Should we buy this Victorian house?

[Wigeon]

Help! Agreed a sale on our house almost 5 weeks ago, have looked at around 12 houses, and finally viewed this one (Rightmove link) which is the first we are considering offering on.

However, we never thought we’d be going for a Victorian property - most of the ones in our budget/location are 1930s or later (this is over budget but it’s been on the market a month with no offers and the owners told us they’ve found somewhere they want to move to, and the agent says they’re open to offers).

What should we look out for? Are the heating costs going to be mad, with the high ceilings, and is it going to be draughty? Is the maintenance bound to be a money pit? We’d get a full survey.

Other cons:

I don’t like that you can’t see the garden from either the dining room or main reception. Not totally sure how to use the second reception area (the bit next to the dining area).

There isn’t a massive amount of room for the gazillion coats and shoes our family has.

Small garden.

Bit further from the children’s school and DH work, altho they’d still all cycle (prob 30 min cycle for the youngest DC, faster for the other two as they cycle quicker).

Pros:
3 big bedrooms, smaller one would be my working at home study. Big loft and big tanked basement.

Three loos and two showers when we currently have one loo and one shower between the four of us!

Very close to train station (I’ll be commuting once or twice a week), the town centre, the huge beautiful park, close to my children’s friends and their various activities, they’ll be able to get to all that independently (they’re going into Y7 and Y10). Generally one of the most desirable locations in the town (and we can’t afford the bit right next to the park, which is the most desirable bit).

Masses of period features, most places we’ve been viewing are much blander modern places.

Help help help! External /objective perspectives needed!

There’s a loo in the upstairs shower room, so the DC would use that.

The window frames aren’t necessarily PVC.
My daughter has wooden sash windows in her new flat which are in quite a state. We are getting them refurbished in a few months so the frames will remain wood but double glazing will be replacing the current single glazing

The floor plan seems to show a weird passageway on the ground floor. What is that?!

You could install a corridor from the hall to the family bathroom by stealing a strip from the bedroom, the small upstairs shower room could then become an ensuite. The house will be very costly to keep warm. We had a similar Edwardian house and sold it for that reason, we had to leave the heating on low all the time as if the house got cold it took ages to warm up again. We had similar stained glass windows which are pretty but impractical. Wouldn't do it again despite the size advantages for the DCs.

That’s the side access to the garden.

Someone else asked if next door’s properly extends above it, but that the end of the terrace, so not connected to next door and this property’s bedrooms go above the psssageway.

Lovely house but a no from me. I have lived in a fair few houses and my favourite by far was my last house a 1930s semi. I loved that my rear lounge opened onto my west facing garden as did my kitchen, it was bright and lovely. I lived in an Edwardian semi prior to this and it was like a long corridor with no view of the garden, the rear rooms dark and gloomy with only a smallish door into the side entry. I am now in a Victorian semi which is ok but will be moving next year and will 100% be buying another 1930s semi. I like the house to link to the garden. Also off road parking, here I have none and 80% of the time it's ok but bloody annoying for the other 20%.

Also seriously consider the direction the house is facing. South facing garden will mean not much direct light into the front lounge so could be cold.

I love it!
We have a large 5 bed, 3 story Victorian house that was built in 1853. I adore it and it has so much character and beautiful high ceilings but the heating bills are vomit inducing.
We currently pay £300 per month just for gas (and it's summer). That's just one thing to bear in mind when buying a big old house.

West facing garden, so I guess east facing front reception. So sunny reception in the morning, and sunny garden in the afternoon?

I live in a similar house.
Im guessing it is double glazed because there aren’t thick heavy curtains. That is good because your heating bills would be scary otherwise.
I don’t think the shutters in the main room are practical. You will probably need curtains as well.
With two open fires you will need wood and fuel storage for winter. For one fire we use most nights we pay £220 for wood and £500 for smokeless fuel for the winter. We are in the NW.
It won’t be the warmest, best insulated house, but won’t be too bad either. The roof looks in good shape. It looks nicely decorated. Lovely fireplaces. I really like it. Make sure they leave the chandeliers.

You’ll freeze to death in there unless you have at least £500 pm ( more come October). For the gas bill . It will have very little in the way of insulation . That front door looks nice but it will be so cold come winter. It’s a no from me especially for nearly a million quid !!!!!!!

