What would attract you to a house

Right Location
Detached
Loads of parking and a good sized garden, with privacy from neighbours.
We have trees and high hedges, all included on our Buildings Insurance so not a problem.

At the moment we prefer a quiet Village, but if we ever move again it would be near to some shops, buses, Doctors……….

In our price range. We’ve had too many people look at our other homes that didn’t stand a chance of meeting the asking price and I don’t think that’s fair on the sellers.

A good result on the Structural Survey.

Anything else we’ve always been able to change/knock down/extend. Artex ceilings would be a pain to have to plaster over, although we did it in our current house.
So internally as long as it doesn’t stink of cigarettes or animals, we can see past other peoples furniture, personal stuff.

No cats, if MrOops walked into a house with a cat, he’d end up in A &E.

No more thatched cottages, been there done that, too dark and chilly.

But at the end of the day it has to ‘feel’ right, most internal stuff can be sorted, if the price is right.

Looking at this list I doubt we’ll ever find another house that would suit us that we could afford, because added to my list would be ‘ within 20 minutes of the sea’.

Cars are a good thing to mention here.
When we sold a house in London where parking was limited, the viewer got a £50 parking fine for parking on the road (almost under the signs!) I had gone out so the front was free to park on, but the agent who did the viewing fogot to tell them they could. Oops!

A nice 'feel', which is very hard to define and I also think very personal.
When house hunting last time, I saw some beautiful properties but none felt right for me!

I can also overlook decor etc but storage is really important to me and wall space i.e a friend of mine bought a property with several rooms that have doors / radiators / shallow alcoves on 3 walls making it quite difficult to position furniture unless it's of a specific size.

Apart from location, a wet room on the ground floor, and laminated or tiled floors throughout.

new builds don`t have much storage and I believe that they use 3/4 size furniture for staging, to make the rooms look bigger. I bought a 4 bedroom house with one set of fitted wardrobes in the main bedroom.

A very good carpenter built a set of storage into two other bedrooms, excellent storage with lots of space, all fully used by me but then those 2 double bedrooms really became 2 large singles. Something to look out for, alcoves are obvious spaces for built in storage and also counted in the advertised room sizes

Hence me buying the 4 bedrooms, all rooms are fully used

Downstairs in a new build, they often have underfloor heating and the manifold is placed in a narrow cupboard of sorts, just about enough room for a few coats on the wall. The old spacious understairs cupboards are almost always now a downstairs toilet/cloaks. Hall is big and utility has some storage but tbh the storage areas of old are no more

When we sold our last house, we suspected the family bathroom and garden would put people off, as they definitely needed work, but we had very recently replaced all the old worn out windows and patio doors. The couple who bought the house wanted it because we had a big double garage which they wanted to convert into a home cinema!! However, they never did that. Instead they ripped out all the brand new windows and replaced with very similar!!! Three years later they sold the house, and it still had the same tatty bathroom and boring garden!! The only other thing they'd changed was to knock the wall out between the study and the kitchen for no obvious reason as it didn't make a lot of difference to the size or the use of space. You never know what other people consider important! We've never been in a position to afford to spend much on a new house, concentrating mainly on the size suitable for a large young family, so we'd have to like (or accept) what's already there, other than basic decorating, of course! It's taken us 12 years to afford to make this house how we want it, but we've always loved it here - it was the first house we looked round, but we looked round dozens more just to be sure!!

I love to watch those house-buying TV programmes and see couples moaning that the kitchen isn't big enough (when it is gigantic!), or the view is wonderful when it's of a load of rooves! And I cannot bear those big kitchens that look more like a science lab, or modern houses with double-height ceilings and an all glass wall/doors and no soft furnishings at all. My instant thought is 'this is UK! In winter that's not cosy and when it's dark and the lights are on, everyone can see everything you're doing!!' Give me curtains or blinds and a rug and a sofa any day!! I want cosy, not sterile!!!

CB, yes the lovely view ie a field, now with cows, likely later with a new estate, I smile when a field is pointed out. I have lovely views of very old gardens and red old sloping dippy roofs. That view cannot change. Nowt wrong with a view of roofs, at least the view is established

I don`t like those big clinical kitchens either and haha they all need to entertain

I'd love a nice view.
This flat has appallingly ugly ones from every window.

The OP can't change her view, though

True.
I just got carried away, imagining rolling hills, and red tiles roofs.

