1930s semi or new build detached

[Housemove21]

1930s a small 3 bed, large garden, desirable road.

New build detached, 4 bed small garden, around social housing.

Thoughts?

I would normally say the detached but based on your description I’d ow say the 1930’s semi.

@GingerAndTheBiscuits

1930s semi. Can’t beat the high ceilings and period features. Make sure you’ve got a slush fund to do it up though. We rewired ours, new bathroom, decorated parts of it but desperately need a new kitchen (hoping to do as part of an extension) and there’s still areas that need redecorating 8 years on. It was a shell of a house when we bought it and we hadn’t anticipated how much it would cost to modernise it (it only had two plug sockets!). But I don’t plan to ever leave, any work we do to it is with an eye to living here forever.

Very similar here . Rewired - some rooms had no plugs !! We have done a downstairs extension, now have new kitchen diner seating area plus playroom and downstairs loo. Separate utility. Large garden . Been here two years in august and planning on doing bathroom next . It was a shell of a house but location wins for me . We are planning to extend the loft to make fourth bedroom.

I like the 30's houses...our other house built 1929...very solid and low ceilings...also south facing so lovely and sunny and never seems to get really cold like our victorian house where we live....also the 30's house has a huge garden, drive and a garage...i would live there if not so remote area etc.

Has anyone had a double storey extension on the side of a house from 1930s, did it make it more expensive? Not a clue what them sort of things would cost

I did OP - 3 years ago. Cost £100k including two new bathrooms and a new kitchen. Obviously depends on size though.

Have also done a double storey extension. When people quote a price per sq m, its not the footprint, its the space you're adding (so someone mentioned an 8mx3m extension, that's actually classed as 48sqm for double storey). Ours worked out at £2k per sq m.

If you're thinking of going out at the side double storey, just see how much space you have. The general planning rule (certainly here) is that you have to leave 1m between the extension and your side boundary.

I'd go for the 1930's house if I had the choice, that's what I expect we'll buy next. I love older houses, we're currently in an Edwardian 3 bed, and it's huge! Will be downsizing as we'll be moving to an (outer) London suburb, with tubes and trains, which hikes up house prices.

The good thing is that we'll be buying a house with a garage to the side, so plan to do a double storey extension plus single storey across the rear. London prices are £2k-£2.5k per square metre, so if you do an average sized one, you'll not see much change from £100-150k.

For those who extended, have you gone full width at the back? I figured we’d be limited by the 45 degree rule, so we could go out the back from the kitchen (on the detached side) but couldn’t go out the same distance on the attached side.

@GingerAndTheBiscuits where we are - and I think it's pretty standard - you can extend single storey full width across the rear of the property but the first floor has to be at least 2m from the boundary with the adjoined neighbour. will try to find a pic

Similar to this

1930s semi, without a doubt.

The semi

Good luck with your offer!

I would have chosen the 1930's semi too.

[quote Africa2go]@GingerAndTheBiscuits where we are - and I think it's pretty standard - you can extend single storey full width across the rear of the property but the first floor has to be at least 2m from the boundary with the adjoined neighbour. will try to find a pic[/quote]
But does it restrict how far out you can go? Like if we wanted to extend the kitchen out to the limits of permitted development I’m not sure if we can do that across the back (if we even wanted to!). We remortgage next year so just trying to get a sense of what we might be able to do downstairs and price it up ready.

1930's definitely.

You'll have to really push your solicitor to get it through before stamp duty though. Our council returned our buyers search results the same day they requested them (no extra charge), no enquiries and it still took about 13 weeks from start to finish due to poor communication.

Why buy a 1930s semi to add some awful extension on to it? 1930s houses don’t have a large open plan kitchen with an island and bi folding doors. It’ll be the equivalent of all the people who ripped out Victorian fire places in the 90s.

@GingerAndTheBiscuits I think the PD rights now allow 6m in length for single storey extensions for semis - I don't know the process for that but think neighbours can still object and you still need approval (certificate beforehand??) from the LA. I'm guessing it would very much depend on the actual site??

@Housemove21
I am living in an Semi-Detached that's built shortly after the first world war. After 8 years I started to look for new built houses. Here are the pros & cons I weighed.

Pros of old houses:

1. Old houses has bigger gardens also bigger driveway.
2. Good privacy, when compared to the new builts where people from the house behind yours can see whole of your backyard from their bedroom.
3. I found the privacy in the front lounges also not that good. As most of the houses dont have bigger driveway, the houses opposite can see each others lounges, so they have to keep their blinds closed all the time. In my house, we hardly close our blinds.
4. Location of the new developments could be away from the city, so daily commute to office/schools might be challenging.

Cons:

1. We can hear the neighbours through the walls. And they can too. We are in good terms now, so whenever the noise goes too much, we text each other to keep it down. But it wont always be the case.
2. With old piping, we changed to new high pressure boiler, and the pipes struggles to handle the pressure. They bang on the floors and makes loud noises during the nights when the heating is on. We have to install pressure controlling devices and see how it will help. I have sleeping issues, so the loud heating noises, and loud neighbours are not helping.
3. The walls are cold due to poor to no insulation. The room gets heated very quickly, but when the heating is turned off, the walls suck the heat, and it gets cold quickly too. So in winter we had to have heater running almost the whole day.
4. Future renovations or extensions might be tricky. We tried to go for extension and found out there is a Severn trent drain pipe just under 2 meters from the property, so we wont get permission for extension.
5. The neighbourhood is not that friendly. But with new builts, especially in the developments that built 50+ houses, we get to live in a community of like-minded people. Kids might get friends, and the cul-de-sac would even enable them to play outside.
6. It's not as easy to do renovations, finding right builders etc. So if we find a good detached house that has everything we need, that would be a best bet.

In our case, we are in a catchment to a good school, and the new builts we loved are outside the catchment area, so we decided to continue living in this home. This old house has the positives of bigger garden and privacy. And we are happy with that for now.

1930s without a doubt.
We’ve been in ours just over 20 years, it’s grown with us.
Double extension to the side gained us a playroom/office, larger kitchen, bedroom and shower room.
Then we went into the loft to get another bedroom so we’ve now got 5 bedrooms.
We have a lot of projects going on and we have spent a lot of money but it’s increased in value by over £300,000 so we’re lucky.
Going to make an outdoor kitchen this year.
If we had bought a new build we probably wouldn’t have done anything.

Definitely 1930s house for me. I've just bought a 1930s house which has plenty of original features which were mostly covered up. I looked at a mix of houses and the new builds I saw were tiny inside I feel like I'm living in a mansion compared to the new build, the 3 beds were on a smaller footprint than my 2 bed Victoria terrace. My 1930s house needs work but the work I do will definitely add value in the long term and the house can be decorated as modern as a new build.