The EPC is not great and you are stuck with heating a large solid wall house that might not have room for extra insulation since the loft, cellar and internal walls are all decorated, as well as the single glazed feature windows. I wonder if you could find out the last year of gas/electric use?. Also the roof doesn't have much scope for solar panels and you may struggle with the open fires/smoke control area regs. Could you budget for internal insulation as part of redecorating?

It's a lovely house but we have some of these same issues with ours, they were built for a different time and even if recently refurbished may not have had heating costs/climate change in mind. Its made me look at traditional houses differently!

We have a large Victorian terrace in a town centre with on street parking and considered the same issues too. We also have a cellar so no under stairs storage. We love It ( yours is even more beautiful).

Heat - front of ours is north facing. Back is South so kitchen lovely and warm. House is gorgeously cool in summer. We installed wood burners in both receptions, although rarely use the back one. We do use the one in the front most evenings in the winter, using eco compressed logs. So heating on for the children coming home, Woodburner on, heating off so v cheap, but we like cold bedrooms! House warms up v quickly and we live in the South, heating on more during cold days and school holidays. I wfh in the back reception so use the log burner on v cold days, or dressing gown/ blanket. Energy bills are fine.

Storage - cellar has 2 rooms and tendency to damp - we have dehumidifier downstairs. So we don’t put any clothes/ books down there. It’s used for kitchenware overflow, excess tins, cleaning stuff, hoover and mop, tools, scooters plus I use it as my gym.

we have narrow IKEA shoe boxes in the hall and coat hooks in the long narrow corridor. We try to rotate them seasonally and non daily shoes and coats are kept in the upstairs cupboards.

Windows- ours were cheap, ugly UPVC and we’ve gradually updated with gorgeous aluminium ones, in keeping and nicer than they sound. Front door is original.

Your house is beautiful and I would I would go for it in a heartbeat.

Yes, definitely concerned by the current EPC and potential heating bills, especially given the insane direction they are heading. A bit reassured by the potential EPC rating, which seems pretty good - but a big question is how much it would take to get it up to that rating. I guess the survey might indicate what further insulation is possible? And then we could cost that up.

Our duel utility bills are 160-200 in the winter, less in the summer when we overpay. Obvs they’ll be more in October. We pay around 500 p year for logs. The log burners we’ve installed are much more efficient than our previous open fires.

Lovely house, but my main concern in that location would be road noise. It will be constant, even though you're two roads back from the main road. Is that something you're used to now?

Actually, it’s amazingly quiet given the location - I know it looks like it wouldn’t be! We know that part of town pretty well and it genuinely is. We have looked at other houses in the area much closer to the M25/M1/all the various bigger ring roads and 40/50mph roads and road noise can be a big issue. But this part is actually a little oasis despite the central location.

Translation

"Hello everyone I can afford a million pound house"

This is the property board - to talk about property. If you're upset by what others can afford perhaps it's not for you.

It's lovely but blimey, that would be half the price in the Midlands.

I'm not upset by what others can afford
I'm dismayed at how people can be so crass and obnoxious.

I know we are massively lucky to even be considering this price of house (although we’d be offering quite a bit less - but appreciate that’s still going to be lots). It’s not totally unusual for houses in the SE of England though. Does it help to know that DH is a teacher and I work for the NHS…? So although we are well off compared to many, we aren’t crazy wealthy. We managed to get on the property ladder quite a long time ago (yes, with a bit of grandparental inheritance, for which we are still enormously grateful), and with with increase in house prices, a couple of house moves, and actually fairly modest and careful outgoings (absolutely no private school for the DC), are now in this very fortunate position to be able to afford to upsize.

I miss my victorian - it was cool in the summer and warm in the winter and I loved the size of the rooms. My new bathroom is about a quarter of the size of my old one, and even it is considered 'big'. They are great houses, I would go for it.

The garden is smalllish for the house because the kitchen is an extension by the look of it ? Not too teeny though, still enough space to plant it well, sit out for coffee in the morning.
i don’t like the knocked through dining room, I think this tends to destroy proportion and flow, but many people do it and are happy with it.
Other than that it is a beautiful house. Clearly very well looked after, the red brick is so attractive too. Hard to fault it really, a very nice family home.