Searching for a forever home - help and support needed

[HouseBuyStress]

We are looking for our forever home.

Looking for advice and opinions on this specific house.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/153113879#/?channel=RES_BUY

I don’t think it’s worth £335k because inside some areas need modernising, mainly the upstairs bathroom and en suite. The kitchen houses an under counter fridge and the utility an under counter freezer. This isn’t ideal but we can’t afford to have everything changed all at once so the bathrooms would take priority.

What would be a sensible offer?

What would we need to consider before buying this property? The gardens are lovely but we don’t have the time nor knowledge to maintain so we would want to pull all the plants out and just have grass. Does this look like it will be expensive?

The house is 24 years old built old and built by persimmon. The boiler is 4 years old.

We don’t love the house as it is but we like it a lot, we can see ourselves living here, we love the space and the floor plan and we can see potential. We don’t have a massive amount of savings at all, so the work to be done is quite daunting.
Any advice or help with this is much appreciated.

"we would want to pull all the plants out and just have grass."

I hope the vendors sell it to someone more appreciative of nature.

The house is lovely I think, maybe the odd tweek here and there but nothing major, oh and please keep the garden! I think it's very reasonably priced too, if the same house was for sale down south you could easily add on another £200 grand.

Assuming it's on the market for a fair value for location / size etc ....
Yes a house is only "worth" what someone pays for it .... but that doesn't mean the vendor will accept offers that knock off something just because a purchaser doesn't like everything inside (or indeed outside). They might .... but also no guarantee that your assertion "it's not worth ..." is correct.

You're both looking at if from diferent angles.
If you've got e.g. £335K to play with ... you essentially want to pay £300K for the house & keep £35k for new bathrooms.
They want all the £335k for the house.
Neither of you is right or wrong ....

Just because a house isn't to your taste cosmetically, it doesn't mean it's worth any less.
I personally think the kitchen is nice! It looks cozy and functional. The undercounter fridge and freezer wouldn't bother me personally. It's what I grew up with, and what my mum still has. There would be plenty of space to pop a freestanding freezer in the utility, conservatory or garage.

The bathrooms are fine as well! Yes the flooring in the main bathroom is a bit odd, in that it doesn't match the walls or suite at all, but it's just cosmetic. The downstairs toilet looks close to brand new, and the ensuite looks just like the bathroom my parents had fitted in about 2014.

I’d be more concerned about the roundabout.

We don’t have a massive amount of savings at all, so the work to be done is quite daunting.

It doesn't look daunting at all judging by the photos. The house looks in good condition with a decent layout and the bathrooms look fine. The garden is lovely and wouldn't need huge upkeep.

If you want the latest bathrooms and a garden with nothing in it you could buy a new build.

It's by far the best and looks to have the largest rooms of the houses with 4 bedrooms for sale in the same area. Even the more dated aspects, such as the main bathroom tiling, are tastefully neutral so nothing is glaringly in need of replacing.

Just because you feel you want to change some things doesn't mean you can expect the seller to effectively pay for your changes by reducing the price.

A few things I would consider doing over time are putting a shower at the other end of the bath in the family bathroom. I would say no one showers in there currently.

Look at perhaps adding an entrance to the ensuite off the landing by swapping the shower to where the cupboard is and putting a door where the shower is.

Consider knocking through and having a kitchen diner. Are you sure there is an under counter fridge? There looks to be an integrated fridge freezer in the kitchen and a separate additional fridge or freezer in to utility room. You could remove the units next to that tall unit and put a freestanding fridge freezer in there instead if you wanted.

It's a perfectly nice, newish, estate type house but they do appear to have priced it on the high side compared to previous recent sales and, despite a small reduction, it hasn't sold in the following 2 months.
If you look at Rightmove, 4 bedroom properties don't appear to be moving quickly and there are quite a lot of reductions. Those that are marked as STC were either listed in the Summer (and quite often reduced even then) or are at the cheaper end. I think the market will fall more as the stamp duty land tax rises again from 1st April. It's a huge difference if you are first time buyer. Are you a FTB @HouseBuyStress?
You can only offer what you think it is worth, taking very careful account of what you can afford and not over stretching yourself. Perhaps 320k seems more reasonable. Before doing this though, you need to carefully research your local market, ideally over several months and view lots of properties. If you don't get this house, there will be others and, as I said, I suspect sales and prices will slow after the SDLT reduced rate expires in a few months so no rush.

We’re not FTB, but our buyers are.

We’ve been looking since August and only this and one other has been suitable in that time and the other we lost out on. We would be happy to keep looking to see if anything else comes on but the ones we like are £340k+. Our buyers have been waiting for 6 weeks now and if we complete before March the stamp duty savings will be £2.5k.

