I DID buy a house with

[MonteStory]

Really enjoying reading the ‘I would NEVER buy a house with’ thread and all the different perspectives on objectively tricky situations as well as odd picky requirements people have.

So, which no-nos have you embraced or even actively chosen?

Our new house is:
off mains gas
has solar panels
on a private road (which we own)
has lots of trees
no shops etc in walking distance

We’re so excited to move in☺️

Our house had no central heating and has a central staircase (tbh I've no idea what the perceived problem with that is meant to be! )
The first winter with no central heating was a bit miserable

I also have many MN snobby decor crimes - that we purposefully chose!
Barely any books
Brown leather sofas
Laminate floor
Feature walls
Metro tiles
There are probably more!

And we had an extension and included an ensuite bathroom....and it's used for all bodily functions you would normally use a toilet for!

I did buy a house with

No mains electricity
No mains gas
No mains water
No mains sewer
On a private road
Miles away from anything

We put a state of the art solar set up, LPG bottle gas, massive water tanks, and septic system. It was amazing, only problem was it was on the other side of the world to my family.

Now I've bought a leashold flat, in a dodgy area, surrounded by drug dealers (not my words) I love it, it's a lovely area and the dealers are very well behaved 😆

No mains gas, no mains sewerage, soak away with pump not septic tank, oil fired ch.

I really liked the independent feeling it gave us.

I did buy a house with.....

1. No water supply at all (no mains water and previously the private water supply had come from a well on a nearby farmer's land - but prior to our purchase one of the other two properties it supplied had a bust up with the farmer who subsequently pulled the plug on all three!)

2. Septic tank

3. A brick built extension with leaking polycarbonate roof underlaid with soggy plasterboard

4. No near neighbours or facilities

Hilariously, it was an old water mill - with zero water supply! No wonder it was a repossession. We had a borehole drilled within a couple of months and a new slate roof fitted on the extension. The septic was fine although caused all sorts of issues when we sold last year. We hated living there and thank god we've now bought somewhere in civilisation!

Our current (Georgian) cottage has no front garden, front door opens into the dining end of the kitchen which also houses the stairs and a (currently) paved garden. It's also has absolutely no character features...and is Grade 2 listed. We love it because it's two minutes walk from the beach.

On a main road, north facing garden. Untouched since the 70s, couple of slightly weird things with the layout. Mystery damp in one wall. No mains sewer or gas, cesspit kept backing up in the first few months until replaced with a new fangled pump thingy.
Amazing view over the main road, big driveway. Large garden so plenty of sun all year even though north facing. House stays really cool in the summer.
Location is idyllic and I love to renovate.

I did buy a house with

Diamond leaded windows
Traditional wooden Kentucky front door
Staircase in the sitting room
One toilet (in the upstairs bathroom)
Shared driveway
Paved over front garden

But I love most of these features of our lovely little cottage - the only thing we changed was ripping up the paving and then taking time to turn it back into a enclosed little front garden full of flowers, grass and this year we've planted a sapling tree and we planted a hedgerow and sourced a beautiful old-fashioned wrought iron gate and put that up.
Sanded the front door, painted it white, put new door furniture on it and decided to keep the old-fashioned windows - they're double-glazed but a lot of people seem to either love or hate diamond leading - personally we love as my husband and I both had it in our childhood homes.

Lovely neighbours next door whom we share the driveway with so it's never really an issue (apart from the very rare occasion but it's always easily solved).

We have added an additional toilet.

We get a lot of compliments on our house and even the door and windows because we keep them pristine and a lot of the other houses are all beginning to look the same - with plastic doors, plain windows and huge driveways - nothing wrong with those things (although I do hate plastic doors) but we just prefer things a bit more old-fashioned - we jokingly call it "Granny's Cottage".

Same here, if I list the renovations we’re doing I take up most of the no-no list 😂

kitchen island
ashp and more solar panels
knocking a wall down to make more open plan
ensuite
bifolds (although leaning towards French)

Grade 2 listed (never been a problem - you can decorate inside however you like, you just can’t change the outside appearance of the house, which is chocolate box pretty so I’m happy to leave it as it is)
Next to a pub (never been a problem)
House on the other side in state of extreme disrepair (rabbit warrens in her garden has caused a problem - we are overrun with bunnies eating every thing and digging holes in the lawn)
On a school road (never been a problem).

Current house:
Downstairs bathroom only
No side/rear access
on street parking
mid terrace
open plan including stairs in the living room
in an area MNers look down on
overlooked

None of these things have really bothered us in practice other than noisy neighbours. I don’t know why some people get so worked up about parallel parking on the street, it’s no more difficult than bay parking.

