What's your priority factors when buying a house?

[celiastjames]

Trying to plan our next (and final!) house move, and interested generally in people's views / priorities / strategy!

We know we'd like to stay within the town we are in, which generally is a good area, good schools etc.

Would you prioritise:

A: Size of house - i.e. the largest house / best floorplan you could afford, maximising budget;

B: Precise area / neighbourhood, including street / primary school catchments, cul-de-sac setting etc (even if it meant a slightly smaller house / garden for the same budget,);

C: Size / orientation of garden;

D: Disposable income - i.e. choosing a home you could spend the least on to reasonably accommodate family life in the desired town, with maximum disposable income for holidays and general spending;

E: Type of building - i.e. prioritise detached over semi, even if semi was bigger floorplan / accommodation for a lower price.

I realise for most people this will be a balance!! But just interested in if there are any standout priorities.

It's weighing up all that you mention.

Some things you find you can compromise on, others make it a no-go. I wanted detached, for example, and private/rural - but size didn't matter.

I wouldn't have considered a listed building, or one needing a lot of work, but everything else is just a weigh up of pros and cons.

For me, having motivated sellers is a significant factor; knowing a vendor is serious and not just about to waste your time, cost you ££ and cause grey hairs.

We sacrificed a to get what we wanted for b,c,d, and e. I have to be honest, I do sometimes feel embarrassed about how small our house is. But in terms of lifestyle it was definitely the right choice for us, and large houses have real downsides anyway,

If you are moving and schools are important to you, I would absolutely look at the admissions criteria of your council before spending ££££. I would also think more about secondary schools than primary school if you don't want to move again.

The above should tighten your search area.
Then just start looking at houses and see what you like /hate.
If you have capacity, I would get a doer-upper as you tend to get more square footage for your budget.

Same here. a) is relative tbh, how small is yours? Ours is 140 sqm and it's small compared to everything around but for 3 of us it's perfect, maybe even big.

As our DC have got older, I am very grateful for the space we have.

We live in a village - not the poshest side but we are in catchment for excellent primary and secondary schools and closer to the station. Fingers crossed, we shouldn't need to move house until our youngest has finished school which is a great feeling.

You need to think longer term in terms of what will be good for now and the future.

For us it was
How easy was the commute into London?
Decent sized house or had the potential to be (pref detached)
Good schools - got a shit school initially which is when I learnt very quickly the nuts admissions criteria of our council
Off street parking

Didn't care about a garden, just that it had one.

For us it was location (meant an easy commute) and garden.
House was also big enough (even if it was a terrible state and had a layout that didn't suit) to be future proof.
All the houses we looked at were within 20 minutes of the dcs' school.

Location is top of our list, by far. That will determine its future value more than anything else.

My personal priority list, if I were house hunting today, would be b, c, a, d, e.

Secondary school catchments are currently my big worry in life. A big garden is a bigger priority than house size for us, but size comes next rather than type of house etc. We currently live in a semi, when a detached would have been nice, which is not the largest we viewed but has a very large garden. Works very well for us, even though I daydream about a bigger master bedroom!

Driveway parking and not being heavily overlooked are two of my deal breakers no matter how nice the property is.

Some friends bought a house few years ago and had a large tree in a neighbouring garden blocking the view of the flats of five or six storeys behind them.

Neighbour had the tree taken down and moved a few months later leaving friend's back garden and house totally open to the gaze of around 30 odd balconies which friend finds really intrusive during the summer months when she is in the garden sunbathing or gardening. 🙁

I'd absolutely hate that and would have started the moving process the day after the tree came down.

Location, location, location. Our house is work in progress and can be changed but the location is amazing for us. We also had a list of must haves (no of beds) etc and nice to haves (no of bathrooms) etc

For our current house our budget was limited and we bought a 1930s mid terrace with very small garden that needed completely renovated. We could have bought a property in good condition if we'd gone for a flat, or a smaller more modern house, or a less convenient area. So I guess we prioritised build quality, space and location - and potential to add value.

Now looking to our next move it's more complicated - we will need a decent secondary in a few years so that becomes number one priority. It might mean buying a house that's a similar size to what we already have when ideally we need more space. I've come to accept that prioritising a school will mean we're unlikely to buy what we'd ideally like.

If money were no object, I'd definitely prioritise a convenient location, build quality (personally prefer the solid feel and higher ceilings of older properties), not on an estate, a semi or detached over a terrace, good sized rooms with logical layout - no awkward extensions, and a non-overlooked garden that's ideally not south facing (too hot for me). Size of garden not important to me.

Good luck in your search!

Thanks all.

We've found a house that's in our dream location, to the street. It is detached, but not extended, and fairly constrained by bigger surrounding plots - so I'm not sure if we're crazy maxing our budget on this! Similar floor plans with more garden space / extending potential are marketing for £20-50k less, within 5 mins drive.

It's a 3 bed - we have 2 small DDs, and a DSS (17) who we used to have 50/50 but now only stays once in a blue moon (as his social life is centred with school friends / around his mums, in a town approx 30 mins drive away).

My thoughts are, DDs are fine sharing for a while, at least until they start school - and then we could either try to dormer loft conversion, or convert the garage into a kind of annex with an office for me and bedroom / bathroom for DSS to use (who'd then be early 20s and likely only looking for somewhere to stumble into and sleep after a night out!)

Living space isn't generous, but has sliding glass doors out to the back garden - which is narrow but long. So would be good indoor / outdoor living for the girls, within a 5 min walk of their school.

