What things would seriously put you off buying a property?

sharpee

Smelly houses!!!!

We looked at two houses at the weekend. One was a renovation project but is stank so much we were in and out in 2 minutes due to had bad it smelled.

The second had dogs and although they had made an effort with smelly plug in iar fresheners and having all the windows open it still stank of wet dog.

LittleMissGiggles123

Speaking from experience, I hate steps out the front. One or two small steps is one thing, but in my first house (desperate to buy somewhere), the house was on a hillside so the front gardens were very steep & we had to climb up the steep steps to get to the front door. It was a nightmare when we ever bought any furniture & I even stopped doing big grocery shops because I hated traipsing back & forth down the stairs to bring all the bags in.

Also stairs in the living room.
Front door opening directly in to a reception room.
Small kitchens!! I love baking so need lots of room. But on the other hand, badly designed large kitchens. I've seen kitchens that are really large rooms but don't have much worktop space because they've been designed badly, too much focus on storage so larder cupboards everywhere, tower ovens etc. Don't get me wrong, kitchen storage is important, but there has to be a balance.
Small gardens. Again, my first house had a postage stamp garden & I hated it so much I actually never used it. I now have a huge garden & love having BBQ's in the summer, plenty of space for the kids etc.
No off road parking.

That's enough to be getting on with for now

x

snid

Here's one type of a shared driveway:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-20793270.html

You can see the 2 garages in the garden. I too don't see why this is such a no-no. As long as you get on with the neighbour. If you don't.... well there'll be plenty of other problems I guess.

My big dislikes are:-

Small/overlooked/shadowed garden (ie: you cant use it to sit in, BBQ etc.)
Small rooms & windows.
By busy road.
downstairs bathrooms.

red_devil

I agree with the poster who said shared gates, nightmare especially when the neighbour is a !!!!!! and dosent care about yours and his safety and security.

LauraMac_2

My list is much the same as what's already been mentioned:
-new builds
-densely built-up area with houses crammed together
-small bedrooms or long, narrow bedrooms
-no bath/no space for a bath
-completely paved/concreted/gravelled/decked gardens
-close proximity to a school
-evidence of noise from children, dogs, stereos, traffic etc.
-near a busy road
-tiny one-person kitchen
-completely open plan living-room/dining/kitchen (live in one of those just now and I hate it)
-not in walking distance from public transport
-dodgy area
-evidence of DIY/cost-cutting, especially DIY electrics (went to see a house that on paper should have been ideal, but turned out to be full of DIY wiring jobs, as well a seemingly endless list of things that would have to be ripped out/mended.)

Henry_Hoover_2

Apart from obvious things like a property not having enough bedrooms for my needs/in the right location, i'd be put off by:

- No bath
- No upstairs bathroom or an upstairs bathroom only accessible via a bedroom
- A dirty house. It's different if a property has tenants, but if an owner-occupier can't even be bothered to clean for a viewing, they probably have been slacking on the maintenance too!
- A small master bedroom. It needs to be large enough to comfortably fit a bed, wardrobes and bedside cabinets, at least.

phoebe1989seb

Just to add to my previous posts and to address some of the issues raised by other posters as to why they would not consider buying particular properties......apologies in advance for the length, lol

DH and I gradually worked our way up the property ladder till we owned a very nice 3000 sq ft 6 bed detached Victorian house in a conservation area on the south coast. It was on a reasonably quiet road with good size garden for a city (65 x 35') and had fantastic original features and good sized rooms.

Then our DS went to uni and we decided to downsize. Our first purchase was a total disaster - beautiful (unlisted) detached Tudor house with later Arts & Crafts additions with tons of character.....vaulted ceilings etc. However, it was in the worst possible area for us - horrid neighbours, awful estate built up around it, very deprived part of the country........) so to cut a long story short we sold and made a stonking loss

Last year when we sold we were very wary about making a similar mistake so we had a very strict list of criteria for choosing our new home. Apart from the obvious of wanting a detached period property with loads of original features (but preferably not thatched!), we decided we wanted no estates, whatever the period, no busy roads (had lived by traffic lights on double yellows before), no front doors opening into reception rooms, no stairs in living rooms etc etc etc......very similar to many posters on this thread.

We also needed to relocate from the area to which we had disastrously moved in 2007 to return closer to family, friends etc, but this area was more expensive so you would get less bang for your buck. We found it hard to find many houses that fitted our criteria and were still large enough to take our extensive collections of 'stuff' and that also allowed us to remain mortgage-free.

We viewed and rejected a few houses and in the end the one we chose, on paper sounded the antithesis of our criteria list.....thatched, end of terraced, the front door opened into a reception room, the stairs were in another reception and it was on a main road. It was also described as a 'half-finished project' but having taken on virtually uninhabitable properties before this was the least of our concerns

However, for DH the minute he stepped over the threshold of the 2000 sq ft house he knew it was the right one. For me it was the garden......approx fifth of an acre of beautifully manicured garden leading down to a stream with amazing views of rolling countryside beyond. It also had extensive ORP. We did need to get over the initial shock of the state of the house - all walls stripped back to bare stone, virtually no kitchen and very rudimentary bathroom, the place was a bit of a tip to put it mildly......it was actually unmortgageable. But the previous owners had re-thatched, put in new oil heating and restored much of the timber work. I was still put off by the other obvious disadvantages.....main road, stairs etc, but DH persuaded me that we should make an offer which we did only a couple of days after it had gone on the market.

Ten months on, despite my initial misgivings, we are starting to make progress into turning what we could have so easily rejected into the perfect home.......the front door instead of opening into a living or dining room, opens into our 'breakfast hall' a limestone tiled room with country style dressers and granite topped island. Beyond this a dilapidated room is going to be transformed into our large kitchen and utility rooms. Leading off the 'hall' is the 'snug', our winter sitting room complete with inglenook housing log burner and the dreaded staircase to upper floors. Off the snug is the dining room and beyond that our 'posh' sitting room......at the back of the house in this room you cannot hear the traffic on the road outside and it also has amazing views which are unlikely to be lost as our garden backs onto watercress beds which are not likely to be built on. The stone walls are so thick that any noise from our one attached neighbour cannot be heard and we intend to have timber DG put in in the future.

In the garden on the patio area road noise is audible of course, but on the lawned area all you can hear is the sound of wildlife and the stream.

Regarding the road, whist we do get a fair amount of traffic, this is concentrated at certain times of day and much of the traffic is comprised of farm vehicles. After 11pm the road is really quiet. We are fortunate to have an award-winning village shop and excellent local facilities as well as being two miles from a very good historic town.

So to sum up, if we had adhered to our list of criteria we would never have found the house in which we are now so happy, proving that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover

rosyw

breadlinebetty - re the sound travelling, tbh I really don't notice it! my house is approx 65 mtrs from the road and there are 2 others (very small) in between, which shield in to a very great extent, I get more noise from neighbours lawn mowers! even with the windows open in the summer it's not a problem

The shared driveway gives access to my own and one other property, no parking is allowed on the drive , apart from the odd delivery van, we each have our own parking and turning areas, and the only problem I have ever had was due to the weight restriction of 5.5 tonnes which meant that the removal truck couldn't use it, so had to have a shuttle van.

seven-day-weekend

I would not like something on an estate.
I would want easy acess (walking) to bus, shops, doctors, church etc.
I would not mind a city centre or a small country town, but not nowheresville suburbs.

Oh! And no artex.

tuftyclub

BINS - My current abode(flat conversion) only has a half pavement outside and there is no room for a wheelie bin. Rubbish storage is my number 1