How many houses did you view?

Tygermoth

after having a house that didn't have parking and one that had allocated parking , but had horrible neighbours that were inconsiderate and abused the system (three cars/two work vans and told you to eff orf if you asked them to move) it gets old - fast.


our list:


Parking (drive)
Three bed house - but good size rooms. Locally they have a habit of having a third 'bedroom' you couldn't swing a cat in.
A garden that is not too overlooked


This surprisingly narrows our search down to almost non existent properties. However I have not reached the stage that I am willing to compromise, yet.

Emmazom

It is a typical street, but we're near a school so there is a no parking zone in some areas, opposite is garages so they can't be parked in front of, there are a couple of disabled parking bays, around the corner is double yellow and the opposite side of the rode is mainly taken up with driveways, terraced as well but not the same period.

I understand a lot of advice has been offered on this particular house and I do appreciate it, but I was asking how many houses people viewed and how they felt when they had to compromise, especially on the style of house.

My home at the minute doesn't have parking in front of the house so it's not that I'm unwilling to park elsewhere it's that it's extremely difficult to

ElsieMonkey

Emmazom wrote: »

I was asking how many houses people viewed and how they felt when they had to compromise, especially on the style of house.

I think most, myself included, feel fine about compromising (whether sooner or later), because it's inevitable when buying a house.

Ok so I understand a little more now about the street this house is on. It does sound like it may be difficult. Might not be a deal braker for you in the end, but I guess you may not come to that realisation until you've looked at a few more, or until it's sold to someone else then you kick yourself for not going for it.

I'd find time every day for a week to drive there and try and park at the times of day you would be if you lived there. Instead of guessing, see what it's really like. If everything else about the house is perfect, it's worth this effort to see if the one thing that is putting you off will really be as bad as you think it is.

GaggingOrder

I saw 6 when I purchased my current place. I viewed everything that was available within my set area and criteria in one day, and went with the best overall option. There was a house I liked more but it was slightly above budget and needed a LOT of work. It sold again recently and has gone up in value by a bigger percentage than mine, but hey, that's life. I agree with others, few FTBs buy their forever home.

Incidentally we're now hoping to buy our forever home and viewed only 4 properties before finding something we fell in love with. Just luck though this time as our budget and criteria were much wider. I expected to be looking for a while. There's no hard and fast rule. The tighter your budget and criteria the fewer options so I'd suggest revisiting your criteria to work out what you really want.

Emmazom

That's a good idea about driving by every day, we did drive by a couple of times yesterday and it did look difficult but you're right it will be worth the effort. It's on the way home from work so will be easy enough to do.

The worst part is we found ourselves wishing for rear access driveway, when we previously let the last "wow" house go because we didn't like the driveway at the end of the garden!

Then again I'd rather a little trial and error than going in all guns blazing and being stuck somewhere we figured out later we didn't like

quotememiserable

Emmazom wrote: »

I hope we're not, we saw a property yesterday and the house itself was more than we could have wanted, but there was no parking so we didn't go any further.

I suggest you start with a flyby of potential properties, rather than go straight to a viewing and waste everyones time. A lot of properties get ruled out just by the road, or the drive, or neighbouring property etc. Then the ones you view will have a better chance.

glasgowdan

We're looking for our forever home and have viewed 33 in the last 3 months so far and totally fed up. There are a fair few we'd have killed for showing as recently sold, but as we weren't looking at the time we can't complain.

We commited to selling ours though so now in rented. I'm gutted how it's worked out and there are so few really good ones coming up for sale right now.

marksoton

I have to say given your responses you are over thinking things OP.

The simple fact is unless you have a bottomless pit of money you cannot have it all. And even if you did find somewhere that ticks literally every box there's nothing to say someone with deeper pockets won't also be in the running.

rosyw

When I last moved I viewed just one house - the one I'm now living in! It was a huge compromise for me as until now I've always lived in period properties and had always said I'd never consider a "new" house. This place took some finding though, it's a modern "one off" non estate chalet, and I love it cheap to run, low maintenance, garden is big enough but not too big for me on my own, it also has character, unlike the average modern box I would say don't rule out newer properties, sometimes it's a matter of finding the right one.

Emmazom

We do generally do a drive by beforehand, and we did with this property but we weren't aware wether there was back/side entrance and the estate agent we spoke to didn't know either, hence why we booked the viewer. Of course we don't have a bottomless pit, however this property is well below budget.

Again my original post was simply asking how many properties you viewed, surely I'm better taking my time and finding out the type of properties I like and what I would be willing to compromise on. Rather than being told to not be picky, this is likely to be the largest purchase of my life, so of course I would like to get as many ticks in the boxes as possible for my budget.

I have no intention of looking forever and have mentioned we would compromise on some things, I was merely interested in how people felt when they had to "settle" for the sake of sensibility