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…

Front door that opens directly on to the street

No off road parking - or not enough. There are lots of newish houses around here with 5 or 6 bedrooms and just a tiny single car drive.

Open plan downstairs. I like to be able to close the door on the kitchen/lounge etc.

A bedroom or a main bathroom that’s accessed only via another bedroom. My sister had a house where the third bedroom was effectively a large cupboard off the main bedroom. Perfect for a small baby but not much else!

A conservatory

No off street parking

Attached

That's only if they don't own them.

But this wouldn't apply in the vast majority of cases. Seems a bit ludicrous to write off all houses with them.

Same with north facing gardens. Ours is lovely and sunny because it's long and not overlooked.

I also have a saniflow toilet and no bath! It allowed us to get in a toilet upstairs for pee in the night as main bathroom is downstairs. Been well worth it while the kids are little.

I seem to be able to tick most of the things people don't want off on my list but then I have a view of the sea at the front and woodland at the back where I can watch deer. Well worth a slightly noisy bog 🤣

Gravel drive - constant upkeep or it looks scruffy
Massive garden - you'll pay £££ for gardeners or it'll be a full time job to stop it looking like a jungle

Oh dear, I'm starting to see that so many features of my house are big red flags for lots of previous posters -
Thatched roof
Oil heating and solar panels
Private sewage treatment plant under the drive
Stream
Log burner
Big trees
Very steep hillside garden
Bats in the walls

And finally a very large kitchen island with 3 pendant lights over 🙂

It's lovely and there's very little I would change!

If it had a separate living room as well would it put you off?

We didn't have one in our last house and it was rubbish. Our new place has loads of corner shops, a little Tesco and a Co-op nearby and it's great!
Also agree with other posters about bamboo. We were forever digging it out of our last garden because next door's kept sprouting up through the fence.

Close to a school or pub or church or village hall.

On an un adopted road or with a right of way across my land.

Having west facing bedrooms.

Having steeply sloping gardens.

Several of these can be spotted before a viewing is arranged, so that saves time!

With no driveway
with bifold doors
with an en-suite

No off street parking
Open plan living room / kitchen
No cupboards to store vacuum cleaner,ironing board,and coats and shoes used every day.

I wouldn't buy anything in a "preservation area" where you have to apply for permission to plant flowers in your tiny front garden instead of 3sqft of grass which is the devil to keep mown to the regulation height and have a committee coming to gawp at your front door to decide whether it is the EXACT shade of bimblefeld's vitreous green required. And you get tourists taking photos through your front windows and sneaking around the back to shit in your hedges.

Also anywhere so near a park run that you can't get in or out of your road on a Saturday morning because not only do the lycra-clad pb-chasing marvels park everywhere and anywhere, but they stand stretching and spitting in the middle of the road before and after their run without a thought for anyone else.

Also no conservatories, saniflos, open plan or rooms that are effectively corridors. Plus would rather have a few decent sized bedrooms than 6 tiny ones.

Shared garden or driveway.
Plastic grass.
Modernised within an inch of its life.... grey plastic windows, cladding etc.

... the only bathroom opening off the rear living room.

But family members did!

I wouldn't buy a house:

On a main road
On an estate
Without a hall
Without a downstairs cloakroom
Near to a school
With the sitting room at the front of the house
With a shared driveway
Without off-road parking allowing for at least three vehicles to park side-by-side
Overlooked at the back
In a poor wifi area
Not in a coastal area

(My list isn't exhaustive nor in priority order - and we're not moving any time soon.😙)

A house with no or too little storage space. I want large built in cupboards to hide away all my crap.

A thatched roof would be a big fat no. I saw one on fire once.

Must have a bath.

What's wrong with solar panels? I'd see that as a plus.

Yes

also artificial grass, no drive, no bath, downstairs bathroom, no space for a fridge , stone cladding, chickens in next doors garden.

You've obviously never bought windows.

I've just done so. 1930s property. Lots of period features.

Modern critall style windows - 45K aluminium, 55K steel.
UPVC with similar glazing pattern (and same as rest of neighbourhood) 17.5K.

It wasn't a difficult decision.

Adjoining driveways
On the corner
Not enough storage
Guess what? I did!

Oh yes, that's another thing. I would not want a place that had had the fireplace/some of the chimney breast hacked out to put a log burner in! A woman I know has got one in a tiny house, and the room it's in (the lounge) is quite small - 12' X 12' - and when it's lit, it's like sitting next to the sun. So ridiculous and unneccessary in a tiny house. Log burners are not for me anyway, tiny house or not.

And one more thing, I wouldn't want a shared driveway, or any kind of shared access.

Log burners are awful. So ugly, also, aren't they environmentally bad?

On a main road.

Why the en-suite?

I live really near a school (same road) it was really convenient when DC were little and attended the school and I had forgotten it was book day
I don't find it off putting at all, of all the non residential buildings you could have in the sane road, it's about as good as you'll get. It's barely used for most of the school holidays, weekends, evenings etc

I don't like en suites either.