How did you choose your house? Any compromises?

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A really open question I know! I’m house hunting and just can’t find anything that I like that I can afford. I have a small search area and everything seems to be such a compromise or hugely overpriced (there are some ones that have been listed a while that I like but can’t really afford!). Head or heart for these decisions?

Also, look at takeaways. It hasn’t affected us as we don’t use them but we can’t get ANY takeaways where we are!
The one thing that we didn’t overlook was broadband, we are very rural but have great broadband which is vital as both myself and DH work from home in the IT industry!

Slightly to my surprise (because I've been through a phase of location, location, location due to making a bad mistake with my first house and ending up somewhere that nose-dived in terms of area) this time round I'm going for space over location. It's not a huge compromise - the area is still okay but not as nice as where I am at the moment. But we are going nuts tripping over each other in a house that is too small. (And has too much stuff in - stuff that isn't easy to get rid of. I've had a massive declutter, but you get to the point where you look at what's left and think "camping stuff? nope, need that. Tool boxes? Nope, need that. Bikes? Nope, need them. Musical instruments? Nope, need them. Book collection? Would feel like cutting off my right arm...")

We are lucky to not have any debt other than a mortgage so it is just the usual bills and expenses to cover from our pay.

We compromised on having to renovate the entire place so we could have the space we wanted and needed. Also I compromised on no utility but there is room to extend if we could afford in future

We compromised on no of bedrooms over location. We decided it was more important for us to still be within walking distance of the village than to have a spare room for visitors which is realistically only once a month. Long term there's potential to extend to create the extra space we'd like upstairs but it might be cheaper to move. Having said that I love the layout downstairs and I love the location but I would like more period features. Overall we're happy with the compromises we made.

We compromised in bedroom size, amount of work needed and kitchen size / layout.
But then it's in a lovely area and great quiet road.
It was at the top of our budget ( asking price was beyond budget) but a canny estate agent suggest we view it as the vendors might take a lower offer.
Thankfully they did!

Every house is a compromise. Last house was terraced but great school catchment and had pretty much everything else we wanted (period, nice garden). We were also able to extend it. Next house is big detached but has more road noise (backs on to busy road via garden and woodland), and hasn’t been updated in the last 40 years so we have work to do

We had to compromise on bedroom space. Downstairs is Awsome (with slightly too small kitchen) but everything else matched. On the house that fell through it was location and garden size. As ftb I think you always have to compromise on something as you are unlikely to find perfect dream home unless you have heaps of cash and an unlimited location field and time

I compromised on space, knew the (very small and expensive) area I wanted and that I wouldn’t afford much there. Still happy with my decision.

I made a head over heart decision but am now completely in love with my house. We compromised by living in a building site for a year. We bought the house because I knew it had good sized rooms, nice area and I was fed up of looking at houses. I had no attachment to the house when we purchased it. Fast forward a year and the work is nearly finished and I love it. I only admitted to my husband the other day that I didn't care much for the house when we bought it...

Is there anything actually wrong with the less desirable area where the nice house is? Or it is just considered less posh but it’s actually fine?

i would go slightly less desirable area and detached unless by less desirable you mean crime central detached can make less desirable neighbours bearable as no party walls

Totally head as that was the only option we had. We needed a certain location and would have considered anything that offered fairly reliable off road parking, 2 bedrooms and somewhere in the house that I could work from home in. We got that but it's not the style or layout we would have wanted but when you are on a limited budget it's not compromised its reality.

JoJo good question.

Being old and cynical and having had considerable experience of moving house, I'd say you face two genuine risks with the less good area.

One - the area goes downhill (have had this happen to me). More houses of multiple occupancy (a particular risk in university towns), less community feel, worst case scenario more crime.

Second - it's much much harder to sell your house (I had two sales fall through, then had to drop my price by 15%) in order to sell my house in an area that had gone downhill. It took me ten years (and an inheritance) to claw my way back to the same size of house.

So snobbery shouldn't matter, but in the real world it does, and with the single biggest purchase you'll make riding on it, you'd be a fool to ignore it.

We had four things on our list. These were closer to where we wanted to be, parking, more storage than our then property and safe for the cat. Other than that we couldn't afford to be picky.