We go for a project house in an area we want to be in, which has to be cheap enough for us to maintain our lifestyle. The amount of work is factored in cost wise not amount wise.

We are currently living in an area purely to avoid school fees (thanks labour) and I hate it. The compromise was the garden which I regret (luckily it's for 2 year not forever) and the layout is difficult to extend without spending ££££.

That looks like a nice plot tho, could you extend to the front? I would be tempted to knock the garage down and put an annex type garden room at the bottom of the garden with a side return extension to the house in the future.

Location is priority number one, but not in terms of a particular street and my kids are no longer at school (and were at private so not a top factor). It has to be walking distance to shops/transport/park. I'd love to be more centrally located but can't afford it (London).
After that size. It has to have enough bedrooms and basic layout needs to work. I don't care if terraced/semi etc - it's terraced currently as only thing affordable. Luckily soundproofing is good.
Then it's style. I like period houses, but if there was a fab modern one or warehouse style I would consider it.
Garden - I need one as I have four pets but orientation doesn't bother me - my current one is north facing and gets sun all day in the summer. Not in the winter but I don't care then.
I usually do a renovation job so factor that in - so cheaper if I need to update, can spend more up front if less work needs doing.

School catchment has been key for me over the years. We have paid a premium to buy property in good catchment areas then been able to sell relatively easily for a good price a few years later for the same reason.

Garden is also important. People generally prefer South or West facing gardens. And most people prefer quiet streets with access to local shops & good public transport.

After viewing a ridiculous number of properties in my latest house search I concluded the most important factors were -
Location - feels safe, reasonably quiet and private, not on or backing onto a busy road
Orientation - so that it has plenty of light coming into the house and sunshine in the garden
Age - having had a very old house previously I wanted something more modern for reduced maintenance / heating costs

It depends why you are moving. We moved so our DC could go to a specific primary school followed by a specific secondary school so we were limited to where we could move too.

I found the catchment areas for both schools online which gave us the area in which we could live. From there, we chose the biggest house with the most potential that we could afford.

Our non-negiotables were having 2 off road parking spaces, enough pitch in the roof for a decent sized loft conversion, ability to extend the house into the back garden and ideally a 1930s house as I love the style of them.

We were lucky that we managed to find all of this (it also had a south facing garden which was a complete bonus that we didnt even think about until we moved in), but we did have to make compromises. Our old house had a 100 foot garden and our current one is about 30 foot but we wouldnt change a thing about it. Weve finally finished extending it (only took 15 years) and dont ever have to move as we could live quite happily here until we go out in a box.

I'd prioritise being in the catchment area for the good school.

After that, a sunny garden - you can completely change the house but you can't put it on a Lazy Susan!

Number of bedrooms might be more important than actual floor space. Eg rather than having x big bedrooms you might prefer to have (x+1) smaller bedrooms so you can benefit from having a study/ guest room.

I think it depends a little bit what stage of house ownership you are at. When I first bought size really mattered - I needed a 2 bed so I could rent the second bed out to help pay the mortgage. Precise area didn't matter, as long as I had access to the places and transport I needed. In my price range then it was only ever going to be a flat, so some of the other details didn't come in to play. That said, what swayed me to the flat I bought over others of a similar style and size was the location with lovely views over green space, even though it was London.

Now I live in a nice semi-detached place, in a nice enough area, the crucial things that would matter are that it's better than what I have now. For me, it's upgrading the details of the location that I'd be prioritising but I wouldn't want to buy downgrade to a mid terrace or a flat to get that, and I'm tired and bored of gardening, so I would consider a bigger garden to be a downgrade to my lifestyle. Parking is the thing you don't mention specifically - parking is getting busier and busier in my current road, which is an older, narrower road where parking can only happen on one side of the street and it was not designed with off-street parking although some of us do have it. I would prioritise a location with everyone having off-street and garages for a move.

A downstairs toilet is essential. Easy to get to train/bus stop, local shops, doctors etc.

Our first priority was location - we didn't want to move so far that we would have to change the DCs primary school as they are really happy there.
Second was number of rooms/space - we both wfh at least part of the week so preferred a house with more smaller rooms you could shut a door on as opposed to an open plan space.
Third was garden - a bit of outside space was non negotiable but the house we ended up offering on has a really big garden which I am very excited about.

Disposable income left over was a smaller consideration...at the moment we spend money because our flat is tiny so we end up going out for the day a lot at the weekend. I think my DC especially DS1 will want to spend a lot of time in the garden in the new house.

A. comes first, zero point having a house not big enough and as a family of 5 (essentially 3 adults) who work from home we need space.

B. comes next as it needs to be here, the closer to town the better (but we have settled for the same distance we are now though).

D. Doesn't really apply to us as we are cash buyers but obviously whatever we bought we would have to be able to afford. We aren't willing to get a mortgage just to spend more unnecessarily.

C & E are both luxuries, fabulous if you can get them but not requirements (interestingly, I have never seen a semi bigger than a detached... semi's are usually tiny round here).

Out of your options, I'd chose the last and go for a detached over a semi if I could afford it.

However, the absolute priority would be a reasonably quiet road. Second off-road parking and third, amenities (ie supermarket, at minimum of one pub/restaurant, takeaway, GP, bus service withing walking distance).

If you intend it to be your last move into old age, then I'd say amenities within a short walk (in case you can no longer drive/can't use care for a while) and a house with flexible living accommodation, ie one downstairs could be a bedroom and there's a toilet on that floor.