To buy this house? Advice please

[HepLaurenceLB]

We are trying to move to our dream town. There are only 11 houses for sale. The only one that is big enough and in budget is a 3 story townhouse. Lounge is on the first floor.
It ticks most boxes e.g location, schools, number of bedrooms. The problem is I hate the layout and it feels cramped. We have 3 DC to squeeze in and DH wfh. Also it is a private, quiet gated road and I worry my children would upset the neighbours.

If we don’t buy it we will have to stay at my brothers house (which DH will hate). I am worried that if we do that a better property might not come on. Wwyd?

Can you convert the garage to a living space? That means your lounge is on the ground floor beside the kitchen and you can use the current lounge as a bedroom or overflow lounge.
Otherwise i think a living room on a different floor is not worjavy with small kids.

I always fancied the idea of a townhouse when my DS was younger. Now I am older I could think of nothing worse. But then I am very against stairs at the moment!

I would be concerned that your children will have to share so it depends on whether the twins are the same sex?

Also, if you are really not sure now before you even put an offer in it is not the house for you

Are you in England? Loads of extensions are able to be done under permitted development. Is this a conservation area or are there restrictive covenants?

I love our town house (3 bed), I love having the sitting room on the first floor and though ds is a floor up, a couple of staircases have ensured safety.

However the particular design of that one feels cramped and I think I might feel a little claustrophobic.

We are looking to move to a town where good houses sell in a day. We will sell our house and move into a rental so we are ready to pounce . i think you need to get our house sold now, while the stamp duty holiday is on and you are getting the best price. House prices are predicted to fall next year so you would be much better placed living in a rental and buying then.

@user1471538283 the twins are both boys. I have already put a really low offer in that was rejected but they have come back with a half way price compromise. They have been on the market since March and have already dropped the price by 75k. They are offering us a further 15k off.

Personally I wouldn't recommend a townhouse with children. There's lots of stairs, the distance between the kitchen and living room might cause an issue if your DC are young and need supervising.

Someone said 4 beds are for people with children so don't worry about noise- obviously this isn't true. You will have neighbours with no children but even the ones who have children won't want yours screaming, shouting and running up and down stairs all day.

Keep looking, and perhaps consider going slightly out of town.

@QuantumQuality it is a private road where everyone pays a service charge for maintenance of communal areas. This also comes with a contact not to change the buildings or gardens.

Op, who exactly has told you that you can't convert the garage? If it just a room conversion (eg no kitchen, plumbing etc) then it should only need to satisfy building regs, and not need planning permission. We have just converted our garage into a dining room. We live on a new build estate, so needed a letter of permission from the developer (which was easy to get, cost us £120), then the builder dealt with the building regs (waiting for certificate to come through, it was only finished Christmas week!).

My last house was a townhouse with large kitchen on ground floor and living room on 1st floor (it did also have a separate dining room on the ground floor, but I used it as a kind of office room and had a sofa in there too, so it could have been used as living room if I'd wanted I guess).

The main bedroom with en-suite was also on the first floor, then the other 3 bedrooms (bedroom 4 was a tiny box room) on the top room. The only thing I didn't like about it was that I am a very light sleeper, and I could hear every movement from the rooms above me. Literally could hear my daughter turning over in bed sometimes, and could definitely hear her talking (as she could me). Not saying all townhouses are like that, but something to consider, especially if you have creaky floorboards above!!

We also stayed at a friends house early last year (before the pandemic) who have a townhouse. Their bedroom was on the top floor, we stayed on the middle floor. I could hear her husband snoring all night!

My kids were 9 and 10 when I moved into it so didn't need me as much, but if you've got 1 year old twins how many times are you likely to need to run up and down stairs when they're in bed and you're down in the kitchen for example? Will certainly keep you fit, but it's just another consideration.

Please don't take this as negative, in spite of what I've written above I loved my townhouse. When I came to sell I had a local agent telling me they were a nightmare to sell as people didn't want them. Clearly I didn't go with him, and my house sold in a week, so people obviously do like them.

Well, how essential is having a separate sitting room on the first floor for you? I would use that as the fourth bedroom and have the tiny box room as a small play area or office. But I'm personally not bothered about a small living room attached to the kitchen, so that would be fine with me.

Are your twins the same sex? If yes, they're more likely to share for another 10 years before they're of secondary age, in which case you could move again then or plan conversions/extension as necessary. So to start with you don't even need a fourth bedroom. Sitting room could become your en-suite eventually and that still leaves you 3 good sized bedrooms.

Why can’t you convert the garage? Who has told you that?

I would rent x

I’ve just properly looked at the dimensions of each room - nope I wouldn’t buy that.

Nothing to do with it being a townhouse but 1 of those bedrooms is so small they’ve got a nerve even calling it a bedroom, and the 2 upstairs ones are so oddly shaped there doesn’t seem to be much actual useable space.

I think after 18 months in this you’d be desperate to move again.

If the front has to remain the same, could you convert 2/3 of the garage to a playroom so that you can a closer eye on the kids when you're more likely to be on that floor for most of the day? That way you can keep part of the garage for storing bikes etc.
How big is the garden? Is there room for some sort of playroom/ home office construction there?

I think townhouses suit older children personally. This particular house also has fairly small rooms, though if one bedroom is used for WFH not too bad. From your post you don't sound like you even remotely like it.

My DD had a townhouse with baby twins. It wasn't a problem. I'd use a small area behind the garage door as storage and move the utility room into the garage. Incorporate the existing utility room into the kitchen diner to make more space so that it can be a living room too. Sofa, tv etc.

The strict covenants on this house would make it a hard no from me because it doesn't sound like somewhere that's geared up for kids. We looked at townhouses with our DC1, but decided against it because I wanted a decent garden for him to play in and I couldn't stand having to open so many stairgates to go anywhere in the house!

@HepLaurenceLB

We have asked about a garage conversion and have been told that we would not get planning permission to replace the garage door with a window. So we could only make an internal conversion with no natural light.

Some friends of ours turned a garage like this into a music room/study but left the front 2ft of garage with garage door in place to use as a bike shed. The remainder of the garage made a good sized room. You can get natural light into internal rooms using light tunnels which can be amazingly effective

We live on a new build estate, so needed a letter of permission from the developer (which was easy to get, cost us £120),

Hasn’t the OP already indicated the developer won’t give permission?

I think you should rent for now. This will mean you’re ready to go as soon as the ideal property comes on (which I do not think is this one). There’s a chance the SDLT reduction could be extended so you might also benefit from that but there’s huge value in being chain free. This house isn’t practical and you’d spend all day going up and down the stairs.

Sorry I meant to add that it also would be difficult to sell I think, as you can see from the current owners having to drop the price and being on the market for nearly a year.

Town houses are pigs to sell on as they appeal to such a limited market.
Personally I wouldn't buy it.

Unfortunately I would say that you are very unlikely to make the stamp duty deadline now anyway.

You don't usually need planning permission, only bulding regs for a garage conversion but depending on the age of your children I woudn't like the bedroom layout. It would be great for me now with older teens but I turned down a 3 storey layout when mine were younger.

We have a townhouse that is very similar to yours. We have a restrictive covenant from the developer/ local council saying we cannot convert the garage and it's related to the number of parking spaces on the small development. I like our home but I do wonder about all the stairs! We have just one adult daughter with us now who is on the top but I would be wary of all the running up and down after little kids. We know a number of young families who live happily in a townhouse though but I would say if you aren't 100% sell yours, move to rented and take it from there. There will be another house