Get a muriel? ?

Like Hilda Ogden?
I have been saying for ages I'm going to paint one on the half wall around the dustbin area.
My kitchen looks directly onto it.

Exactly. Hilda's was so convincing - if you get a removable one you could be at the beach one day and in the hills the next. Permanent good weather too - what's not to love? ?

I think our priorities change as we get older. The first two houses we lived in we were game for anything, nothing fazed us from cleaning and decorating to building. It was only lack of funds that sometimes stopped us doing what we'd have liked to do.

We're a lot older now so when buying our present house we looked for a property with local amenities and services, one that we could future-proof if possible. It necessitated extending and changing the interior layout but I hope we've achieved that.

So if we were house hunting now I'd be looking for
1. Kerb appeal - a house that would make me smile every time I came home.
2. Interior space - I don't like lots of small rooms connected by hallways and numerous doors to open and close.
3. Upstairs and downstairs toilets/bathrooms.
4. A neutral colour scheme throughout - I'm not so eager to do decorating now.
5. A good state of repair, especially chimneys, roofs and gutters.
6. Clean - not necessarily showhouse clean but good enough that I don't have to get down on my hands and knees and scrub skirtings on moving day!
7. Wooden floors - they're so much easier to clean.
8. I can see beyond clutter, family photos etc, they won't be there when we move in.
9. A good sized sunny garden.
10, A far reaching view if possible, not just more houses across the road.
11, Off road parking.

I think I've just described our house!

It's rare to find a house that meets all your criteria, but if the changes you'd have to make are minimal then you've got very close.

Good photos if you are selling are vital nowadays when everything is on the internet.

And another thing, how do you get rid of photos once the sale has gone through?
My friends bought a house 5 years ago which , if googled, still comes up with video and asking price.
I think I might want to sell privately and not have all the curious viewers. How would I do that?

Good question. I wouldn't like the thought of that either. My decorator put a video of before and after shots of the work he did on his Facebook page and I made him take them down. So intrusive!

So could they ask the agents to remove the video? Doodledog
I will suggest that.

Yes, the agents could take it down. Most do when the house is sold, as it uses up a lot of bandwidth; but if they haven't it would do no harm to give them a nudge.

My decorator wasn't pleased, as he wanted the 'before and after' video for advertising, but I hated the idea of my house being online like that, as people can zoom in on the books on your shelves or nose into anything, really. Plus, I choose who gets invited into my house - it's not a public building ?

I belong to a minority apparently, as I am perfectly capable of seeing past others' private possessions, clutter or mess.

When looking at houses, DH and I focused on the shape and size of the rooms, on whether they felt or smelt damp, and on which way they faced. I had a compass with me to check.

Apart from that I focus on how a house "feels". If a house sends shivers down my back, then I obviously would not consider buying or renting it. If I think, I could be content there, then fine, if not, look for something else.

The really important thing is the structural integrity of the building, how old the roof is, etc. etc.

I may well find the seller's choice of wallpaper frightful, but I am not going to live with the wallpaper, after all. Nor am I bound to use their bedroom as mine.

Basically, if we like the house, we will consider buying it. Location, views, garden are all immaterial to us. Being on a bus route is essential at our ages as is easy distance to shops, GP and post office.

I agree, grandtanteJE65. My house was shocking when I viewed. Very old lady in style, even though it had been a middle-aged man living there.

I had hoped to find something 'off the shelf', as it were and saw some lovely houses in pristine condition. But they didn't have my essential requirements, so I accepted a house I liked despite it needing work.

Absolutely agree with varian - LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION is all important for buyers - but for sellers ? - location is the only thing that can’t be changed.

High ceilings, though that's not something changeable.

It's the location and a South facing back garden for me. My bungalow was a mess when I bought it, had all the features of the 1980s. It was so bad it had lay empty for nearly a year while others were snapped up around it. Luckily I had the vision of what it could look like, but the estate agent said a lot couldn't see past the work it needed.
I think if you keep a house neutral, decluttered, clean and smelling fresh it helps the potential buyers. A tidy garden is a must for the kerb appeal for the ones driving around looking at the area before booking a viewing.
Good luck with the sale

I am married to a builder - we didn’t even go inside the home we live in now. It was the location and privacy of the setting, as he said anything else he could change/improve.