Regret buying house or just irrational thinking?

Flugelhorn

Sim1N said:

HampshireH said:

If you still have your flat and the cleaning is overwhelming, put some of your leftover cash to good use and pay a company to do a deep clean for you

Yes we still have the flat and it is with the council so can easily extend the tenancy. It’s hard because I haven’t been allowed to book a full week or two off of work either.

We did consider getting cleaners in, but we just thought we could do it ourselves and save the money… maybe we have been too naive in this whole processes!

Does anyone have an idea of what we would be looking at cost wise for such a service? Just so scared of getting scammed by paying over the odds or at the same time paying too little for a poor job. It’s a 3 bed semi with a conservatory

I got some cleaning done by one person and it was £15/hr - took 3- 4 hours but TBH it was small and not in a bad state just needed mainly kitchen and bathroom back to the pre rental state . Also got the oven done for £55 and it looked beautiful

I wonder if it is worth deciding which is the worst and most offputting part of the house - bathrooms? kitchen? and get a quote for that in the first instance - again see if you can get recommendations locally - there are a lot of people who do this job part time and flexibly 

Sim1N

WellKnownSid said:

Buyer's remorse is perfectly natural, especially if you've not really slept since completion.

We moved into our current house in 2019 - and we all had to live in the dining room for three months until rooms were habitable.  Cooking took place in one of the hallways (wife refused to use the kitchen even after a deep clean...!!) yeah I kinda feel like even though me and my mother in law scrubbed the kitchen, it wouldn’t feel hygienic. But we were planning on putting a kitchen in anyway, we just didn’t realise how tired and grimy it was on the viewing as you can’t really go through their cupboards and oven and so on on the viewing when the property is occupied (well I’m sure some people do but I wouldn’t do that personally)

1. As others have said - get it cleaned.  Cost is minimal for the benefit it brings.
2. Focus on one room to make it habitable and work from there
3. Replace all the toilet seats.  A horrible job but you can do it yourself, no other job will seem quite so bad after, and there is something much nicer sitting on a new seat  there’s only one toilet in the property and now due to the cowboy we got in yesterday we likely need to replace the full toilet! But yes nothing worse than using someone else’s toilet seat!
4. Get any dirty carpets out.  A room with a bare floor and a few different paint samples on the wall can look SO much better than a tired room with a filthy carpet. Oh yes the carpets are beyond saving and absolutely stink (not to sound rude but that’s the first thing that hit us when we walked in) we knew we wanted to rip them up anyway but thought we might have been able to clean them to keep us going for a couple of months but again when you view and there’s furniture on them you don’t realise how dire they are. We have ripped 2 of them up so far and think we might just do the others

I am really grateful for you response thank you

Sim1N

housebuyer143 said:

One room at a time. Clean it first, then just focus on one thing at a time until the list goes down. 
It's very overwhelming moving house and it's not all smiles and happiness which people make out. 

I hated mine when I walked in and took me two weeks to feel like it wasn't a mistake. It's a big change - you just spent loads of money and put yourself in huge debt and then you look around at all the more money you need to spend. It will get easier, just give it time. 
This time next year you will be laughing that you ever felt that way at all. 

Thank you so much that is very reassuring. All we’ve been saying as we walk round is “omg look at that! That’s a few hundred quid there, that might be a grands worth of work, what have we done, why have we done this” and so on. We’re just so up and down too one minute we see the potential and the next we are literally sat in our car on the drive crying and/or arguing over the state of our lives. I know it sounds dramatic but honestly we feel like we’ve messed our lives up.

The only grace in all this is we don’t have children that we have to move into the house ASAP, well not human ones anyway haha just feline ones

Sim1N

I really appreciate everyone’s comment it’s made me feel less alone. I’m quite tearful that people have taken their time to read and respond to me.

We are fortunate that we have decent paid jobs (we are not wealthy or privileged in any sense, just normal working class backgrounds) most people wouldn’t be able to buy a 3 bed semi for their first house specially in the current financial climate. I think something that is niggling at us is that if we had spent £40k-£50k more we would have had a house we could have just moved straight in to. But the location might not have been as good. We could have borrowed a lot more affordability wise than we have (we’ve borrowed around £120k less than the mortgage providers were offering!) and decided not to as we didn’t want sky high repayments and no free money to do enjoyable things to have that balance, so I would like to think we have been sensible in our borrowing. But there’s just that thought in our heads of “we could have spent more and not had the hassle”

Jemma01

If you can get few people to help with cleaning, then do that. I know you mentioned your mother in law, but few more will get the job done faster. Since you only have 3.5k, I wouldn't spend it on cleaning. I'd spend it on carpeting and other significant things. Unless it is very cheap, then maybe it is worth a stress-free process. We were charged 200+ for a professional cleaner to clean a two bedroom flat after tenancy of 13 months, that the landlord knew (south east). We didn't want to argue and just paid. Bizarre.

