Please help us decide between these two houses

[Inneedofspace]

We are FTBs with young kids, who have always lived in a flat, so this would be our first house ever, and we are super excited (mostly about having a garden for the kids). Having always lived in a flat, we would love a detached property, but these are rare to come by within our budget, so we were thrilled to see one that matched our criteria recently (House 1, link below). We are obviously looking at all other houses in our area of interest, and we have found a lovely done-up semi-detached (House 2, also link below).

From what we can tell, house 1 will need some work done, but we are not sure about the extent of it, and how feasible that would be considering we are WFT and have young kids (we could stay in our rental for some time initially). House 2 seems ready to move in, but we are not sure if it would feel like we are living in someone else’s home (we will not have the money to change much unfortunately as it’s already at the top of our budget). We slightly prefer the location of House 2, but it will need to be extended some time down the line, as we would ideally need an extra room (so that the kids have separate rooms). We would probably prefer a terraced to a semi, just because a semi somehow seems like we are getting half of an ideal detached property (I am aware this probably sounds ridiculous to most…). We have viewings scheduled for both and are ready to make an offer, but not sure if we are considering everything here and if there is something crucial we are missing. We are somewhat familiar with both areas, schools and catchments, but the house itself is more difficult to judge, so we would appreciate any advice please. Which would you go for?

House 1: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/170883104#/?channel=RES_BUY
House 2: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/170881130#/?channel=RES_BUY

Thank you for any advice and thoughts.

If you buy house 1 there may be merit in having the boundary checked - the line of the fence looks a bit unusual and no harm in ensuring the neighbour didn't eat a bit of your garden. It's very narrow so the difference could be significant.a

If you buy house 1 there may be merit in having the boundary checked - the line of the fence looks a bit unusual and no harm in ensuring the neighbour didn't eat a bit of your garden. It's very narrow so the difference could be significant.

Hi speaking from experience renos are stressful and only 1 person I know actually enjoyed it as they worked part time and had a lot of spare cash . Houses two for looks 100% house 1 looks abit rough to me . Just the general style of it but I can see the potential in 1 :-)

Good idea, we’ll do that, thank you.

You can change a house but you can’t change its location hence house 2 for me. That busy road and the not so bouji shops opposite are a real turn off - undesirables possibly hanging around late at night, delivery noise, large commercial bin emptying etc.

House 1 needs quite a lot of work which is very expensive nowadays, especially in London. It looks like there might be some hidden nasties which could considerably bump up the costs of work. I might be wrong but it doesn’t sound like you’ve done any renovation work before? If not, don’t underestimate the expense, toll and stress particularly with young children. You could move straight into house 2, unpack and get on with living. It will always hold its value.

Woodford and Chigwell are getting more popular as young families move out of Hackney and the grittier areas for bigger houses and schools.

Plus I bet people will forever be blocking the driveway of house 1 to ‘nip’ into the chippy, shop or pub.

Having living through building projects, I'd say you were storing yourself up a world of pain buying the smaller property with a need to build an extra room. I'd be picking house 1. Privacy and not creeping about to avoid disturbing your neighbour is worth a lot and not having to worry about somebody with a screaming baby moving in next door is also important to me. Yes, one of the bathrooms in house 1 is nasty but it's perfectly useable and it's a lot easier to do up one bathroom (particularly when you have another bathroom) than go through all the permissions, building delays (and yes there almost certainly will be delays) and so on to build an entire extra room.

First of all I thought house 1, then looking through the photos and some of the comments and points raised by others maybe house 2. 1 definitely has more potential long term but 2 is ready to move into and you wouldn’t need to do anything. It depends how long you want to stay there for and 1 needs a lot of money spent on it. Are both bedrooms on 2 big enough especially as they get a to teenage years and spend more time in their space.

Just looked on street view at 1 and although it’s nice to have shops “nearby” I would never want to live directly opposite a chippy, noisy smelly, lots of people hanging around, one reason why it’s cheaper but bigger!

Thank you, that all makes sense.

No, we have never done any renovation work before, so pretty much clueless. We have watched a lot of renovation videos, and it’s the final look that’s so appealing, not what happens until you get there, so yeah, we are 100% underestimating both the stress and the cost. It is the idea of “this could be our forever home done our way”—having always lived in rentals—that is so appealing. But maybe it’s not smart at this point in our lives with the little ones.

I'm from NYC and live in London, so I'm probably less bothered by busier roads than a lot of people on here, but I really don't like the road house number 1 is on, particularly with young children. I also think quite a few posters are being optimistic about how much work is needed on house 1. We've done work in London in the last few years and it's slow and expensive, even with great builders.

I'm also not sure how much sense it makes to worry too much about 4-5 years down the line, and I don't see that tucked away tiny kitchen being ideal for family life right now. If you can sort out the garden issue and afford to fix up the kitchen and redo those bathrooms in the next year or so, I can see 1 being an option, otherwise, I'd go for 2.

