet as a grave. I'd imagine it's noiser at rush hour by far. The aircraft noise doesn't seem to bother the kids. It's me that's seriously disturbed by it. I get woken at 5am by aircraft in the summer now!

Very true Nap. This could be a huge issue, as the house is already blighted in so many ways. Plus the only 1 guaranteed parking space for a 4 bedroom house isn't ideal before you even start on anything else. By the time we'd been there a few years & my kids have trashed it a bit, it would have nothing going for it whatsoever. And if a block of flats ends up being built behind the garden it will render it almost unsaleable.

DH & I kind of minimised all these points because there was literally nothing else to look at in price range once we'd reduced ours. Now we have a second possibility. Need to find out what the story is with house 2. I'm not concerned it's going to sell imminently because it's been "discreetly marketed" (agents done little more than fuck all) for 3 years now! So there's a story there!

Thanks again all!

Why are you moving? What are you looking for that your current house doesn't have.

Always go with location. You can alter a house to make it what you want it to be, but not the location. That said, you do need to find out why house 2 has been on the market for 3 years.

Moving because our house is far too small senua. We live in an area with outstanding schools, which makes prices higher than neighbouring areas. My kids don't need catchment areas anymore so we can move slightly further away & afford a better house than we could here. I used to be married to the DIY neighbour from hell for 10 years, it now seems like I live next door to them, but thats another story! Im not prepared to go through that again. Current hubby can barely change a light bulb lol. It would cost a fortune to extend this house & change it to be what we wanted it to be & we'd still be stuck with inconsiderate arseholes next door. We can afford to buy something detached outside of the area, or something someone else has already extended if we move!

You are so right Agatha, although tbh location isn't such a priority as it has been, now the kids are older. There definitely is a limit though. I fear with house 1, that should the social club behind it close, it will definitely be knocked down & redeveloped on, plus the field that goes right up to the garden fence. If it were a small housing development I would be fine with it, but having seen another house at the weekend with a block of flats being built literally metres from their back fence, I can now see that is a distinct possibility.

My thoughts on house 2 being on the market for 3 years is that they are reasonably happy living there, but trying their luck putting it on for a higher price, which if anyone is willing to pay they'd be perfectly happy with. If this is the case then we can't buy that either. We were paying 41k less for house 1 than the current asking price of house 2, & I feel thats a more than fair/generous offer even. Most recent sale in the cul de sac was a larger house & garden with a separate double garage, which went for 600k. House 2 is on for 599k, has a single integral garage, slightly smaller house & garden. It needs a couple of bits doing to it, but nothing major. Its not worth the same as the recent sale, thats for certain! I will await with interest the EA comments when she rings me today!