DEADLOCK: Can't choose between two houses. What would you do?

Carrotline

My boyfriend and I are FTBs and have recently had our first house purchase fall through because the valuation came in way under what we offered. The full details of that can be found here.

Anyway, we looked at two Victorian era two-bed cottages today that are in the same area, and are completely stumped on which one to go for as we really like them both.

Therefore, I thought I'd post a few details here about them to see if you can provide us with a different perspective on some of the things we think might be good or bad about each one.

One of our biggest concerns is how easy either one will be to sell on in future, as they've both got quirks that might put some buyers off, but have enough merits to make them worth considering for us.

Now, I'm not saying that we'll count up the votes and make an offer based on what you guys think, but we've talked ourselves round in circles about this all night, and I'm interested in hearing what you think.

Property #1 = £199,950 Two bed cottage

1. It underwent quite a lot of renovation about five years ago, has a lovely new staircase, but the kitchen units have seen better days.
2. It also has a cellar, which we're not quite sure what to do with, and are also quite concerned about what a surveyor might make of it.
3. The garden is over 200ft long, is about two metres wide, but it's really cluttered up with stuff. There are just piles of stuff everywhere in the garden.
4. It has off-street parking for one car, and is located in a slip road right next to a very busy A road.
5. We're thinking of adding a porch, if we bought it, and the whole house could do with a little bit of freshening up.
6. Unlikely to be able to extend it, as it's part of a block of terraced houses and planning permission has been denied on several others along the road.

We really like this one, as we think we could make fixing it up a bit
of a project for ourselves over the next couple of years.

Property #1 = £204,999 Two bed cottage

1. This one needs nothing doing do it. We could just move straight in, and - despite having a similar layout to the one above - the rooms are all a bit bigger.
2. The garden is 100ft long, but is completely enclosed, whereas the one above is fairly open and viewable to the neighbours.
3. The house is directly beside the A-road. The people who live there now have double glazing, as well as another slide across window on the inside to keep out the noise of the road.
4. There is no off-street parking. Parking outside the house is completely impossible, unless I'm prepared to risk having my car written off by a passing articulated lorry.
5. There is potential to extend and turn it into a three-bedroom house, but a family home on a busy A-road with no off-street parking probably won't be the easiest of sells, I'm guessing later down the line.

Again, we really like this one too, but we're not sure if the lack of off-street parking and its proximity to the A-road is likely to put off future buyers. There's also not a lot of areas that we can add any value to it, although the idea that we could just move in without doing anything is also appealing.



What do you think?

pawsies

Are they on rightmove and if so, can you post the links to the properties on here so we can see them?

Southend1

Write a list of + and - points for each and ponder whether some outweigh others.

If all else fails, toss a coin!

princessdon

You don't live in a house you don't love. What is your heart saying (not resale). If short term investment chose head

No off street parking is a no for me with children and shopping

Carrotline

pawsies wrote: »

Are they on rightmove and if so, can you post the links to the properties on here so we can see them?

The first one isn't on RightMove, because it's not being actively marketed at the moment.

To give you a bit of background, today was the second time we've viewed it (having done so several months ago), but - instead - decided to put in an offer on another property several doors down (big mistake. HUGE!).

The estate agent said the owner had quite a bit of negative feedback on the place (as it was like a hoarder's paradise when we looked around first time) and has officially taken it off the market to try and smarten it up.

We put in a tentative inquiry about it this week after we got confirmation that our first attempt at buying a property had fallen apart completely to see if it had sold, as we noticed it had disappeared off of all the sites. We were nicely surprised to find out it's still available.

The second one can be found here, though.

houseimprover

I would say the first one without even looking because you will always put the preferred one first subconsciously.

Carrotline

houseimprover wrote: »

I would say the first one without even looking because you will always put the preferred one first subconsciously.

Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Obviously. Interesting.

Mids_Costcutter

You'd be lucky to have a cellar: quite rare in this country and makes better use of land area. You might be able to extend it too.

elsien

What are your personal priorities - forget for a moment what you think you "should" do (eg adding value) and think about what is going to work best for you.
For example, you're FTB so I'm guessing you're not looking for a forever home - realistically how likely is that that you'll extend rather than move in the future? And if you had to choose between space or noise, what are your personal tolerances?

And differentiate between the big issues and the more sortable ones - eg the garden being less private may be harder to sort than a bit of mess that you can just get a skip in to get shut of.

As a buyer, lack of parking would be an issue for me - I don't need off street parking if I can park near the house, but no parking at all would put me off. So how close would you realistically be able to park? Although I also hate cellars - seen far too many horror films to want to venture in to one.

Carrotline

princessdon wrote: »

No off street parking is a no for me with children and shopping

See this is an A1 consideration, as we don't have kids at the moment, but would like to have a baby within the next three years or so.

A two bed will be big enough for us with a bubba, but - yes - not having easy access to the car for buggy purposes, etc, will not be ideal.

ValHaller

Cellars, depending on how dry they are, can be very useful for storage of things which can tolerate damp. Let the surveyor have his say rather than try to second guess - unless you can see it is in a bad state.