Victorian houses

[HummingbirdSong]

Hi, I'm thinking about purchasing a victorian house, but I've heard so much about the liklihood of damp and high ongoing maintenance costs. Anyone had experience of owning and living in one?

We do, 1880. No damp but we had to rebuild a lot of the front of the house as the main supporting beam was riddled with wood worm. Cost 30k about 10 years ago.

The high ceilings can be expensive to heat, but they are beautiful.

A Victorian cottage will be a different set of issues but ours was a middle class home.

i live in a late Victorian. I like it and feel it’s well built. No damp or subsidence here. I’d say it depends on how well the house has been looked after.

@HummingbirdSong plenty. Generally speaking both things are true. If the house is already renovated, pay for a comprehensive survey to determine whether the work done is to a good standard without evident damp etc.
If not renovated, a comprehensive survey should highlight all significant areas of concern so at least you know in advance what will be needed.
Overall, a Victorian house is likely to cost more to heat and work needed will probably be more costly. That said, even new build houses can have a host of problems so there's never 100% guarantees.
Being very honest, the ongoing maintenance of our beautiful Victorian home did become relentless in the end. But I did love it anyway for a long time.

Mine is 1892, it’s a money pit, ongoing maintenance, high heating costs, high ceilings to decorate, had a few damp issues but I love it 🤣

I'm early edwardian semi. I don't see the costs of maintenance as worse than anything else

I live in a Victorian terrace which costs about £2k per year to maintain, including saving for big jobs (I bought it from my parents and talked figures with them). My house looks great, but the street as a whole looks quite run down where people haven't maintained their homes.

1870. Expensive to heat though putting in double glazing helped. The windows are vast so expensive to get blinds/curtains. Ceilings are very high so it’s v difficult to paint. We don’t have damp, but it often feels damp because it’s chilly. There are interesting features and quirks, but I’m quite ready to move on.

1899 large terrace. Absolutely love it. I love the space and high ceilings, features, kerb appeal etc. I dont find energy bills too bad (£164/month).

We have a log burner, which people hate on MN, but it is what old houses are crying out for in terms of keeping it warm and dry.

We have definitely uncovered extra problems during decorating such as rotten joists, but all fixable.

I can't really compare though as I have only ever owned victorian houses.

If you get one which has been loved and well looked after it will be fine. If the previous owner hasn't understood old houses then they might have hidden a load of issues. If it hasn't been maintained then it could cost a bit to get it back into a good state.

I've got a victorian stone terraced house from the 1890s. I've been here 12 years and had no issues at all - no damp, no rot. It's warm and cosy - bills are about £140/month for gas and electricity, and that includes electric underfloor heating in the kitchen I had put in. I have a wood burner too. The rooms are spacious and the high ceilings are hard to let go - we've been looking to move and everywhere we've looked has smaller rooms and lower ceilings (although more of them). We are only trying to move for more outside space. If I could transplant my house onto a bigger plot, I would never leave!

1890s. It’s so cold I use a hot water bottle and wear thermals every day inside. We are renovating to make it more liveable to the tune of £200k.

F knows how the old lady who sold it survived… the energy bills are £280 a month and we only put the heating on for an hour a day. They poured the concrete floors straight onto the earth and her windows are drafty and her roof was fucked.

So far we’ve spent £2k on insulating the attic because she had 0 insulation there, £1.4k fixing the roof and £500 fixing a leak in the water tank.

Yes. There may be but it is all solve able at a price. The important thing is to use the right materials. Your costs will be high though.
my instinct is if you are concerned at this point it’s not the right he home for you.

I have a Victorian house, built in stone. The walls are 70cms thick in places and we do get damp in the winter. It's absolutely beautiful though, with large rooms, tiled floors and chimneys. So much more exciting and roomy than current new builds.

I’d like to highlight a plus side to our double brick walled victorian house that hasn’t been mentioned - yes in the winter the thick walls soak up heat like a sponge and so heating bills are high, but in the summer when it’s heat wave hot, the walls act in the same way. So if I keep my windows closed so that hot air isn’t coming in, the inside of the house is noticeably much cooler than outside.
I’m not a lover of the heat though! You might be horrified by that.

