What things did you regret after buying your house?

[HeartOrHeadDecision]

House purchase is such a big thing and yet you only have about 2-3 times to visit it briefly before you complete. And once you move in there might some little annoying thing that you really didn't expect. Was there one for you?

Not talking about a structural problem but let's say the door turned out to be tricky to get things through or the stairs too steep. Or sockets in a funny place.

Anything you always now check when looking for a new home?

Water pressure! It was dreadful in my last house and a shower was a miserable experience. I asked my surveyor to specifically check water pressure in the showers in the property I’m buying.

Well most of the time little stuff can be put right, so it's not an issue.

Things I kind of regret are not checking the boiler properly, not looking at the damage on the back door, not spotting what a diy/bodge mess had been made of a few things including the damage to the walls in the living room (the rest of the house was pretty pristine).

But the bottom line is none of these would have stopped me buying the house if I had spotted them in advance, and I doubt whether the people who sold it to me would have reduced the price based on these things if I had pointed out to them that they were in a state. It would have been take it or leave it.

Look which boundary you are responsible for and check its condition. If necessary speak to the neighbours on that side to ask if they’re happy with how the sellers have maintained it.

i regret not having a survey.

Bought a house back in beginning of May. I only had a 10 minute viewing - very pressured, and then when things went to completion it all happened extremely quickly so I didn't get a second view booked in. I REALLY wish I had!

The house is only 10 years old but the oven and washing machine were beyond disgusting. I paid for an oven cleaner and after 4 hours, several wash cycles on 90, bleach, cleaners, you name it, I have conceded to have to buy a new washing machine as well. It just stinks. Despite the owners saying the dishwasher works, it doesn't - another expense for a repairer to come out. So - ALL the integrated appliances have let me down. One of the windows doesn't close properly (the bathroom one), which I missed, and I missed the sneaky way my surveyor said 'those he opened' worked. So that's another repair. The front door gets stuck - something my surveyor mentioned and I put to them, and they said 'oh we hadn't noticed, we'll put a dab of WD40 on it' - sometimes I have to put my whole body weight on the thing to get it to open. They just plain lied. I wish I'd looked at all the bathroom fittings - they're all corroded and need replacing. I wish I'd looked at the kitchen cupboards - 2 of them are fake over a bit of structural stuff so I have much less space than I thought.

And the big one - the solar panels that were a real bonus - don't bloody work! It's £750-£2000 to replace the broken inverter, that from the looks of things it has not worked for a number of years. I can't believe it wasn't mentioned - we asked if they had feedback tariffs and all that, just not 'do they work??'.

I did make the assumption being almost a new build - and because it was all so beautifully presented - everything would be fine. I WISH I'd gone for a second viewing and had a real nosey about. I paid way over asking price which in hindsight I'm annoyed about because pretty much EVERYTHING has needed work. I know SOME (unexpected) things are to be expected - but there's a pretty short list of things that are actually okay in the end! ( GAHH!!!

Next time round I'm having a second viewing, opening and closing all the windows, inspecting the appliances myself, lifting up the rugs to see the stains and broken tiles, and basically being a HUGE busy body!

The next door neighbour! Dreadful man. When the house sold as he had to move out, a youngish couple moved in. Not much better. Thank God most others around here are normal.

Our water pressure was really low in our new house until we realised there were two stopcocks and one was seized half shut

10 years is a bit young for a new build to go kaput.

A lot of people live in them for 15-20 years and then leave. At that point they are superficially knackered (but structurely should be OK) and need a complete refit, especially if they have had a full family hammering the crap out of them. Also the fittings are very much of the time - so for mine 20 years ago gives you wide open style curved sinks in the bathroom rather than the boxy stuff you tend to get these days. Still they are shiny when polished up.

I got a "free" set of legacy machines (cooker, fridge, washing machine, dishwasher).

I joined the ao club to get the discounts and replaced them pretty much all at once. The hob I left - its so shiny its almost new so I just replaced the control knobs. The replacement cooker matches it and barely changed from the original.

You'll find probably that when you replace you will get much more efficient machines.

You'll probably be pleased to know your boiler is probably the cheapest the builder could source (no one buys a house based on the quality of the boiler) and will pretty much be kaput after 15 years.

Completed on our house in March.

One really annoying thing is all the light switches beyond the doors!

Water pressure is a good one. Didn’t check that in our first house but I did when we moved.

my husband had a thing for checking how creaky the floor were. Some houses we viewed had loads of creaking on the floors upstairs which would get really annoying.

The hedges, so much maintenance. I still wouldn’t have bought the house but wish I’d known how much effort it is to keep them maintained.

Yress. We have soo many trees and were told 1 had a TPO on it. Didnt read our paper work properly and now find that all 6 have TPOs on....and the bloody council wont let us cut them so the back garden us now mostly shade and sky has died due to blocking the signal. Bloody hate trees !

