Location, Location ,Location

[JediJim]

Been watching Phil and Kirstie on LLL over the years and have to wonder what the point of it is. Yes ,it’s easy watching and you get to see some property porn, but surely if the house hunters themselves don’t know what they want, how can Phil and Kirstie find it?
Typical episode -Tom and Helen want a three or maybe four bed in the suburbs. They have two year old Hettie and now have baby number two on the way. It needs to be near a good school and a short distance from the train station. Tom is an IT manger, while Helen works from home.They have a healthy budget of £550 k but could go higher if the right house comes along.
After looking at about 50 properties, they’ve enlisted our help. Followed by a few silly jokes between Phil and Kirstie.

The point is, Phil and Kirstie ( and the shows researchers) surely can only find the same properties as anyone else could. I mean Zoopla and Right Move can find properties at the touch of a few clicks after putting in your preferred area and needs. Otherwise maybe local estate agents maybe?!
The fact that the house hunters in some cases have already seen the properties or dismissed it after seeing it online proves this. They sometimes admit they already seen it.
Why can’t they show more working class people on more modest ( realistic) budgets? For example Dave who works as a truck driver and his partner Sue who works as a super market worker. They have a maximum budget of £230k. Might be good to see house hunters looking for homes that the average family could afford.

Having said all this I do enjoy the show and like Phil and Kirstie. Just wish it wasn’t always middle class yuppie types who have amazing budgets for 32 year old first time buyers !!

They leaflet areas before filming. We’ve had cards through the door more than once so
I guess that’s where the “we’ve heard about this house that’s not even on the market yet” comes from

We watch this most days at lunch (new lockdown routine)

I love when a buyer says "I need room for my sofa/motorbike/star wars collection" and Kirstie puffs up with indignance that the otherwise perfect home could be lost just because they don't want to buy a new sofa.

Yes - their researchers clearly do a lot of pre work behind the scenes to get into houses not on the market yet.

And it never fails to amaze me that there are couples who have been "looking for a year" but they mean only online and gave never actually set foot into a house.

Back when LLL first began they did feature people looking for cheaper properties. Now it's mostly London and the South East as Kirstie doesn't want to travel too far apparently.

A guy I grew up with was on an early series which featured him and his girlfriend buying a 2 bed terrace. I have to say I enjoyed the episodes with small houses and budgets much more.

I also think Kirstie and Phil do sometimes show them houses that they might have scrolled past or not considered due to style/price or location.
I've seen a few where couples want a house in a expensive trendy location for bars, going out etc.
And then they take them a mile or 2 further away to show them what they could have in a less trendy area (usually bigger, thinking more long term) so they might not have considered it. Or ones where they know the vendors are desperate to sell and will accept lower offers.

I do love LLL and have watched it for years.

Escape to the Country does infuriate me though.

"Bob and Brenda would like to downsize to a 4 bedroom period cottage. But the cottage needs to have higher ceilings and bigger windows. The period features also need to be a bit more modern. A bit of a project is fine as long as they can move straight in and not have to do anything. They'd like a smaller big garden that looks after itself and room for the family to visit so actually 6 bedrooms and a huge dining room would be better. Oh, and they'd like to be in a idyllic rural village but with a choice of shops, pubs, a leisure centre and a Tesco Extra round the corner."

Just make your mind up Bob and Brenda!

I would love a spin off to this show that looks at bargain houses. We did a pretty radical move a year ago to a house in an area we'd never thought about living in, purely because it was the cheapest four bedroom on Rightmove within a 20 mile radius of our previous house.

When I looked round it, it was dirty, the previous owner had died in the living room, lots of other properties on the road had been turned in HMO's because there of the tiny back yards. And it's been the best house and area we've ever lived in!!!!

It makes me laugh now on LLL when the 50 foot garden is too small, the house too near a buy road, local schools not good enough or they 'want a project' when they can afford a house in mint condition. Some people are professional dissatisfied!

@RomaineCalm you've nailed it - that's so true!

My favourite Escape to the Country, is when they complain about the traffic noise from the quiet village road that the house is on. You live in central London fgs, you aren't going to be able to sleep in silence.

It's all totally fake anyway, I've told this before on here but exMiL was selling a flat and kirstie and Phil showed a couple around it on LLL, they wanted it and put in a cheeky offer, which exMiL turned down.

But on the program they made out she'd accepted said cheeky offer and showed the couple celebrating as they'd got the flat!

Absolute bollocks it is.

LLL has made us all wise to the cheeky fuckery that goes into making an offer. Some of them are so piss taking that if I was the vendor, I wouldn't actually dignify it with a response.
We all know now that best and final offer actually means the couple are sitting on an extra 5 grand, but would prefer the vendor to pay for their new sofa!

@ginsndcv that drives me mad as well! “We’ve been looking for a year and our max budget is 600k, we’ve finally found the perfect house but we won’t pay a penny over 580 for it” WHYYYY

The other thing that really gets on my tits is when you have a young couple and Kirstie shows them a nice 3 bed house that would last them ten years and they go “oh we’re not ready for that yet” and buy a 2 bed flat they’ll have to move out of in 5 years instead. Just because you have the extra bedroom doesn’t mean you need to fill it!

