What was your 'compromise' with your property purchase?

ka7e

I was all set to offer on an almost new (low-maintenance), 4-bed/2 bath town house - the compromise being a 14 foot-wide garden that was very overlooked.

Instead, I'm in the process of buying a run-down 3-bed 1930s semi! It needs a total renovation - new ceilings, kitchen/diner remodel, bathroom/loo remodel and decorating thoughout. But there is space for a utility and downstairs shower room and a big square garden backing on to a field.


The thought of sitting in my garden, being overlooked by 15-20 windows outweighed all the advantages.

suki1964

cloo wrote: »

Compromises:
- Driveway - not all that many houses near us did have them, we nearly bought one with, but that fell through. Our house was the only other we saw that was big enough as a whole
- Garden - actually ended up with slightly smaller garden than we had in our previous flat! But again, larger gardens than that were actually hard to come by at under £1m round our way. In the end, figured we had a park around the corner, and this is England, so it's not like one really spends that much time in the garden overall.


Just passed our 4th anniversary of being there, after lots of building work, and very happy!

Well thats your view

I live in NI and its even wetter and colder yet I still have a pizza oven in the garden and 2 BBQs, plus one of the garages is now a play room - snooker - darts - shooting - bar etc

We do open the house into the garden as much as possible and when we invite people around we are grateful that we do have the garden to enjoy ( plus the views)

Bluebell1000

Our initial wishlist was somewhere in in a village, a decent amount of land (0.5 acre ish), 2 garages or space for a car workshop, space for a mini train track, 4 bed, detached, 2 toilets, decent schools nearby.

We saw a lot. With the house we bought, we nearly didn't even bother viewing as it didn't really tick most of those boxes. It's in town, on a fairly busy road, 3 bed, semi, and the RM ad only showed 1 bathroom - though we did find a second one under the stairs when we visited, no idea why the agents didn't mention it. The only reason we went to look was the garage workshop, which did look ideal, and the garden seemed quite big. When we saw it we just loved it all, and didn't care about the wish list any more, because it just felt right Made an asking price offer on the spot. It was also a fair bit under budget. We are really happy here. And there is still enough land for my ride-on train, even though it's not quite half an acre

letitbe90

Compromises:
- Price. Did not envisage going for a mortgage in excess of £400k and suffering the stamp duty with it! Originally planned to buy within the £300k-£350k bracket.
- Commute times to work will increase by 10-20 minutes.
- 3rd bedroom on the smaller side, but I guess most houses have the same issue

Bonuses that I hadn't anticipated:
- Boarded loft room with stairs leading to it already done up and a velux window
- Large concrete outbuilding in garden which I plan to set up as a gym
- Greenhouse and fish pond (with fishes!) in garden
- Can move in without doing any work at all to it - not even cosmetic, it was immaculate

TBagpuss

My 'must haves' were off-street parking, a front garden (or space ) rather than being right on the pavement, and a garden. I also wanted reasonable room sizes as a lot of newer houses feel very poky and cramped.

I got all of them (although the front garden was entirely covered in tarmac and there was no fence or other barrier to the pavement/road, when I moved in)

Compromises I made were

1. Layout. Ideally I would like my hosue to be the other way round, with the living room looking into the back arden, and the kitchen at the front.
2. Size. I would have liked slightly larger bedrooms
3. general condition.
4. Semi rather than detached. This was a price thing, there was nothing in my budget which was detached, but I knew going in that that was unlikely. Instead, I made sure that I bought a semi where the main bedroom had no connecting wall to the neighboruing house.
and as things turned out, I have lovely neighbours so it isn't an issue anyway.

Nothing had been done to the hosue since (at a guess) the late 80s, early 90s. The decor was awful, and in poor condition.

But it was worth it to me as I got the location, and other attributes that I wanted. Since moving in, I have had all the walls replastered (as I anticiapted, the old, blown plaster came off with the terrible woodchip wallpaper), the old artex ceilingsremoved and replastered, and have decorated and carpeted throughout, and you would not recognise it as the same place. I have also had the tarmac removed and the garden turfed, at the front, and a gate and fence put in and am in the process of creating a garden.

NaughtiusMaximus

The big one is it's a semi rather than a detached, but if we had gone for a detached within our budget, realistically we would have had to have compromised in one or more other important aspects instead (e.g. the house has a large rear garden, utility room, downstairs loo, is not overlooked, is in a nice area and is bigger than the majority of 3 bed houses).

Bossypants

Compromises I made:
- Market town rather than village location (necessary for commute)
- Built up street rather than open countryside (fields start at the bottom of street though, and I'm not really overlooked)
- 1950's with no character features (but turned out to have good bones and needed a full overhaul anyway)
- Closer to railway line than I would have liked
- North-facing lounge

The first two have turned out to be blessings in disguise, and I don't think I would change them if I could. The third was, well, a lot more expensive than I expected and is still ongoing, but at least it'll be exactly what I want by the end of it. The last two are probably always going to be things I tolerate for the sake of the rest of the house, but they're really only minor annoyances, and the rest of the house is lovely. I hope to spend at least 10-20 years here, and will probably only move again if getting my true 'dream house' becomes an option (it would be 2-3 times my current budget, so unlikely but hope springs eternal!), or something entirely unexpected happens.