What was that one compromise?

[Fancypants2022]

when buying your house - what was the one compromise you made? Mine was accessing the kitchen through the lounge. My last house has this and I was hoping to avoid it. It was great in every other way (apart from being a bit small!!) - is there one thing you gave in on in order to get the house?

Our drive is one car behind the other and you have to reverse out onto a corner.

Luckily post covid dh doesn't leave the house and the road is not too busy!

We wanted an open plan kitchen/dining room. We got a house that doesn't have this and the layout makes it pretty much impossible. We also paid more than we had initially intended to.

No drive. Though there are unallocated parking bays right outside (and very respectful neighbours). In two years, we have only not been able to park right outside once, when we went away for the weekend and came back while a neighbour had a few family round for a bbq.

To get a drive we would have had to drop a bed or reception room or have a tiny garden. I’m so glad we didn’t.

Our compromise is an absolute massive mortgage which means we’ll need to be really careful with money, which we’ve never had to be.

and a really old upstairs bathroom and no ensuite, but hopefully something we can fix in 2-3 years.

Nondriv

Whoops.

No driveway, communal parking only. It wasn't a good decision.

Absolute wreck decoratively with a lot of DIY bodge jobs, but structurally sound.
Gardens so overgrown you couldn't see the back.
No downstairs loo.

It has taken a long time, but almost all done and we have a downstairs loo now.

I bought my house in 1983, when compromising wasn’t necessary. I got a 4 bed 2 recep detached property with a garage, good sized gardens, two bathrooms and central heating, for £29K. (My annual salary at the time was about £30K.) In an attractive village, 200 yards from the primary school and 20 yards from a bus stop. It’s now worth nearly eight times that!

Being a higher mortgage than I wanted to pay.

We lost our buyers which in turn meant we lost this house then found new buyers but accepted £20k under what the original buyers were paying. Was the reoffered this house when their latest buyers pulled out but they would not budge on price as needed every penny for their onwards purchase plus prices had risen since they first went to market.

We loved the house and nothing had come on the market since plus we had done all the conveyancing on it.

I wasn't able to model the higher mortgage and several other financial factors to be taken into account (a teen leaving home, lower council tax, a reduction from 3 hours driving to nil) so went ahead and hoped it would be ok.

It is ok and we love the house but I am having to be very careful with money. And nothing suitable came up for sale in the meantime.

I only had two requirements: upstairs bathroom and off street parking. This house, which I love, has neither 🙄

No off road parking, the house I bought was on a council estate & was on a path between two roads, I paid for a disabled parking bay instead.

Not overlooked was a firm criteria. Neighbours ground floor window overlooks part of back garden. I've told myself I'll plant a tree

North facing garden, which turns out to have been absolutely no issue at all, it's actually more like North West and so large that our patio gets sun right until sunset

Small windows which are aesthetically ugly but still let in loads of light because of the lovely aspect of the front of the house

Hate the school we are near but location for family is perfect

Don't regret a thing, would buy this house again even if our incomes doubled and we could afford "better"

Mid terrace three storey townhouse with lounge on first floor (both mid terrace and 3 storeys had been absolute NO for us in the first year of our search).
No regrets at all, because we compromised on these to get everything else (location, 2 bathrooms, enough rooms, nice kitchen). Mid terrace isn't a problem at all surprisingly (we are coming from detached so aware of the earlier misplaced snootiness), 3 storeys I just take as extra exercise, plus having bedrooms on 2 separate floors is quite useful l realize now.

Size of garden and semi not detached. We could have had smaller detached with bigger garden. Ended up in a huge semi detached with a smaller garden. It’s likely in about 10 years time I’ll want us to sell for more garden for retirement.

A small galley kitchen that two of us can't be in at the same time without getting in each other's way. Made even worse because DS has been sitting in front of the washing machine to be near us since he was 2 so is constantly underfoot. I compromised on that before he was born to have the new bathroom and big conservatory.
Next house will be an extension not conservatory and a bigger kitchen.
Will never compromise on a driveway. Avoid shared driveways like the plague.

We compromised on a smaller garden than we wanted because it had absolutely every other thing we wanted and then some.

When DH got round to clearing the masses of trees at the bottom, it turned out it is bigger than we initially assumed so doesn’t feel like we’ve compromised at all now.

Location. I'm never going to love East Anglia - flat as a pancake and so damn dull.

Ive owned a few properties in my time and always have the same compromise - price. I always start sensible and end up viewing properties I can’t really afford and then falling in love with one and buying it. Have given myself financial worries over the years but luckily it has always worked out in the end

Having less than a 40 minute commute!

There were lots of requirements and the house we're buying ticked most of the boxes so the hour commute will hopefully be worth it.

Thought we wanted 4 bed, but found a 3 bed where all were decent doubles, which is really what we needed. Also no drive or garage, but we have been able to have them built, though it has cost a fair bit. No regrets, our cottage is just right for us.

No garage.

We managed to get the semi detached, enough bedrooms, compartmentalised, large garden and drive as compensation for no garage.

I didn't realise at the time that a downstairs toilet should have been on the list and inadvertently compromised on that too.

Can o ask why this is a preference I always thought all the stairs would be a ball ache.

I regret the downstairs toilet much more than the garage.

Garage would still be nice though and I think we would absolutely need both if we moved. Otherwise aside from location there would be no point.

Haha - I was about to post exactly this - wondered if I had already done so and forgotten.

If anything I'd say it's a positive as when you have people over no one has to go traipsing round the house (wel assuming you only had 1 bathroom). Also when poppy training - it was better to have downstairs and we just had a potty in bedroom at night.