Anyway, I love LLL

I’ve always loved LLL but it is suffering now from the lack of variety in locations and budgets. We have a very different system in Scotland so I always appreciated the token Scottish episode in a series but it’s been a while since they ventured north. I know someone who works on the show and has confirmed what a PP said about Kirstie not wanted to travel or do any overnight stays while filming. I do think there are a lot of folk out there who are totally overwhelmed by house buying and this is where K&P's advice comes in and makes for good telly. I’ve known lots of people IRL who discount scores of properties after looking online only and/or who haven’t been able to look beyond a house’s current décor or can’t compromise on various family members’ needs and frequently say that they need K&P's help. That said, I am still cross about one episode of LLL which was in Edinburgh (my home city), the couple said they would be happy to live outside the city centre, one of them worked in the centre and the other worked at the airport and they didn’t want either of them to commute more than 30 minutes. Kirstie was utterly fixated on East Lothian and only showed them houses in Dunbar, Haddington, NB etc then got really cross when they kept saying the houses were too far away. She claimed she had given them everything they had asked for but to me it stank of lazy researching, clearly someone had searched “nice areas 30 mins from Edinburgh” without actually considering the practical implications – it would be 30 mins to the Welcome to Edinburgh sign on the east side of the city, another 30-40 minutes to the city centre in rush hour and a lot longer to get all the way over to the airport. In the end they bought in somewhere like Balerno, without Kirstie’s help and she seemed really pissed off that they had completely contradicted their own preferences, when in actual fact this was the kind of place she should have shown them. It’s made me a bit sceptical now about whether they are finding the right houses and put me slightly more on the side of the house-hunters, even when the programme is trying to make them out to be ridiculous.

I draw the line at bedroom light in my eyes woman though. And yes, I scream at the telly when someone tearfully turns down their dream house despite it still being well within budget. As I said, the Scottish system is different so I don’t really understand the intricacies of the system elsewhere but it just smacks of trying to get one over on the vendor and cutting of their nose to spite their face.

I don’t understand how anyone can view 40-50 houses. Who has the time for that?

What about the retired couples who want to downsize? Normally you would think they would want a modest 2 bedroom house or apartment. Not too much maintenance for when they get older.
But in many cases, they want a detached 4/5 bedroom mansion with about 2 acres of land! It’s always extra bedrooms for the grandchildren to come and stay ( even though the grandchildren will be young adults in a few years and won’t want to stay at the grandparents anymore! ).
They must realise that in 10-15 years time that having a massive garden is going to be difficult to maintain, song with a massive house to maintain and potter about in .
What are they downsizing from exactly?!

Along with a massive house!

I just can't get over anyone naming the poor child Hettie. Unless this was made up to demonstrate the yuppie point?!

My favourite is Love It or List It. That is definitely about the relationships!

Oh, and getting your house done up by Channel 4!

Today’s Escape to the Country was another classic, older couple in their 60’s looking to move to Scotland where you get a lot more house for your money, Nicky Popidol showed them a massive 1920’s house with panoramic sea views, the wife wanted to buy it immediately (the views were stunning so I don’t blame her) and the husband’s only concern was where they would put their dining table that seats 10! (Even though it was only 2 of them who were going to live in the house and they were moving 450 miIes away from any family so would rarely need such a big table) I just can’t imagine not buying a stunning house in a beautiful location because I might have to get a slightly smaller table! fortunately disaster was averted as they found a room for said table and they did put in an offer!

Case in point in today’s show Jedi another house they liked was a huge detached Victorian house in 2 acres, it’s a job in itself looking after and maintaining a property like that let alone having 2 acres as well to look after, fine if you can afford people to do it for you but I would think it quite daunting and expensive taking a property like that on in your later years if you can’t outsource the work involved in keeping it maintained.

Dieu, I made that part up regarding the child's name Hettie, to sound more yuppie but I do have a relative that chose that name for her daughter. She isn’t posh.

Probably because it’s not as interesting watching Dave and Sue look around 3 bed semi-detached’s... I get what you’re saying though. A Place in the Sun always get me... when you have couples who have a budget of £50k but want a modern, fully furnished, sea view house/apartment with a private pool. When by some absolute miracle the host finds them something that meets the criteria, they reject it because they don’t like the tiles!

Want a project? What’s the fascination with these middle class couples wanting a bloody project? ! What they mean is they will pay a builder lots of money to do the house. You can tell they have never owned a toolset in their lives!
Buy a project to waste another 30/40 k when they are standing in a perfectly lovely house..

I love A Place in The Sun, especially when they wheel out an ex pat who claims to 'enjoy sport'. You just know that Derek's favourite sports are playing darts and getting pissed watching the Premiership every weekend The couples also stipulate 'must have two bedrooms for the grandchildren, a communal pool and a large sun terrace, sea views, also within a five minute walk to the beach and a ten minute drive from the airport', all for £65K. Cue Roy and Jean looking dejected when they're shown a tiny apartment and complaining 'Oh, but it's SMALLER than we expected!'

Wanted Down Under- when the family are subjected to the recording of their families back home complete with emotional blackmail. With their 95 year old grandparents breaking down in tears saying how much they’ll be missed.

DH’s colleague was on the show. He and his wife wanted a kitchen with ‘room to dahhnce’. Cut to them tango-ing round the kitchen. I could never take them seriously after that.

I love ETC, husband propels wife around house, hand on the small of her back.

what’s with the word properly? it’s a feckin house.