House Buying - Regrets & Boo-boos

epinjy

My only regret was not buying sooner.. I bought a 2 bed semi for £162,500 with a 20% deposit earlier this year. I think I could have pulled off buying a year or 2 sooner if I had played it better, perhaps a 10% deposit, but a similar house would maybe have been £140-150k then. Of course life isn't that ideal and I had to work around job switches and the low stock of houses I would actually consider coming on to the market, and I don't think I got a bad deal at all anyway - similar houses are already selling 5% above even what I paid 6 months ago!

lookstraightahead

Don't buy young as it stops flexibility for more exciting life experiences.

Don't stretch yourself so much it stops you enjoying your life.

Don't buy then get divorced!

Don't judge your success by the size of your property.

I did all of the above in my very early twenties and house ownership that early on was a ball and chain.

Davesnave

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'm not even on a pension (no income) and am trying to avoid a doer-upper.

I was joking, a bit.

Pension age is a little late to be taking on a full renovation, as things [STRIKE]rarely[/STRIKE] never run to budget, which makes the project risky if your income is shrinking.

On the other hand, if you're still fit and have the skills, it can be a good way to keep active and mentally engaged in early retirement.

We got through ours with the capital we had put aside, so we're comfortable, but there are jobs like hard landscaping still outstanding, and that kind of job becomes harder with age.

robatwork

Davesnave wrote: »

On the other hand, if you're still fit and have the skills, it can be a good way to keep active and mentally engaged in early retirement.

I'm younger than you but not young. I now know what I'm doing a lot more than I did in my 20s/30s (& 40s). But now when I do anything physical I need to allow for a day or days of a bad back afterwards. Put in a few trees this year but digging was an aching chore. I'd love to be out chopping wood or repointing the chimney which are jobs I could do.

Have to be pragmatic and get people in to do the tricky or really physical jobs now. But they'll never take my axe!

seven-day-weekend

Saga wrote: »

Looking back, what big house-buying mistakes have you made and regrets that you have, particularly as a FTB, which with hindsight you would avoid now?

I was a FTB in 1976

I don't think we have any regrets . But I would certainly look a little more closely at the property than we did in 1976, when he wanted a cellar, I wanted an attic bedroom, we both wanted a garden and that was all we looked at before saying 'Yes! We will have this house'.

seven-day-weekend

CarbonImage wrote: »

Just to add, I disagree with people saying that you should go as big as you can from the outset. Especially if you are young and not settled. Consider your own circumstances and likelihood of change.

Since we moved in, OH has unexpectedly quit her job to re-train as she wasn't happy and I now support both of us (for the time being). It would've been impossible if not at least much more stressful to cope had we gone for the size of mortgage our adviser was pushing us towards.

I agree with this. Because of our tiny mortgage on our terraced house, my husband was able to retrain as a Teacher at the age of 31, I was able to go to Uni at the age of 34, and we were able to pay the mortgage when he had a very bad breakdown when he was 40 and we had to live on my (miniscule) income.

We have never had a detached house; in fact the semi-detached bungalow with a drive that we bought in 2015 is a real step-up for us, although officially it is a downsize .

Davesnave

robatwork wrote: »

Put in a few trees this year but digging was an aching chore. I'd love to be out chopping wood or repointing the chimney which are jobs I could do.

Have to be pragmatic and get people in to do the tricky or really physical jobs now. But they'll never take my axe!

Have you heard of 'no dig' gardening and its guru, Charles Dowding?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIojWdJz0RE


The builder and I had a combined age of around 130 when we started the re-model and renovation. He's gone on to build a complete house from scratch since then, but I'm done!

SensibleSarah

I have a long list of things that I did wrong when I bought my house. I followed the advice that said to buy the worst house on the best street I could afford (which still wasn't a very nice street - but hey). Sadly, I do regret failing to properly think through how I was going to fix up a house with no savings and not enough disposable income to save enough to ever have the level of money needed for the task. :rotfl: Not to mention, truly abysmal DIY skills.
So 9 years in, I still have a fixer-upper that looks worse than it did when I moved in because I have started but not finished several things, plus all the things that were already old when I bought it are just 9 years older now!

Planning on cutting my losses in 2020 and moving to a slightly 'worse' area (it's all subjective), where I can afford a house for not much more money than I should get for mine, which doesn't need a new kitchen, new bathroom x2, total rewire, new doors and windows, new roof, new boiler and complete floor to ceiling redecoration in every room, all at once.

And semi-detatched is a dream after living in a mid-terrace for most of the last 20 years (including rentals before buying)!

I could extend myself to the limit to buy in a 'nicer' area - but as a single income household - I absolutely won't take that risk when I have an alternative that is perfectly fine and £40k cheaper.

RelievedSheff

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

I was a FTB in 1976

I don't think we have any regrets . But I would certainly look a little more closely at the property than we did in 1976, when he wanted a cellar, I wanted an attic bedroom, we both wanted a garden and that was all we looked at before saying 'Yes! We will have this house'.

We bought our first house in 2007 (bad timing) based on the need for a decent sized garage and two off road parking spaces with a limited budget of £100k.

Most of the local estate agents laughed at us when we told them what we wanted and what we had to spend. :rotfl:

We had to compromise on location in the end which in hindsight was a poor choice.

vroombroom

We bought our first house in 2014 in a help to buy/shared ownership scheme. Whilst I love the house as it's great for school/work, we're now desperate to move as we've since had another child (b/g 6 years between) and we're stuck in this tiny 2 bed.
Due to the scheme we are on, we have to sell it at a price the company we bought it through gives us. If we get any offers less, we have to pay the difference which means we'll not only have to pay them a load of money we don't have, but we'll have no shares either.

Worst thing we ever did.:(