I'd also keep looking.

Editing to add, number 2 looks like the kind of street where there will be others with small children and a bit of a neighbourhood vibe, number 1 not so much. That doesn't matter to everyone, but I'd consider that too.

I just want to thank everyone again who commented and/or voted, the amount of response and advice is overwhelming, in the best way possible, with so much advice and things to think about. We have read each and every comment and are taking everything you’ve said on board. Thank you so much! ❤️

Just to add it is very easy to do the loft on these houses we were quoted about £35k all in although much its much much cheaper than london where i am. As it stands since we moved the wall we don’t feel we need the extra space upstairs.

We're 80 miles out of London and although I didnt get a formal quote, I asked a builder to give me a ball park figure for what loft conversions would be for our house, bog standard small 3 bed semi, and he said around 50-60k.

All valid points, thank you. If it’s not too much to ask for, if you were happy with your builders, could you please let us know who the builder is (via dm if that works), just in case we decide to go down that route. Thank you.

Would it help to know the cost of work right now? Were Zone 6 and have been quoted £8k per bathroom, £12k+ for new kitchen, £120k for 4x10m single story extension.

In fact just this month I’ve shelled out £1,450 on roof repairs and £1995 on insulation for our doer upper.

We were very happy with them, but we did a back to bricks renovation on a listed house and needed specialist builders. I honestly wouldn't recommend them for the projects you're looking at as they wouldn't be remotely cost efficient.

In your position, what I think might make sense is to get a local architect or designer to look at house 1 with you. They might have some thoughts on how extensive the work would be and can also be a good source of recommending builders - that's how we found ours.

I'm still on team house 2, though. I'm sure it's not exactly as you would do it if you were making the choices, but when you have a couple little ones and both working - from he sound of it - don't underestimate the emotional value in just moving in and unpacking and taking a deep breath for a few years. You won't get that with house 1.

I see that one as having potential but there's a lot of work to be done and I really don't like that road. It feels like you're going to be walking down it with little kids with traffic whizzing by, and while I do like a vibrant neighbourhood, I suspect that chippie is going to have rats and rubbish around it on weekend nights/mornings, not to mention drunk people making noise and weeing.

If also think you should be very honest with yourself about how you'll feel if you buy house 1 and have to wait 5 years to do any work. Some people would be find with it, but some people wouldn't. I know I would struggle with that kitchen and find the bathrooms pretty grim, but they wouldn't bother everyone.

And one more thing - I'd get someone to take a look at the flat roofs, if possible.

We previously lived in a house with a flat roofed extension that was an absolute nightmare. The slates were constantly breaking and we were getting leaks and every time they went on the roof to fix it, more slates cracked and we got more leaks. Our current house has two side extensions with flat roofs and they were done properly and then we had green roofs put on and we haven't had a single issue. If I was going into a new house with a flat roof, I'd want to know it didn't need to be replaced right away.

Yes, that helps, thank you. So, you are in the midst of doing yours at the moment? Do you also have an estimate of how long it might take for a bathroom and a kitchen to be done? Thank you.

I understand, thank you for explaining. We only have about 80k left for renovations if we were to go with House 1 (basically the price difference between the two houses), so we were trying to figure out if we could redo the kitchen, making it open plan kitchen/diner, and then one bathroom as well with that money (plus the painting, carpets, and other bits). This would ideally be done while we are still in our rental.

We have been trying to research and figure out how much time and money a renovation like that would take in general, but now that many people have pointed out the busy road and the issues that might arise from that, we are having second thoughts. We totally failed to consider that initially as we currently live close to one, but tucked away in a way, so not really the same experience at all.

Thank you again for all the advice, it is much appreciated.

We are at the beginning of it all so planning/design and planning permission stage with a design & build firm. If you don’t need that then it depends on the builders availability and the complexity of the design but if they were free I’d imagine a bathroom and kitchen refit could be done in a couple of weeks. Especially if it’s just swapping one bathroom suite for another - that could take a week if they’ve a couple of lads.

We are planning a full renovation and to get us to start doing the work will take around 3 months. Their schedule puts us at starting physical work at the end of spring. All being well. We are also locally listed so it’s a touch more complicated for us.

Oh, that sounds like a lot of work, we are definitely not ready for that, so ours would be very limited and done in stages (no planning permissions needed, hopefully). I hope it all goes well for you.

And thank you, it’s good to have an idea of how long things might take.

I would say, if you have young children, move into house 2 and just enjoy their childhoods with the luxury of a fully-done house as a background. Building work is just awful.

One thing that is useful to know as I had no idea is that loft extensions are typically done through the roof rather than through the house. So the builder will put up scaffolding, create a big hole in the roof and access the loft space that way to build out the new roof line [if a dormer], and do a lot of the big work including windows install. Then they'll open a hole into your first floor and close up the roof/make it water tight before starting "first fix" and installing wiring, connecting plumbing and so on. 6-8 weeks for a straightforward loft extension isn't untypical.