Would you buy a damp house?

[HooseDilemma]

We viewed a house last week. Lovely location (ideal really) and with a bigger garden than is the norm for the area. House needs cosmetic work, as we expected from the advert.

However, we also noticed that upstairs, every outside wall was damp at the top and around the windows. We're talking maybe about a foot of discoloration (some rooms more obvious than others) along the top of the wall, along with peeling wallpaper. There was mould in all the window sealant and on the ceiling in one of the bedrooms. You could see condensation lines running down the wallpaper in another if the bedrooms. House is approx 1970s/80s so not particularly old.

Only a few houses a year come up in this location, but we'd be mad to buy a house with obvious damp, wouldn't we?

I'd get a specialist damp report. It should only cost a couple of hundred, and you'll know exactly what you're dealing with.

We are about to buy a house with damp. Long story short, we love the house and won't have money to fix it straight away but will save up for it. We are hoping by running dehumidifiers etc it won't be too bad for the short term!
If there was a house in the right price/location without damp we would have obviously gone for that instead

If multiple rooms are affected I would factor in the cost to replace the roof and gutters. If it has been a long standing problem the joists and rafters may require attention too.

So depending on the price of the house plus the cost of a new roof (worst case) if I really liked it I would buy it.

I rented a damp place once and it was horrendous. Imagine if you couldn't fix it how horrendous it would be. We all had health problems living there that never came back once we moved out. Not worth it.