ugly house, nice location?

iolande

Wow. This really is the big pink!

Freshen the paint, plant a nice garden and the outside will look a thousand times better. Perhaps redo the front door (build a little porch or buy a really nice front door). Fairly superficial changes for a cheap house in a lovely location

kunekune

I have an appointment to see it tomorrow afternoon! It will be the first house I've viewed in the UK, since I have always decided "no" on the paperwork, so to speak. I'm quite excited.

It has been really useful seeing all these responses (I must admit I was expecting rather a different kind of response to my original post ... ). I am usually quite accurate at guessing which houses will sell fast (the ones I like, invariably) but I rejected this one at the first pass, and am thinking others might have done too. I've never taken on a house in need of work, and DH is no handyman, so there's a lot of thinking to do if I turn out to still be interested after the viewing. But yes, you're all right: there is masses of potential, and much of it can be fixed comparatively cheaply.

amazon_spice

I have seen much uglier and the view is lovely.

Strapped

kunekune wrote: »

What neighbours at the back? They're not that close (most houses in the UK must have neighbours closer than that), and the important outdoor part is at the front. Also, the terrace is higher up, so my guess is their view skims over "our" house, which has quite a big garden (so far as birds eye can reveal). I am very confused, though, by the last picture taken by the estate agent. I cannot work out where that is: we didn't see anything like that when we sniffed around.

Sorry, you asked for opinions and I gave mine. Perhaps you should've just said, "this is the best house we can afford in the area we want to live; please make me feel better about buying it".

kunekune

Sorry Strapped if I seemed defensive, I didn't mean it like that, I was just a bit confused because I couldn't see what neighbours you meant, which made it difficult to work out how to respond. It's true that if we were spending twice that amount we might get a detached house, with no neighbours anywhere near, but I don't want to spend that much even if we could. Anyway, I wondered whether you were thinking about the last picture on RM, which doesn't seem to bear any relationship to the birds eye view or our own observations of the location ... I have doubts about whether it a view from this house at all! If there was a development like that just over the fence I would seriously reconsider even going to see the house.

I certainly didn't start the thread to make me 'feel better' - I was genuinely curious about whether other people thought it was ugly and whether they thought that a view made up for that. The responses were helpful. I have plenty of time to get panicky and ask for reassurance (and not get it, LOL) if we end up deciding to make an offer, etc, etc. This was the 'is it even worth looking at' stage.

kunekune

Update:

What a wreck. The agent was pretty useless, and didn't know (or wasn't saying) anything about the house but I think it must have been empty for at least a year, going by the state of the garden. I haven't the faintest idea when the garden photos were taken, as they don't represent the current condition (actually, maybe one of them is of another property altogether, like the one of the 'houses at the back'). That I could have handled but when I got into the house it was clear this was more than a lick of paint job. There was some damp in the titchy bedroom which looked to be coming from some damaged cladding. The bulkhead extended halfway into the room so there wasn't room for a single bed. The walls behind the paper were very uneven. It looked like someone had taken out a gas fire in the dining room and papered over the hold. The 'understairs cupboard' was minute, not sure why. And someone had at one point installed a kitchen but there was no room for a dishwasher and we'd have trouble getting the fridge in it was so small, let alone a dryer and the freezer. The only way to get a big enough kitchen would have been to knock through into the dining room and then add a conservatory at the back to replace the lost dining space. Oh, and there was an ancient coal bunker just outside the dining room window.

Overall verdict: ugly on the outside ok, cosmetic work ok, gardening ok, but not major remodelling. However, on the positive side: I've done my first viewing, DH is now more confident that I'm not going to go mad and buy in a panic, and our criteria are now more firm. In fact, they are so firm that it'll probably take months to find the right house (just what DH wants).

I would like 4 bedrooms (need a study), a child-safe garden, a decent sized kitchen with room for all my appliances, and we really should have a proper shower as well as a bath (or at a pinch just a shower). When the boy is all horrid & mucky first thing in the morning, a shower is the best solution, as it's not easy for him to climb into the bath and I can't lift him. Only two floors would be nice, as would somewhere for the washing machine other than the kitchen (a new zealand hangover). And close to the bus route I use to get to work/that goes past the children's school, so that I can take them to school when DH can't.

Oh, and for under £200K.

There are only two houses around here that fit that set of rules:

http://www.dacres.co.uk/property-details.php?pcode=BIN071227&dbtype=sales&rps=dacrps&pamend=1209809685 - this has been on the market about a month. I think it's time to go and have a look.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-17554621.rsp?pa_n=1&tr_t=buy - this is pretty gorgeous, and we've checked out the street (not such a good suburb but seems ok, nice views too) but the owner has a sold sign up though it isn't showing on RM. So it may have been snapped up ... with this one, I may have to wait until the current sale falls through.

As I said to the agent, there is no hurry, the right house at the right price will appear at some point, and there is no point trying to squeeze into a house that isn't big enough. Houses the right size do come up fairly regularly, we're not asking for the impossible, though it may not be in the village that's at number 1 on our list.

opalfruits_2

Have you thought about somewhere like Queensbury? It's ideal for both Halifax and Bradford and the views are gorgeous as it's right on the tops.

kunekune

Did think of Queensbury, but Queensbury secondary school is terrible and we need to be zoned for a good school, that's one of the reasons to stay around Bingley/Cottingley/Crossflatts. Also, after a lot of thought, we don't want to change the children's current primary school and after school club: it's the older one's third school, and being disabled he takes a long time to settle in, it would be cruel to move him again. Finally, because I don't drive, bus routes/train routes are important, and I like Bingley because I have both.

But yes, there are some great houses in Queensbury and the views are lovely (on the days when it's not in the clouds ...).