Nice period home but badly overlooked - yes / no

RocketRonnieRadox

Well we have found a lovely period double fronted house with a full cellar and 5 bedrooms 2 living rooms and a morning room.

The house is in need of some updating to the time of 40-60k and it needs all the windows replacing with sash which is gong to fleece us at 23k.

Being such a unique house it's difficult to gauge the value but I feel it's about 20k too expensive

The main issue is the garden, it's north facing, 15m wide and only 5m long so won't get too much sun but what further compounds the issue is that to the west side where the sun sets there is a row of 3 story Victorian house rears that totally overlooks the garden and is not really very nice to look at glueing somewhat unkept.

How much sun will it get like that ? God knows but not a lot.

I know we can only answer his for ourselves really but would that out any of you off ?

My wife said the benefits of the house outweigh the garden but if we are buying our forever home could we have it all with another house ?

The other houses overlooking are close - only some 5-8m away to boot and have many windows. So little privacy combined with little light.

Hmmm

lush_walrus

It depends on you really and how you plan to use your house. are the main living spaces overlooked or just the garden?

To reduce overlooking is there something you could do, some form of screening etc

For me it would be a deal breaker, i love having windows without anything covering them for example, but we are all different.

Tiners

I'd say a 5m long north facing garden with 3 story houses to the west only 5-8 m away... virtually no sun at all, maybe in mid-summer at mid-day it might get a couple of hours when the sun is directly overhead.

Davesnave

People put up with different inconveniences in order to afford a particular kind of home; some down-sides being tolerated easily because of lifestyle choice.

My previous neighbours living in Victorian houses tolerated gardens exactly like you describe, with no direct sunshine until late evening. For them, the dull garden and being overlooked by neighbours wasn't a huge consideration. They only came outside to hang washing and have the odd barbecue in the evening.

When sold-up, I offered these four neighbours the chance to double the size of their gardens for a mere £10k each, but they didn't exactly bite my hand off! It was only after they realised the extra potential this gave them that interest increased; it certainly wasn't the idea that they could have the occasional barbecue in the sunshine. There was also a worry that one of their immediate neighbours would take the plot behind them, if they didn't.

So, they came around to the idea, but I'm sure if I hadn't come along, those people would have been quite happy with their houses and gardens as they were, because it was the period features they valued and paid for. My house had minimal character and cost the same as theirs, but it was the 1/4 acre garden and sunny site that I bought it for.

Few of us can afford to have it all, so we choose what we want most. Only you can do the choosing.

glasgowdan

I wouldn't buy it but I highly value the outdoor space, and seeing those windows looking onto my family whenever they're outside would seriously bother me.

freeisgood

To me an overlooked garden would be an absolute no, I would feel I was being watched every time I went out there, but it's a personal choice.

missprice

And for me I would care less about the garden, as I am no kind of gardener. But the house sounds divine, double fronted, huge cellar etc. I would buy it.

xylophone

[B]Ice period home[/B] but badly overlooked - yes / no

Igloo with scope to extend?:)

RocketRonnieRadox

xylophone wrote: »

Igloo with scope to extend?:)

No room at all to extend.

And to boot the kitchen and dining room are at the back of the house and would be fairly dark to say the least.

Another downside is that there is no direct access to the overlooked garden from the kitchen. One has to leave the kitchen and go through 2 sets of doors before accessing the outside.

Thanks

phoebe1989seb

The house itself sounds lovely, but I'm a fan of period properties However, we also value both our outside space and our privacy, so an overlooked garden that gets very little sun would be a deal breaker.

A few houses back we fell in love with a very old five bed property that had originally been surrounded by its own land with orchard etc. Sadly in the 1980s this had been developed by the then owner and - whilst the house retained wrap around gardens - what outside space was left was a maximum of 20' deep/long. The Tudor features lured us in and we were prepared to ignore the proximity of the two neighbouring houses - one of which felt very close as our house had a conservatory that was only 4' from the boundary whilst the other building was again built almost up to it, with only a ginormous (leylandii) hedge affording any privacy.

After purchase we discovered one neighbour (the swine that did the developing......grrr!) was a karaoke performer who liked to practice in his garage that was adjacent to the other boundary, while the other neighbour had constant parties and noisy BBQs.

In the three years we lived there we barely used the garden as - apart from the noise - we felt overlooked the whole time.....

Cakeguts

This house is cheap because of the overlooked garden, the lack of garden and the direction of the garden. What you have is a family sized house with a small garden. You would have to be very careful how much you spent updating it. Probably the reason that it hasn't been updated is because no one can see how they would ever get their money back because of the limited number of people who would ever want to buy it.

I wouldn't buy it because I don't like small gardens. A small overlooked garden would completely put me off.