In practice it had character but is pebbledashed, dark and has electricity poles in all the wrong places. However, after getting that nothing else came up which met our criteria and was better in the four years after.

My husband had extra criteria and he wanted the biggest house possible and was less worried about location. He has since found two houses online that he thinks we should have moved to instead, but both breached our agreed criteria.

You may need a list of criteria ordered in priority and then go and see as much as possible to test those.

I compromised on location to get space, light and layout.

London Z3 rather than Z1 or Z2. I’m happy with that decision.

I had no attachment to the house when we purchased it. Fast forward a year and the work is nearly finished and I love it. I only admitted to my husband the other day that I didn't care much for the house when we bought it...

Also this. I thought I’d made a massive mistake when I first moved in. Massive. Love coming home to my peaceful home now.

We were looking for a 3 bed in a particular area. After walking around, we set up a very particular area around the local high street.

Within that, we had a little exclusion zone of right near the high street, which has appalling parking and is one of the most polluted streets in the country AND the houses are more expensive, because most people don't appreciate the parking and pollution issues until they've moved there.

So we ended up buying a gorgeous house with a driveway and large garden for £275k, which if it were near the high street would have cost at least £315k. The smaller, creakier, tiny gardened, no parking houses were around £250k.

Our compromises:

• on a 'main' road (though only 20mph, we prefer the bustle, we'd prefer something that wouldn't put off buyers)
• smaller bedrooms - but much, MUCH better socialising space downstairs

I didn't have an attachment to our house when we first viewed. I remember pretending to love the house to the vendors (competitive area) when I felt nothing. But it was reasonably priced, great location, and long term potential. I'm liking it more and more as we renovate and put our stamp on it, but still feels a bit 'theirs'.

We were very limited on budget for the postcode we wanted to live in. We weren't prepared to compromise on location, so decided that whatever came up within our budget, we would at least look at. One was great, if smaller than ideal, but listed and preliminary enquiries indicated we wouldn't get permission to make any of the internal changes we would have to make. Another was also small, but in a great position, been on the market for absolutely ages, needed a lot of work and the vendor wouldn't budge an inch on the price .

We bought the third house. Don't love, don't hate it, it's where we want to be and suits our needs fine.

Priorities were good school catchment (we moved with a pre schooler), big garden, two reception rooms, no work needed, controlled budget so we could enjoy a nice lifestyle
Compromise was we ended up with a long term renovation (been a slog both financially and time wise as of now have two young kids), it's not a particularly desirable street and it's an end terrace (wanted semi or detached if possible)

@JoJoSM2 the area is “fine” but the next area up the road is less fine and then there’s a terrible one. Perhaps I am being snobby. :-/ We live in a less desirable area at the moment and this move will be adding a lot to our mortgage so I don’t really want it to be to another less desirable area IYSWIM.
@FermatsTheorem we are hoping never to move again so would really hope the area didn’t get worse but yes a risk!

I'm making the same trade-off, redpink - or at least I will be if I can find a buyer for my house. Slightly bigger house, slightly less desirable area. Which I don't think (given the demographics) should nose dive, but one never knows.

It was a different issue with my first house - all I could afford was somewhere fairly marginal. There were 3 areas I could realistically buy in, and two got gentrified, and one went downhill - guess which one I bought in?

For our current house we compromised on utility room, which I had really wanted. Bedroom sizes could have been more even too, but apart from that it is an amazing house & I don't want to ever move.

When we moved for school catchment area we compromised on EVERYTHING! I had moved from a mortgage free house, which was a great size, in a nice area & walking distance from town to a house with a huge mortgage, that was TINY. Living room so small we could pass things from one side of the room to the other while sitting in our arm chairs. Youngest DD's bedroom was big enough for a bed & nothing else. It had one bathroom which had the one toilet in the house. It was a horrible house. We tolerated it for almost 8 years, but it was worth it for the schools!

Well we (by which I mean I) pretty much ripped up our list of 'wants' and now live in something totally different.

I absolutely love it, and having lived in a house for 16 years that I was never really happy in, it is amazing.