House we’re buying:
private road
1970s build with no character and untouched since bought by the original owner
no shower (but will be putting one in asap!)
no en-suite

We’re also planning to get solar panels and UPVC double glazed windows and doors. We replaced the old wooden front door in our current house with a composite one. Wooden windows and doors are awful, they swell up and rot.

I'm sorry! I think I have completely misread the post. Thanks for keeping me right x

We did buy a house WITH:

• Stairs that were outside of building regs that went into the living room and not the hallway

• An absolute gigantic ancient tree protected by a TPO in the front garden which stops us having our own driveway entrance

• A home office with a toilet in it (yes you read that correctly)

My first house was off mains gas, had solid fuel heating (with a wood burner so we're all going to die of horrible lung conditions), on a private road and they only bathroom was a downstairs bathroom! It didn't have a hallway either. Oh and it had a galley kitchen.

My current house is also off mains gas (same village, mains isn't an option) but it does have an upstairs bathroom and a hallway. Also on a private road and the garden is separated from the house by the private road.

I think it's funny what ends up on people's lists of things that don't want. Most of them time once you live with it then it becomes normal and it stops mattering.

We bought:

• a front door that lets in the rain all over the walls and floor
• Weeds growing inside the windows
• plaster being held up by wallpaper
• a kitchen complete with mounds of dead woodlice
• one (leaking) toilet
• a different style of artex on every ceiling
• glass internal doors in every doorway, including bedrooms and bathroom
• a driveway too narrow to get the car on
• a garden so overgrown we didn't know what was under it (glass shards from seemingly a thousand panes of greenhouse glass), brambles as thick as trees, and all the random metal stakes for good measure

... But, it had lovely bones, a sea view, is full of sunshine, and we're fixing it one small step at a time. It's going to be perfect.

• solar panels (what's wrong with them? I didn't rtft but the other one starts with solar panels!)
• new build (I almost didn't view but it's ginormous with a shed load of storage in every room. It's the exception that proves the rule.)
• a main road (we've got used to it but I would still put it on my don't list)
• trees (massive lovely trees full of song birds - these were never on my don't list) Edit- the trees are all with TPOs)
• Kitchen island - ❤️ (great for art projects )
• Bifold doors - ❤️ (great view of said massive trees)

No mains gas
No mains sewage
No mains water
No central heating
No neighbours
Private lane

It is a little slice of heaven 😍

Terraced house with:

• no bath
• one bathroom
• ancient electrics and boiler
• asbestos in cupboards under the stairs
• some missing building regs.

A bungalow with no mains gas, no mains sewage, a pond (and I had toddlers) ivy everywhere and a leaking conservatory.

Oh, and it needed major renovations.. we're halfway through the renovations now. Kitchen and one bathroom done, the structural work done. Starting to decorate. I love it.

Forgot to add - electrics and boiler hadn't been checked since 1984 and there was no plaster anywhere

No off street parking. Central London- nobody has off street parking. If I had, I’d have converted it into a garden.

(Different house)- shared private driveway, solar panels on the barn, no mains gas, grade 2 listed, septic tank, needed a ton of work.

I have also (less happily) owned a house with bad neighbours. I’m now ultra paranoid and wouldn’t buy a house without meeting them.

I bought a house with known subsidence.

Insurance company fixed it and we got a certificate to say it was all safe and sound.

A downstairs bathroom. The only one in the house and it's served us well for nearly 30 years (there have only ever been 2 of us).

I bought a house with no driveway or downstairs toilet. The house is perfect!

We did buy an old beautiful listed stone countryside house fairly near a small river. Like something from a picture book, it was beautiful.

Then we got seriously flooded twice in 4 months! Literally 2ft of river water in. Thankfully we sold it just after lockdown when everyone was wanting a country home and planning UK holidays, even though we were brutally honest about the history. Bizarrely we even made money on it during the time we were there, thanks to the bizarre post lockdown housing market. A local wealthy individual bought it as an Airbnb without even caring as its in a tourist location and is very beautiful.

We now live on a high ridge/hill, in a non-listed more modern property and not near any water or rivers! Honestly my advice is don’t touch a house with any sort of flood risk, even if small! This place was not high risk when we bought it, but something changed and it’s been recategorised since our floods. We were lucky our insurance company were great but we had 9 months in temporary accommodation which wasn’t fun. Then the constant threat of it happening again makes your sanity disappear! Sadly it has flooded again since we left and I thank my lucky stars we now live here instead. So I’m loving my practical sensible more modern house although it may not be a beauty like the last one.

Filthy including fleas - " embraced or actively chosen" might be a bit of a stretch, but I knew what I was getting into (to some extent) and accepted it to get the property in the right location for a good price.

Bamboo - luckily clumping but spent a whole summer digging it out and still find the odd shoot

Foam insulation in the roof - luckily it's been there since the early 2000s and the rafters are bone dry.