Jemma01

I also wouldn't stress about a whole new toilet because of the plumber trying to replace the button. Another good plumber will be able to fix it. The more you exaggerate what needs doing, the more overwhelmed you'll become.

Sim1N

Flugelhorn said:

Sim1N said:

HampshireH said:

If you still have your flat and the cleaning is overwhelming, put some of your leftover cash to good use and pay a company to do a deep clean for you

Yes we still have the flat and it is with the council so can easily extend the tenancy. It’s hard because I haven’t been allowed to book a full week or two off of work either.

We did consider getting cleaners in, but we just thought we could do it ourselves and save the money… maybe we have been too naive in this whole processes!

Does anyone have an idea of what we would be looking at cost wise for such a service? Just so scared of getting scammed by paying over the odds or at the same time paying too little for a poor job. It’s a 3 bed semi with a conservatory

I got some cleaning done by one person and it was £15/hr - took 3- 4 hours but TBH it was small and not in a bad state just needed mainly kitchen and bathroom back to the pre rental state . Also got the oven done for £55 and it looked beautiful

I wonder if it is worth deciding which is the worst and most offputting part of the house - bathrooms? kitchen? and get a quote for that in the first instance - again see if you can get recommendations locally - there are a lot of people who do this job part time and flexibly 

Thank you that’s very helpful. I will ask around. It’s hard because my partners family are nearly 40 miles away and my family are more local but never had to get any deep cleaning done so they would be as much in the dark as us on that one. My friends are in completely different counties so again they have no local knowledge. I might just have to be cheeky and annoy our new neighbours haha!

GrannyKate

We bought our first house 55 years ago just 6 months before our wedding.  We got a 3 bedroom semi rather than a 2 bedroom terrace because it was in such bad condition. Late DH did some work before the wedding and I moved in on Sunday after we married on the Saturday.  It had been a struggle to get the deposit together and we had to borrow money from family for food until next pay day.  I had moments of panic at what we had done but we made it into a home gradually and stayed 5 years before moving area.  I could eventually look back and laugh at the adventure. The day our first son became mobile we realised that having floorboards in the spare room was now urgent.  The small wet patch on bedroom carpet which DH felt the need to investigate at 11pm - there was a nail through central heating pipe and entire system emptied itself as soon as he moved the carpet.  

With regard to toilet flush I have resolved to not have the push button type in my new house when I move.  I had a contract with a national company for plumbing but they made a mess of mine and I ended up paying a recommended local plumber to fix it.  His prices are reasonable and I have used him ever since.  As others have said ask the neighbours and look for recommendations. As a widow I have had to learn to deal with tradespeople for the first time in my life and have gradually collected a list of trusted people.  I recently had to have some rendering repaired and I got quotes and went with someone who actually lives in my village.  He did a good job on time for agreed price and asked me to give him a review if I was happy with his work.  

As others have said tackle things one at a time, make a list, have a room to relax in as a priority, don't lie in bed fretting get up and do a little job, get a cleaner in to deep clean where you can, look on the move as the beginning of being a home owner not the end. 

Good luck. 

elsien

Not so much buyer’s remorse because it was the best of what I could’ve afford, but I walked into my new house and had a heart sinking moment.
The sellers had cleaned it and even set the fire for me (and left a bottle of wine) but it just looked grubby and rundown, which wasn’t how I remembered it. 

I think, because it was a first purchase, I wasn’t expecting the marks on the wall where the pictures had come down and left a silhouette so where I had expected to go in and not have to decorate it decorating straightaway. Also, I had very little in the way of things to personalise it it just didn’t feel like home to start with. 

All fairly normal in retrospect but still a bit of a let down initially.

gwynlas

You can do this it is like eating an elephant one bite at a time. There are companies that clean after hoarders have died in properties so yours cannot be that bad, look for somebody who does end of tenancy cleaning. The worst part but the most importanrt aspect of decorating is the preparation, if you do not feel up to doing this then again find a professional.If you want the place to look fresh just choose white  for the time being and live there before deciding on colours or changes. You have been very MSE in not borrowing the maximum you could have to buy a turn key house but you can afford to spend a little doing things up. Each step will take you further  along your journey to a beautiful home it does not have to be DIY all the way. IGetting professionals in while you are working to pay them is a better work life balance than stressing yourselves out by doing their job on top of your own. Remember to get a number of quotes and references to avoid employing cowboys.