I would NEVER buy a house with…

[Wyr]

• solar panels

• a ‘garden house’ IE a lockdown special outdoor wooden shed dressed up as an office - usually taking up half the garden and completely pointless

• a neighbour who has a load of cars / shit in their yard - hoarder vibes

who’s next? 3 things that would make you not buy a house…

Oh yes.
Or open tread stairs.

Ditto stairs with no banister, I’m too old and menopausal for that coordination now 🤣

Very close to a school
Small garden
Renovated removing all character to house and garden

I always thought that broke building regs, but I saw that recently! No ta.

We had friends with a house with no side access. A big bunch of us helped them to renovate their garden and all of the tools, slabs, rubble bags and suchlike had to be taken in through the hallway and the kitchen.

There were a few unavoidable scrapes on inside walls and a horrendous amount of dirt all along the floors after we'd finished.

Also, on a busy road. Used to live right on a very busy A road. Had a very high turnover of cats 😢

Nothing related to the actual house would put me off. We’ve completely renovated every house we’ve lived in.
The hoarder neighbour would put me off also loads of HMOs or student houses.

I've lived in a few terraced houses with no side access. Perfectly manageable.

Yep this and things like window cleaning etc, just means all workmen and the like have to traipse through house

Artificial grass
Attached to any other property
Not open plan (I love it downstairs)

They really aren’t a scam, unless you’ve entered into a very old arrangement to lease your panels. Few people do that.

Having just paid an eye watering sum to get Artex ceilings skimmed, I would never buy a house with a built in media wall, lots of wallpaper or wall panelling unless it was a genuine doer-upper.

A huge garden.
Edwardian upvc white windows (Edwardian might not be right - you know the little white squares, big in the 90’s.
On a hill/slope - round my way some drives are practically a sheer drop! Too anxiety inducing.

OMG yes my neighbour's lad (early 20s) has a basketball hoop with a plastic back on a long aluminium pole. Everytime the balls hits it it reverberates for ages. Very annoying all summer long. There are 3 parks within a mile or two fgs.

Omg artex! And ceilings made from those foam tiles.

I think I've lived in houses with pretty much all of these over the years, it's surprising what you can get used to! But I would say the most annoying for me are probably no side/rear access to garden (this is our current house, it's a nightmare for the tree surgeons), noisy neighbours (in a previous house they played music so loudly that it made all the glasses in the kitchen cupboards jingle), and having living spaces and garden on different floors, with small children it's much easier to keep an eye on them when you're cooking etc if you can see them through the window or they're just next door.

Other things like baths etc can be changed so that wouldn't put me off (have always bought project houses anyway) but the basic house layout can't so that's the most important thing for me.

School next door
Conservatory (yuk)
Downstairs bathroom
Shared drive
Quiet road/ cul de sac (encourages kids playing out)
No off street parking
Bloke next door who collects scrap metal
or sits on his front door step

No off road parking is a deal breaker for me. I wouldn't even view a house where I had to park on the road.
Or anywhere without a garage/outbuilding of some kind or at least the space to build one. DH has too many tools etc (big stuff like a lathe, pillar drill and welding equipment).
I don't like a lot of the other things already mentioned here, such as artificial grass but most of them can be changed. I think as long as the location and basic size/structure of the house was right I could put up with most things until I could change them.

Bamboo planted in the garden (I like it in pots but it’s just too invasive in the ground and it’s the next ‘knotweed’.

Tiled floors downstairs - I like wood or other hard flooring but tiles without underfloor heating is just cold and lifeless (unless you live in a hot country)).

Lots of pine skirting. I like oak, but it’s expensive. Pine has a tendency to start looking orange and a bit ‘eighties trendy’. I’d rather it just be painted white.

Agree with PPs re solar panels and fake grass too and (sorry - more than three) I’d be reluctant to purchase a property with sewer access hatch in the garden - ugly and potentially dear if in boundary and it’s the only way to access a pooberg 🤢

Hot tub next door
Pub nearby
Bus shelter nearby

Although actually, if it came down to no garden side access or having super narrow pinch points in the house so all your furniture has to be flat-pack (also our current house) I'd definitely go for the former! So annoying having to get most things from IKEA.

yes hot tub neighbour and near a bus stop, both nightmares!! Lived with bus stop in front of us before and garden was full of rubbish, bus stop being vandalised set alight etc and people sitting on our wall drinking / smoking. Nightmare!

Mostly things that you couldn’t change:
shared driveway with neighbours
very busy road
anywhere parking was very difficult or the road was just a sea of cars half parked over every pavement
neighbours with a caravan
neighbours with an unkept garden/ house
too many bathrooms/ en-suites ( this can be changed but you lose money)

The only thing I can think is open plan living rooom and kitchen. Always an immediate no from me, I’d feel like I was in a studio flat.

Most things on this thread I’d be happy to buy and then rectify. I hate artificial grass as much as the next person, but I would just factor in the cost of fixing it when working out that I thought the house was worth.

May I also add neighbour with a loud instrument such as a piano, bonus points if they play it badly and at awfully annoying times of day.

I hate open plan and suspect it’s going out of fashion. Drafty, smelly when theres fish for dinner, noisy, you can’t put on the kitchen radio at the same time as the TV, not enough wall to put your sofa and bookcases against- horrible.