What is wrong with this house?

[ButterPiesAreGreat]

Saw this house on Facebook last night.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/160791941#/?channel=RES_BUY

Sent it jokingly to DS as it’s not far (15 mins walk) to our team’s football ground and that was highlighted as its selling point. Then I looked through the pics and realised it’s a hell of a house.

Now the area it borders is not great but it’s not awful and a good mile from the really rough parts of town. It’s well away from the ground with most fans staying well away from the house taking different routes back into the centre. It looks out onto the park so it has a lovely outlook and the road in front is not a through road so doesn’t get loads of traffic. It’s also about a mile from the uni, where there are a few purpose built student accommodation places.

The more I thought about it, the more I was curious about the price because the house is in apparently good condition, even if not all of it is all to my taste. You could easily move straight in.

So I looked back at Zoopla price history and discovered it was listed 3 years ago, for £800K! Then it was listed last December for £650K, then listed again in June for £590K. There’s been 4 reductions of price since then, the latest just last week. It’s not sold any of those times, it was last bought in 2006.

Now I completely get that the area is not completely salubrious, and that interest rates have affected house prices but a 50% reduction in 3 years seems excessive. As it stands now, the owners are selling it for £50K less than they bought it for 20 years ago so they wouldn’t get back what they have clearly put into it.

I can only think that there is something structurally wrong or there is a legal problem of some sort, because if you wanted a 6 bed house in Preston, surely £400K sounds like a bargain. Our house is not much cheaper than that and it’s an OK size in a nice but not super expensive area.

What do you think? What do you think is wrong with this house?

In Moor Park, certain crime types (violence & sexual offences, criminal damage & arson) are rated “High” - perhaps the nearby park puts locals off buying and the people living there are desperate to sell. It will probably end up as a care home for elderly people.

Possibly the close proximity to Preston North End football ground having looked at the map.

If you look at the map there’s a business being run next door - which I would investigate to see if it would have any impact.
It’s not ideal if clients are coming and going but if an office could equal quiet weekends!

It is a lovely house in many ways though.

Bit strong to call it hideous. It certainly could be jazzed up for not very much but obviously they use the back entrance for vehicle access to get off street parking.

Only recently and so far, not doing great. My local council and Preston city are still currently Labour although local government reorganisation is likely to happen over the next few years.

Putting a bedroom in the cellar seems odd as there’s no bathroom. The lack of window wouldn’t bother me tbh. I think that room could be much better used.

That's a 2.5M pound house around here. No idea what's wrong with it but it's a lot of house for 400k.

Flood risk unlikely in that part of Preston. Flooding happens down at the Ribble but you go uphill some distance from there.

On which side? On street view, you can see that number 11 (not attached to it) is a dental practice and that appears to have a fire escape, presumably for H&S. On the side that it is attached, the house there seems to have built an extra building, or were in the process of doing so when the Google car last visited.

Well frankly your attitude is no better than the poster you are criticising.

Twas ever thus. There’s been a lot of construction of student accommodation nearer to the uni, nearest one of those is under half a mile away. Agree that students may live in the area. Before I moved here, a friend of mine lived on one of the streets in the Saints area and had at least one student lodger. However, all the building has meant more of them tend to live in the purpose built flats as more convenient for uni buildings.

Well it would help if the first comment on a post was not sarky and dismissive. But sorry, I am a humble northerner now who must wear sackcloth and ashes for daring to live north of Watford Gap and liking it.

It would bother me from a fire safety point of view. Wouldn't fancy sleeping in a windowless cellar with no other way out. If the stairs were alight you'd be dead.

Um yes, I think I know that. Like I said, that side of the park is well away from the ground. They park away coaches on the start of the avenue and direct all the fans back to the ground. There’s nothing to attract them to that side. And anyone arriving by train or bus will travel up Deepdale Road. considering PNE have been there since 1878, it certainly shouldn’t be affecting its value that much. Its capacity is about half of its record attendance pre-war and rarely tops 20K. Yes, likely to have traffic issues after matches but it wouldn’t be gridlock outside.

Someone replied to my comment on the Facebook post saying it used to be their family home! Will report back.

Think it’s a dentist.

Parking in the garden
Woodchip paper
Obsession with blue
??

The fact it has any off-road parking there is unusual.
Not sure any of the above would reduce the value of a house by £400K.

It is a dentist. Private one, does a lot of cosmetic stuff as well as dental care. Open 4.5 days a week so no one in there from Friday lunchtime until Monday.

Nah, it's hideous and it would cost a lot to dig up all that paving and make the garden nice.

I couldn’t see anything else and don’t know the area

but I’d be interested to know why the brickwork on the front elevation is different in places.

I remember seeing that on one of my RM browsing! I live fairly locally but in an area that has most people go “ugh, rough” (it’s not really)

Agree
It needs a total redecoration and the cost of redoing the garden will be an additional expense

That’s all I can think too. It’s like where I live. The houses on this road are about average for the area but around 150m away are small terraced houses and some social housing. If we were the other side of the main road near a golf club, a house like ours would be considered small and you could probably add at least £100K to the price. Some people I know struggled to sell their beautiful huge house because it was the biggest house on an average road yet if it was literally 100m on the other side of a main road that their back garden backed onto, it would be double the price. I don’t think that people realise how areas change over small distances here.

I think the fact it says investors dream in description is alluding to there being some issue that makes this unlikely to be suitable as a family home. I’m not sure what though.
I work around the area and to be honest if I had that money to spend it is not an area I would choose to live.