What’s the average mortgage payments these days? We currently pay £580 and we’d be jumping to £1,250…..seems daunting! (Total income after tax etc £4,600). We’ve been back and forth many times whether to stay put and enjoy the extra disposable income but we feel cramped here already. DH says maybe wait 5 years but I dread to think what house prices will be then. I like to hop on Mumsnet when I need adultier adults to tell me what to do. :)

Most people who have a garden work full time, have children and animals. A low maintenance garden like that will need minimal time. Plastic grass will raise the risk of flooding.

It’s a good sized house in a pretty good state and well looked after. Everything is completely liveable with and you can change things gradually as and when.

Given you have a buyer and the stamp duty issue and you haven’t found anything else, I’d offer a good price.

It's perfectly liveable and not particularly old fashioned, not saying i wouldn't want to completely redo the kitchen because I would but i don't think you can say that to the estate agent, offer what you want but don't mention modernisation

And keep the plants, they look lovely, if you really don't want to look after them find someone to spend a couple of hours 3 times a year to maintain

Exactly.

The house looks perfectly acceptable and they have done nice things with the (relatively small) garden so even thinking of pulling all the plants out makes me despair.😖

What wold make it a non-starter for me is the location.
Adjacent to the roundabout there is presumably going to be a fair amount of traffic (otherwise why is it a roundabout instead of a junction?), it just looks a bit crammed in.

It does seem that you have quite particular requirements if only two suitable homes have come on the market since August. I do think a lot more properties will come on in the late Winter-Summer period but that will vary from area to area and by type of property too. I'm going to guess that your FTB will want to complete by the end of March to save SDLT fees which is already fairly doubtful even if you had an offer accepted today. This may therefore cause problems down the line.
The mortgage payments relative to your income sound find, unlike quite a few budgets I have seen quoted on here! However, bear in mind that rates can go up as well as down. I'm not sure there is much evidence to suggest that house prices will rise a lot in the next 5 years, at least not in real terms but no one knows for certain.

Aside from the comments about the garden (thank goodness you have changed your mind about that) I think the house is extremely nice. A lovely home to bring up a family. I think it’s quite a blank canvas you can put your own stamp on.

Kitchen is GROSS.

Nonsense

How many houses have you viewed for this move in person, and not only on Rightmove?
Some houses view really well photographically, but in reality are very disappointing, others can be the complete opposite!
Take someone with you that has experience in making changes, if you haven’t yet experienced this yourself. Perhaps you are overestimating what needs to be done?

I totally understand that the need to be careful not to overextend yourself financially, or with available time due to work commitments.

However, I do agree with the vast majority of people replying, it looks like a lovely place and garden, and in the four moves we have made in 41 years of home ownership (terrace to semi-Detached to Detached House, and currently Detached Bungalow), have never had such a comparably well-presented property to view,
I would imagine that the majority of buyers improve their properties over the years, and don’t expect it to be a perfect fit to start with, or to reduce the offer on those grounds,

Do research sold property prices in that area, and if there is a discrepancy on those grounds, offer accordingly.

I’m bemused as to why you think that house needs modernising OP. Perfectly nice house in good livable condition. You can tweak it to suit your tastes once you have moved in as and when you can afford it. Certainly no need to worry about having the cash to immediately change it.

Not sure what work you are envisioning needs doing? It's move in ready condition.

It’s a lovely house (and garden is perfect), I would buy it. In our town that would be around £550k.

No idea why the roundabout would be an issue, it’s just a housing estate one not on a major road.

Honestly this thread has been really invaluable to us and has been reassuring that we are making the right decision. We’re going to ring up tomorrow and offer. Thank you all for your opinions!!

The garden reassurances have settled my nerves there. I’m going to get a gardener in and learn from them as it’s always something I’ve wanted to get into. I also love that I’ll be able to look out of windows and see nature.

The back garden is 57 degrees North East facing, my current garden is 82 degrees East which we love as we get the sun all morning and it starts to slowly disappear from around 1pm and completely disappears by 5-6pm. Will this garden be similar or will it disappear a lot quicker?

I’m nervous now, but also excited! After going over each room, a lot of the things we want to change don’t have to be immediate and we can change it as and when we save the funds for each small project.

Cars accelerating and breaking.

Exactly my point, that and just the general amount of traffic that will be present.

That said, I am biased as I have only ever lived in cul-de-sacs with no passing traffic so I am extremely biased and unwilling to compromise.
The OP will have taken the location into account.