Dilemma! Same house on same street, £34k cheaper

[Parisah]

Hi all!
This scenario in the SE:
House A: decent enough interior, few steps away from amazing school, north facing garden, last sold 2016, chain free, further from train tracks, north facing garden.

House B: older interior but not awful, other end of road so further from school (but relatively close still), last sold 1998, not chain free, closer to train tracks (they are at the end of the road) south facing garden.

Both Victorian semis. House B is £34k cheaper.

Can house A be worth so much more, maybe because of train tracks?

My garden faces NW and I have grown fruit, vegetables and many flowers this year?! I have the sun from midday-ish right up until the evening. Maybe it depends on whats around you but its not as bad as people have described on here

Back to the point - chain free. So much less of a faff

If they’re two bedrooms, are you planning to extend at some point?

[quote Parisah]@bookgirl1982 days! Both will sell, 100% and probs for asking. So I have to get a wriggle on :)[/quote]
Mum was looking to downsize..Had looked in so many places...North Facing gardens, Train Tracks, tower block nearby...
Then a tiny 2 up 2 down came up at £850k... It is gorgeous. In a quiet cocooned place in the same district. We said buy it!
Location is everything.

She did buy it, and it is lovely.

Re train tracks..Dad was born in a house next to Mortlake Train station.. the clickety clack of the trains {Steam then til early 1960's} and he always found the train sounds oddly comforting.

He made money and could afford to move away, but mum always joked that he ''Never wanted to live far from South Worple Way''

Speaking of which....
A lovely old film about moving is ''The Chain''........ well worth a watch.
Good luck :)

When we bought our first house in 1997 the asking price was £110,000 and during the course of the sale the house next door (which had the bathroom downstairs so a big minus point but was otherwise identical) went up for £125,000. We were scared stiff the owner of our house was going to cop on to the fact that he might be able to get more money if he changed his mind and put it back on the market at a higher price.

But it was very scruffy and run-down and smelly (with a nice brown bathroom suite and ancient Woolworths kitchen) and thankfully he didn't.

I'm not wild about south facing gardens btw. They can be too hot.

Id hate a north facing garden, so that one would be a Nono for me. Our back is south facing, beautiful all year round. Exactly the same house opposite us has a north facing garden which is permanently in shade and can only grow evergreen type shrubs, nothing of colour or interest.

I’d recommend you look at both houses. You need to love your home, see which one feels like home. It’s not something that can be worked out on paper.

School catchment change over time, train tracks will always be there!!

Garden aspect - young children and scorching hot garden don't go great together. I mean if you lived in the NW I could understand it more but the SE is warmer, sunnier and more humid...

We're on an estate with lots of on paper very similar houses. They can vary that sort of amount for lots of reasons.

Bigger garden
Newer décor
Redone kitchen/bathroom
No chain
Quick sell needed
Location-yes even on the same street (there's one street which I've never worked out why, but the houses at the far end sell for about 20k less than the rest of the estate, no school catchment issues, no railway, nothing obvious)

Years ago, we had a south facing garden but a north facing living room. I was so fixated on the garden, I didn’t consider the living room at all but when I was stuck at home with a baby/toddler, I vowed to not make that mistake again!

You’re in the SE so hot dry summers in recent years.

Buy A - unless you’re adept at diy doer uppers are almost always a false economy!!

South facing if you are a gardener, unless the garden is so huge that it doesn’t matter.

From what you've said in your updates, I'd go for A. You like it more anyway. It's closer to the school. B could be risky for school. The train tracks could be really annoying depending on what kind of line it is and when the first and last trains run.
You could end up spending nearly 34K updating the older interior of B anyway.
Chain free is also definitely an advantage.

@Foxyloxy1plus1 yes when we win the lottery

Could be structural issue? No heating? Sinking foundations? Leaking roof? In need of full rewire? Unsafe electrics? Failed windows throughout?

Sometimes just because it is cheaper than its neighbour doesn't always make it a good investment. You could find yourself that £34k out of pocket before you've even touched the house itself. Get a full survey before even taking a side glance!

A, better all round, worth the extra in my view

The older house will need rewiring probably, new bathroom & kitchen & decorating, = more than 34K
cold sunless garden & train passing

I got 3 agents round to value my mum's house a couple of years ago
one said I think 495k, one said 550 and one said 690! If it isn't exactly identical to recently sold houses I think they just pick figures out of the air. Can you find any recent sales that are comparable?

BTW my mum's house any in for I think 640 and sold for 620, so the lower two were way off,

Chain free could mean they are in no rush to sell so can wait for the right price.

Most of the stress from buying houses comes when the chain breaks down. If both parties are chain free, it could be a much more pleasant than average move.

Work out the extra cost over the lifetime of your ownership and it might not seem so bad.

House B. As the owner of a north facing garden, I would say the aspect alone would be worth the extra. And a more dated interior isn't the end of the world, most people want to put their own stamp on a house anyway. The chain free issue isn't important enough to alter a decision between two houses unless they're literally identical.

I’d go house A on the basis of the proximity to school and the distance from the train tracks. If you’re anything like me then repeated, regular, predictable invasive noise can be really irritating at best, debilitating at worst. I live on a not especially busy through road under a not especially noisy bit of a flight path and I dream of escaping from both; a train track in earshot would be a nightmare for me unless it was down a huuuge cutting. Also if you’re moving for schools then maximise your chance of getting in to said school for sure!

Dilemma!

Two individuals have listed their houses at different prices (doesn't mean they will sell for that or guarantee they will be even offered anything close to either of their prices)!!!

Haven't read the thread but if the school is good, future buyers may be interested in any variation in the catchment. Some schools have a catchment within yards and will absolutely vary along a street as siblings, looked after children and suchlike can constrict the size of a year's intake.

You'll already know that even if catchment isn't a priority for you, it will affect the valuation for future sales.

Good luck.

If House B is close to the rail track, it will put off buyers. It affects you, for example, if you want to adopt a pet from an animal rescue.

South-facing garden isn't all it's cracked up to be - east west is better.

South facing garden for a terrace house means gloomy north facing rooms at the front of the house.

House B, you will still be close enough to school ( 0.1 miles is fine going by the current last place distance, it may reduce, but not by that much) but not so close that you are affected by school drop off. You will gradually do up the property to your taste. South facing garden is worth a lot! I have lived in a property with train tracks at the end of the garden. It wasn't a problem at all! Try and time a second visit when you know a train is due to go past to see. If they are with different agents you could start negotiating on both.

It may be worth paying for a basic survey on both to see what costs would be incurred on both. The fact that A has been done up doesn't mean for example that it needs a rewire!

Tricky. I would hate to be in sight of train tracks with young children. The pollution, the noise, the fear of them looming. £34k will vanish in the remodelling of a kitchen and bathroom, but they would be exactly to your taste. Then you'd have perfect house, south facing garden, further from school, closer to train tracks, for the same price, roughly as house A.
On balance, I'd probably go for the house that's safely in catchment and further from train. The only compromise there is NF garden. The other house has more compromises, and the cost of updating wipes out the price drop. (That said, all my life, my compromise has been NF garden and next time I definitely want to hold out for SW or S facing.

Nothing wrong with a north facing garden, it's all about the structures / tall trees nearby that will cast shade.

Mine faces NE and it's perfect - full sun until midday, then slowly getting shadier until the evening. Ideal in hot weather especially as the house stays cool too! Never had a problem growing anything and I make much more use of it than one that gets hotter throughout the day.

House A would win for me because it needs less doing to it and is further from the train line. Never underestimate the value of chain free!