House with a recent water leak under the kitchen. Run away from it?

Davesnave

Slinky wrote: »

Beware of shiny shiny house 2 that could be covering up problems with pretty renovations and nice furniture. If it's more than a few years old, pay for a decent survey.

The other issue with shiny house is that it'll be very much someone else's shiny and you won't be able to put your own mark on it or learn much, unless it turns out to be more shine than substance.

Somewhere there might be House 3, like our first, which was sound but unmodernised. There, I learned the basics of decorating, electric wiring, plumbing and how to deal with trades-persons.

That experience has come in more than handy in the years since. We're possibly on our last house now, which took 3 years and £100k to fix, but it would have been out of our ball park altogether without skills and perspectives picked-up along the way.

Davesnave

Tomby1 wrote: »

You should definitely look at your house as your first 'home', rather than an investment.

Can't it be both?

Our first house required input, but we loved it for the location, on the edge of an unaffordably posh area. Over 10 years, our bit became 'gentrified,' just as we'd hoped.

A competing house, owned by an acquaintance, had also tempted us. It was larger , fully modernised, with a good garden, but we doubted its long-term potential. This proved correct, as the road it stood on gave access to an undeveloped area, which became a trading estate. Enough said.

There is no harm in thinking more widely than the immediate future and location, but much depends on your characters. Home renovation can severely test relationships, so it isn't for everyone, especially if one partner would rather be doing something else.

scruti

Slinky wrote: »

There's a phrase about buying the worst house on the best street as being the place to make money. Your first choice sounds more like the best house on the worst street. Although you're looking for a home rather than an investment, I can't see the attraction so much of house 1.


Beware of shiny shiny house 2 that could be covering up problems with pretty renovations and nice furniture. If it's more than a few years old, pay for a decent survey.

Definitely is not an investment, but a place where to move and start a family now that we got married, so we refused to go for any "needs refurbishment but is a good investment" LA approach.

We were having the same conversation about the pretty renovations & nice furniture when we did our first viewings, and will be cautious about this.

We are going to go for a building/structural survey (from a surveyor with good reviews under his belt) in any old house like these ones. I prefer to spend £1k in the survey and have some peace of mind than running into a nightmare.

In the house 2 we want to point the surveyor few things we noticed (double glazing sealing seems to have failed in some windows, we noticed some corners between tiles in the roof are not correctly covered, my wife worries about a couple cracks over the plaster (that seem expansion/contraction but better checking than sorry).