We have lived in our London Victorian terrace hours for nearly 27 years and haven’t had any problems with damp.
The previous owners had fitted upvc windows which don’t look as good as wooden sash but are still going strong.
We have central heating (most rads still the ones there when we bought) but sadly no wood burner!
I don’t think we’ve done any work that you wouldn’t expect to do in any house of any age if you wanted to change
things.

Edwardian 4 bed villa, complete money pitbut amazing house. Huge rooms high ceilings ours came with lots of original features.
Sadly husband left me and I can't afford it so at some point this year its to be sold.

Most people buy Victorian houses because they are more stable than most later builds. I recently had a builder in who said you could just leave it as it is and it would still be like this in 300 years. It's the new builds that are built on flood planes and environmental wasteland, are using cheap steel and budget materials.

I love Victorian houses. Our current one is circa 1870 and the one before was circa 1900.

The best thing about them is that the Victorians really knew how to build houses. The original structure is still in great shape. When we renovated any problems turned out to be from bits that had been bodged by later "modern" work! We have had far less problems than our friends who built new builds and had no end of issues with shoddy construction, plumbing etc.

The house does require maintenance and running repairs but so do all houses.

Hard to heat... yes but there is a lot you can do. Our house still has the original Victorian single glazing (and front door) but we had it renovated to adjust the fit and replace the insulation brushes in the frames and it's honestly no different to our old house which was double glazed. If you eliminate drafts it makes a huge difference. It still costs a fair bit to heat but that's mainly because its a big house (5 beds, 4 storeys).

Damp isnt an issue as long as you eliminate or manage the cause of damp.

I will concede that the attic conversion is too cold in winter and too hot in summer but not unbearable.

I enjoy living here every day because I'm just a Victorian house kind of person! It's not for everyone and fair enough.

We have a London Victorian terrace. Our previous home was a 10 year old, 2 bed flat in an apartment building so it's very different! Maintenance and heating costs costs are much higher and it's a constant job keeping up with all the little things that go wrong. It's harder to do simple things yourself as the ceilings are so high (eg painting stairs). We have no visible signs of damp although there's a smell of dampness on the basement floor, and we use a dehumidifier constantly. Our house was fairly well maintained and probably has less issues than many Victorian houses, but it's not as easy as a modern building. It definitely feels much colder although we don't skimp with heating, I always wear a fleece or 2 at home, in our old flat I used to be able to not put the heating on most of the year as we'd get residual heat from the neighbours. However it's the main type of housing stock for houses in the area we wanted to live, there aren't really modern houses built for larger families.

We have one - no real problems, we keep it toasty warm which is a bit expensive but I don't have to wear a jumper inside. We might double glaze it at some point which would bring heating bills down but would do so with wooden sash double glazing which is expensive. I love all the space, the high ceilings, cellar for wine etc.

100 years of bodged diy, Replastering and pointing not done with lime limits the house breathing. Single skin walls and high ceilings means high heating bills. I grew up in one and like many families we didn't use the front room during the winter, except at Christmas.

1870s three story town house here.

We bought it 20 years ago. Surveyor told us it was a money pit, and to buy a new build instead. We pointed out that the £190k we were paying would get us a small 3 bed-roomed semi, with tiny back garden and single garage, a mile away from the sea front. In contrast our (very tatty) terrace had 5 large double bedrooms, a reasonable sized back and front garden and a huge garage.

Thing is, he was kind of right. But he was also wrong.

Today, the house he told us we should buy is worth about £350K, whilst ours is worth £550K.

True. After we fixed the ridge mortar our builder told us the roof will likely last our lifetimes… and it’s already been there at least 47 years.

It’s not so much the Victorian build as what’s been done since that can be problematic. We are mid Reno on our 1890 house and have decided to basically redo all the pipework because there are so many pipes everywhere, half of which are redundant. The house itself is solid AF ( brick built and subsequently rendered) and it’s not damp so long as you heat and ventilate properly but some of the 1970’s changes are a bit dodge and it’s clear that bits have been added at some point ( likely interwar). It is cold but that’s because the roof is just tiles on rafters so once insulated should be fine ( it’s been double glazed already). However, these issues are partly because the house was originally built as a fancy stables so was converted mid century and not originally built to be lived in.