I hope this is supposed to go here. Bit of an odd one I suppose, and it will probably be quite long! I have put paragraphs but on mobile so praying they show, sorry if not. Looking for advice, bit of a WWYD?
I currently rent a council house, I'm a student and a lone parent. Was previously working full time and was with a partner who worked full time so we were looking at buying a house together, but we just never found the right one. We have since split and as I'm now a student without a partner I can't get a mortgage.
My question is more about my current house and whether to improve it or not. I will have the right to buy/acquire at the end of this year. I love the area, and I do like living here, but the house would need a lot of work which would cost quite a bit on top of my deposit and mortgage. The discount in my area for buying from council is 9k, and houses on my road with the same layout and with improvements have recently gone for 125k and 145k respectively. Minimum I'm looking at around 116k for this house though they could ask for more. If I bought it, I'd also have to offer it back to the HA if I wanted to sell up within 10 yesrs which could make things difficult for me job wise when I finish my degree. On top of this, there are a few things about the house that aren't ideal. Walls in weird places to create huge alcoves (done by previous tenants and never fixed), the bath and sink are in one room and the toilet room is separate. The kitchen and bathroom are old and actually falling apart (but not enough for the HA to replace or fix them). There are a few other dodgy things that the old tenants did which aren't dangerous but would cost me to fix and get it how I'd want it. For this reason, I don't really want to buy it. In the next 3 years I could save up even more of a deposit to buy an already done house for the same cost, but without actually having to have the cash as such to get it done as it would just be mortgage with a good deposit.
The flooring throughout is horrendous, prev tenants had a dog which pooed on the living room carpet and there are awful stains. They must have put all the flooring down themselves in the front room / dining room as there's no underlay and it isn't secured. I have a huge rug in my living room covering a lot of the stains but the carpet isn't even fitted correctly and you can see boards underneath at each side of the room. Same goes for both bedrooms. The top landing and stairs aren't awful but the bottom landing when you walk in has no flooring at all just boards (and 2 rugs I have fashioned to fit there and in the weird alcove they put in). The internal doors were also replaced for awful cheap plywood doors by prev tenants and chunks of wood are literally falling off them, especially in the bathroom where it appears to be rotting as it has gotten wet due to opening towards the bath. The HA says it is my responsibility to replace these, but if I do I have to keep the old doors for as long as I'm here and put the old ones back on if I leave.
My ultimate dilemma is - I don't know whether to replace the doors and get new flooring. If the walls, kitchens and bathroom wouldn't cost so much to sort out I wouldn't hesitate to buy the house as I know I'm lucky to be in this position, I'm also thinking if I can manage to buy a private house don't take one from the HA. It's going to cost me a lot to buy and fit new doors and new flooring for the entire house - money I don't really want to spend if I'm not going to buy it at the end (easily 1.5k which could go in my help to buy) but at the same time, I'm going to be here for a minimum of 3 more years, if not a couple more, and it's really upsetting me that no matter what I do my house doesn't look nice because of these things. Someone please tell me what to do!