What is the appeal in 1960's ish houses?

[user1374384]

Hoping not to offend anyone, but I have fallen in love with a school, and the catchment area is in the middle of massess and masses of identical looking, 1960's? slate fronted houses, mostly in cul-di-sacs. I think this type of house was built until the 80's maybe. Pale or lighter grey bricks, double roof or flat slate fronted. Most are 3 bed semi's, but with the box room being too small to use as a bedroom.

Obvious appeal would be they all seem to have gardens (not huge though) and driveways. But they have low ceilings, small rooms, tiny kitchens, tiny bathrooms, no interesting features, ugly to look at, just seems a bit soulless. Every single one to buy or rent is just beige looking inside too, they don't seem to suit any styling I guess.

But I really want to learn to appreciate them so I don't have to cross this school off the top of my wishlist. Judging by the prices for the size, I must be missing why I should like them?

What has surprised me is how high the house prices are in comparison to many more interesting houses nearby. You can get a bigger Victorian terrace for less than half the price, so why are people paying more for these?

What am I missing?

have fallen in love with a school

Looks as if everyone else has too.

My experience with Victorian terraces is that they’re usually damp and cold so that wouldn’t be my top choice either!

Do you mean this type of house? www.retrowow.co.uk/retro_style/homes/wimpey3.jpg

I have a 1960s house but it's nothing like you describe. It has lovely big windows and the smear room could still fit a double.

The ones you describe definitely sound maybe 70/89s as everything shrank !

1960s houses generally have large picture windows, large gardens and lots of room around them. Maybe a bit ugly with quite plain exteriors, often with tiled cladding. Not like your description.

www.alamy.com/stock-photo-1960s-semi-detached-houses-ipswich-suffolk-uk-33780184.html

Are the lovely Victorian’s also in school catchment?

Flipping auto correct.

I live in a house like this. I'd better tell dc2 his bedroom isn't real!
It's not like I chose it while bypassing other, equally affordable, Victorian houses 🤷‍♀️

We live in a 1960s house. Like you, we moved to the area for the schools and the house was second to that. It's not a pretty pretty house to look at from the outside, but has lots of other advantages.

Bigger room sizes than in most new builds for a start, we have enough space at the front to park two cars and have a bit of garden, garden at the back, space round the side of the house and between us and next door - new builds in the area are an awful lot closer. Solid construction, proper attic which we extended up into.

Downside apart from the lack of prettiness is that there is no downstairs loo. Although it's really not an issue as no other houses near us have one either.

Lots of these houses near me. And yes, they happen to be near a great school too. I don’t think the appeal lies with the house and its keen appeal, it’s the area. Location location location

We bought a 1980 house and it’s smaller still with a tony garden! So for a surburban family house, something from the 60s ticks all the boxes.

Haha, that would be the obvious reason @thebrockmans It is a popular school but it isn't the most popular by a long shot.

I love my Victorian terrace @riotlady, though the gas is spendy and the 'garden' is crap. A bargain Edwardian fixer upper is my dream.

Yes some are like that @sarahb083 but more are smaller like my attached picture.

@malfoylovespotter I always thought they were 80's-90's so you are probably right but this Google images search (attached picture) said 60's and confused me!

Keen appeal autocorrected from kerb appeal, obvs.

This is the typical sort of 1960s house near me.

whoops

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-66109698.html

And yes. Much older properties are a bugger to heat, can't often be well-insulated, harder to extend... and in a terrace you have neighbours either side.

We used to have a house identical to the one in your pic and it was built in 1967. It had big rooms, was full of light because of the big windows and we never heard a peep from the neighbours despite being mid terrace. It didn't look attractive but it was a good solid house and served us well for 10 years.

We are in one out of necessity. Ours has small rooms, large windows, appalling acoustics, one bathroom to five bedrooms. No storage.

I haven't got a clue how the poor lady who was here before me managed to raise a large family. She was here for 50 years!

Saving grace: nice large plot, off rias parking for three cars, quiet neighbours, not overlooked.

If I could choose again? I'd probably buy it again but at the right price to enable adaptations and an extension to bring it up to date.

I have a 60's housewhichhasgoodsized rooms and is light and bright,
The house in the pic looks 70's to me.

We moved from a gorgeous cottage we had doneup but the space here was fantastic! Although we didn't have many obvious period features - pothole windows and parquet floor excepted we are bringing a scandi mid century feel back .

I live in exactly this house .

The box room isnt "a box room" anymore.

We have been really creative with it & asked a joiner to build a bed over the box ... it looks great & has a full size single bed.

I dont like snobbery about particular house types - further up our road we have bigger newer houses ... I would have my house a hundred times over.

Wow ... my house is soulless .

We have one of those, we quickly ruled out the Victorian terraces due to no parking, rubbish gardens and weird layouts (I don't want to have to walk through the kitchen or a bedroom when I get out of the shower!)

We didn't want a new build once again due to no parking, tiny garden, tiny rooms and just generally feeling 'flimsy' (and being massively overpriced)

So we ended up here, with parking for 2 cars, a nice garden and decent size rooms full of light. Yeah it's not the nicest looking house in the world, but I'm not looking at it when I'm inside!

Those type of houses aren’t great and from a period where house building had no style or imagination. There is often a box room which can’t really be used. You can change the appearance of the outside but an expensive job and you will still be looking out at ugly houses. New builds are a bit better but not much so. Doing up a Victorian or Edwardian would be a much better option. No one wants to live on an estate full of 1960s semis like that

Sorry to derail thread slightly, but @IfOnlyOurEyesSawSouls did you have to reinforce ceiling for your bed over stair box? I am desperate to do this but there is currently a large cupboard there (randomly build out of breeze blocks I think). We have been told it is not supporting anything,, but I am petrified if we smash it out the ceiling above might collapse!

I would say that is 70/80s... the start of houses shrinking and becoming generic boxes. Not the worst era though, that goes to the 1990-2010 era, the smallest most soulless houses on the smallest plots

Hmm. Mine is ex local authority and has bigger rooms than new builds I've seen. Also a garden long enough for a decent extension in the future. Not seen that in a new build either. Children change your priorities and a bedroom each and outside space becomes more important than it used to be (never mind school catchments of course!)

I have the terrace version of that house @user1374384. The bathroom may be tiny but we have two nice sized double bedrooms and a good-sized single too. The previous owner's child seemed very happy there. We have a garage, parking and a nice sized garden. I feel a bit insulted by your post to be honest. It's an affordable house in a nice area and we're very happy here.