I regret not paying enough attention to the woman next door who was always stood glaring from the front door and the camera set up in the front bedroom window. Not to mention the makeshift 'divider' she had set up down the middle of the drive way. She's a pain In the arse and is constantly at my door complaining about something. Now I have a ring doorbell so I can tell her to bugger off and get a life without having to get up & look at her miserable face ☹️

Oh dear @Ellicent that's a painful lesson! And that would definitely annoy me too

Socket placement was definitely a big one for us, we are both capable of adding in sockets but it’s easy to forget the amount of mess it makes and the hassle of patching the walls up afterwards. Our upstairs is all lathe and plaster so much messier than channeling a newer stud wall.
I also wish we’d got quotes for some of the survey stuff before we bought - our surveyor (previously a joiner) mentioned the stairs needed repair but assured us they could be patched up for about 1k - in reality no tradesman would take on a repair as they weren’t convinced it would hold up long term and we had to replace the entire staircase. The cost wasn’t appalling but patching up the mess it made of the walls will be!

The real state of it that had been hidden. No connection to sewers, so forbidden to live in it by the mairie, the cost of renovations, the presence of wood-eating capricornes in the roof timbers, and the electricity supply was outside the permitted range for EDF - we were at the end of the network with an overhead supply. It blew up our heat pump costing 3000€ to repair, and we were caught in a pissing contest between the generator and supplier EDF and ERDF .

Sold for less than we paid after 11 years after spending 120,000€ on renovation.

Another one…skirting boards. I didn’t notice them at all during viewing but the whole house is a mismatch of new flat stock, 60s skinny rounded stuff and original 6” craftsman. It makes the whole house look disjointed and messy and a full house worth of trim is a big job to correct.

Oh, actually, all of our radiators are really old and sizes that are no longer standard, so are costing a shit ton to replace as we decorate.

Only one socket in each room.
Dodgy electrics
No shower in downstairs bathroom (and when we came to out one in we realised why as it proved to be very tricky

You mean, apart from the house?

@Izzabird 😅 was it that bad?

We bought during lockdown so couldn't touch anything and had to rush round. No wonder they finally managed a sale after 5 years when they could hide things.

Wish we'd looked properly at the kitchen. It was disgusting, there was a long dead mouse in one of the cupboards when we moved in. No cutlery drawer. The range oven was too disgusting to cook in. There was a hole in the ground under the sink to catch the leak 🙄 (old house so no foundations). Dog grease everywhere.

Should have looked at the outside pipework properly. There were only 2 drains yet 6 drainpipes. So 4 are just draining against the house and causing damp.

We should have enquired more about the absolute twat who lives in the house attached to us. We asked one of the neighbours and they said he was ok, but they don't live that close to him so won't know about the noise levels. 'Cunt' doesn't even come close to describing him.

Should have looked into how much a massive pond actually costs to maintain and run. We were going to fill it in but the previous owners put some fish in it before we moved in and we felt too guilty getting rid of them. So two years and many hundreds of pounds later we have a pond that we still find annoying to deal with.

Shared drive - just no. Never again. Made the mistake of thinking the (nice) neighbours would actually park their selection of cars on their massive drive rather than the shared drive.

Semi detached - massive regrets due to aforesaid cunty neighbour. We wanted detached but the available housing selection was slim.

Shouldn't have believed the previous owner that they had maintained the roof.

The large downstairs windows don't open at all. Why spend lots of money on having wooden windows made but not have them be able to open?

All the internal doors are knackered and don't close. It's a Georgian house so can't exactly pop down to Wickes to buy new. They also cut a cat flap in one and we didn't notice 😖. I did wonder why the estate agent was stood in front of the door a lot.

Should have paid more attention to the fact neighbour's windows open directly into our garden at the side of our door. Now we know how awful he is it really bothers me especially when I catch him looking into our kitchen as our windows face each other. Wouldn't have bothered me if we had a decent, considerate neighbour.

There's loads more regrets. It's been a very expensive and stressful mistake. Made worse by the fact we moved to get away from a horrible neighbour just to find one who is horrible in a different way.

@Ellicent
The front door gets stuck - something my surveyor mentioned and I put to them, and they said 'oh we hadn't noticed, we'll put a dab of WD40 on it' - sometimes I have to put my whole body weight on the thing to get it to open.

Get a candle and rub it along the top and sides of the door.

I wish I’d noticed that at both viewings we were taken into the back garden via the French doors from the dining room and never through the door out of the utility. That’s because the back door doesn’t bloody open! Turns out there’s an issue with the (flat) utility roof and it’s done something to the door frame which means the roof, ceiling and door all need to be replaced. Grrrrr.

Also the kitchen didn’t have a draining board, which we didn’t notice until after we moved in. That was relatively cheap and easy to rectify but it was a nuisance for the first few weeks, especially as there was no dishwasher.

Crittal windows. Metal-framed, single glazed. Never again. Never, ever, ever again. Condensation so bad that it overflowed the windowsills and onto the floor in winter.

Discolouration on the ceiling. A couple of weeks after I bought my first place, I climbed up a step ladder and poked the discoloured patch. Which promptly split and showered filthy water all over me.

My lights swtches are all in the wrong place🤷‍♀️ as in you come down the stairs and have to walk across a dark kitchen to the back door or the living room to the front door to switch the lights on🤦‍♀️ numerous stubbed toes/bruises banging into things.......but worse stood on a slug once and skidded and I don't wear shoes/slippers in the house😖