Been in our home since May...absolute house of horrors...

spadoosh

teffers wrote: »

I feel you pain.

I bought my first place back in 2016 and once in, the house made it very clear it didn't us there lol.
It didn't help the vendor was a lieing !!!!!!! (I now assume all sellers are, so that's that lesson learned).
First the gas meter was venting gas (for weeks).
The place had mice.
The !!!! who had owned it had fitted the kitchen himself and built the units THEN the raised oak flooring right up them, helpfully using wood peices screwed to the walls. This meant when I wanted to install a washer I would need to remove all the units or the flooring.
The pipes banged with pressure every time a tap was used.

Every time the cooker was used it filled the house with the pungent smell of fish.
The party wall was was so thin you could speak to the other caller at the end of next door's phone calls. A delightful aspect was that the neighbour had fitted a water heater on the party wall meaning it vibrated the whole house when in use. He also had a habit of leaving his teenage kids on their own all weekend with all the noise that ensued. They refused to answer the door when I went round with tea and cake ;-)

We picked a village that seemed lovely and friendly, right up until the point we moved in, then it turned into Royston Vasey.

The house literally fought against me ever step of the way. Every single bit of furniture, every window blind every improvement ... the house said NO lol.

I put it on the market 6 months to the day from buying it. It sold to the first viewer as it looked lovely.

They sold it 6 months later..
Whole lesson cost me about £10K in fees, furniture and other costs etc. :beer:

You didnt lie did you?

spadoosh

Any problems with my house i try and turn into a positive. A new skill to be learned that will more than likely help me in future.

The more problems you overcome, the more problems you are able to overcome.

teffers

spadoosh wrote: »

You didnt lie did you?

I never met or spoke a word to the buyers In fact they did 3x visits, one of them 2 hours long with their parents I was told by the etsate agent as we'd moved out months ago.

ReadingTim

Could be worse - imagine facing the same problems in a rental and trying to get an uninterested landlord to fix them...

Niv

My current place was bought as a doer upper but there is so much more to do than met the eye (and the full survey!). A couple of examples of the unplanned stuff:

• Hot water was only on an immersion. Initially looked like I was plumbed into boiler but it was plumbed into a defunked aga. Boiler some 20+metres away + needed new water tank + new timer etc (plus a couple of rads that were needed) = £3k
• Electrics. Where to start, found a random live wire in a conduit (I mean open ended…), mice had chewed through some wiring in the kitchen that only became evident when we went to do the kitchen. Many random bits of wiring in house, much disconnected but still in situ
• Penetrating damp caused by a missing downpipe that was hidden by a wall climbing plant
• Wallpaper had been put on walls and plastered over (wallpaper not a good idea in this place). Resulted in excess damp. We knew there was damp but the bodge was making it much worse
• When doing the kitchen a section of cob had to be replaced which had been hidden from sight
• Some wood worm damaged beams – its always a caveat, wasn’t terribly surprised
• Couple of ceilings needed replacing due to being made of that cardboard stuff
• End of garden had been used as a dumping ground so had many trips to metal yard, stone guy and the tip in general

The list goes on. But I guess we knew it was a doer upper so there is at least a budget available for renovations and some of this is discovered from doing the planned stuff.
Two years down the line and it is coming together, should be painting in a couple of weeks!
Do I regret buying the house? Nope. It is in a location we love, on a nice sized plot, was the only way we could get as much as we have on our budget and I intend to stay here forever so if I have some upfront cost, so be it.

skint_chick

When I bought my house after selling a beautiful house I had with my ex it was a nightmare! Rising damp, mouldy kitchen with no heating and unit doors hanging off, broken back door window and no back door key. Back yard that smelled of sewage - from the blocked drain it turned out - crappy old rental furniture left behind by previous owners, mice under the bedroom floor, cracked toilet pipe, broken boiler, dodgy electrics and an overgrown mess of a garden that Environmental Health had sent several letters about.

I got the keys at lunchtime on a Friday and spent the afternoon at work snivelling at my desk. But after 6 months of complete redecoration and camping out with a microwave in the bedroom and showering at work it was fine. We recently got a kitchen extension and it found an issue with the foundations which brought all the feelings from 12 years ago back. But it was easily solved. We've had no major issues for 12 years - a couple of broken gutters, and a few broken roof tiles. I keep an emergency fund of £2,500 for emergency repairs - it came in handy when the oven, washing machine, and dishwasher all packed in within a few months of each other last year!

You will feel better about it with time I promise!

Cakeguts

This kind of maintenance is completely normal when you own a house. I think some people get a shock when they buy a house and they find that they are responsible for paying for the maintenance and there isn't a landlord sending out tradespeople and getting it fixed.



All houses have problems from time to time.

Grenage

Morata_ wrote: »

Just seems never ending....

It does indeed never end; you can save a lot of money if you get comfortable with DIY.

breaking_free

maisie_cat wrote: »

It might appear that everything is going wrong at once, but when these things re fixed you will know it's good job and that it will last.
In the 12 years have been here we have replaced the boiler, all the radiators, much of the pipework, some of the wiring and a new consumer unit, much of the flooring, bathroom, kitchen, windows, broken garage door and a wall that was falling down because it had been constructed on floorboards!
We also had to replaster lots of blown original plaster, and have redecorated the entire place.
We do not think there is a single surface that is as it was when we bought & it has sometimes felt like a money pit. It looks lovely now and we at least know that there are not hidden bodges.

I could have written this exact post (except I did it in 2 years rather than 12 and haven't replaced the boiler - yet-!) Was chatting with my upstairs neighbour the other day and mentioned how I'd replaced all the piping, cutting down the time time it took for the shower to heat up from well over a minute to around 30 seconds. He told me his shower took three and a half minutes to heat up...apparently some of his pipework goes up into the loft (and probably disappears up a bean stalk before coming back down in his bathroom).

Davesnave

The sort of things you mention are physical issues, entirely resolvable, which have straightforward solutions for those with a contingency fund. The latter should always be part of the budgeting, whether it's a second-hand car or house that's purchased. It's just not sensible to borrow right up to the max and leave nothing for things going paridae-up.

I'm not saying you did that, but if money's tight, sudden demands on it create undue stress.

The worst problems aren't those like dodgy plumbing or electrics. They're the ones that cannot be resolved: like a perpetually barking dog, rowdy, anti-social neighbours or a decision to build a new wing on the local school that suddenly sweeps away the view you bought the house to enjoy. Such things, beyond your power and your savings to fix, are the real death knell for many a property.

If you don't have any 'unresolvables,' you could still end up loving the house; after all there must have been something that made you want it.