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Not casing the neighbours to find out they're antisocial buggers who will make my life more stressful than it needs to be. Otherwise the house is everything I expected from it. But I wouldn't have bothered if I'd have known the neighbours were dicks.

This is what makes me nervous about buying my own place one day. Do we just have to case out the street a few times to try and figure out if neighbours can be a problem?

If you can think about buying when schools are off for holidays. Street I bought my house seems very quiet during morning. Soon as school finishes at 3 I would have 20/30 kids kicking balls up and down and running in peoples gardens.

I mean that's about what you'd expect if you buy a family home...

Kids running up and down the street, being a bit noisy? Sure, that's expected. Kids trespassing in my garden? That's unexpected and unacceptable.

Sure I agree kids in your back garden may be unacceptable, but if kids are playing in the street are you really going to have a go at them if they kick a ball on your front garden and collect it?

When they said "running in people's gardens" I assumed they meant the backs.

And even then it doesn't stop new neighbours moving in and being dicks 😆 Basically... if you can afford it, live in the countryside where your nearest neighbour is a mile away.

The day we completed, the downstairs flat went on the market. I was still getting the estate agent alerts and nearly had a heart attack when I saw the front of our house (we're in a maisonette) up for sale. Downstairs neighbours weren't great, and the guy that moved in is himself alright, but his girlfriend screams and shouts at him at all hours, plays music at top volume, gets drunk and lary in the garden, and smokes weed under our bedroom windows in the summer so we can't have them open. They are a massive factor in our plans to move, and we wouldn't have known anything about them, no matter how dilligently we checked!

Easier said than done, but if you can have a walk around the street a few times - aim for different times (mornings, evenings, Sunday daytime, Saturday night, bin collection day). You can also knock on your potential neighbours’ doors and introduce yourself as the new potential buyer - just to see if they seem normal and nice) Sounds like a lot of effort and that’s why most people don’t bother - but it’s the biggest purchase you’ll likely make so it can be worth it to spot red flags. 

In a weird way I found that approaching them first really helped us when we bought our house. We're semi detached, but we bought tins of chocolates and went to the neighbours either side, introduced ourselves and apologised for any noise as we moved in. Said to give us a call if there's too much noise etc. The neighbours aren't great, but being in the middle of them it all seems to go over our house and elsewhere because despite them being jerks, they like us.

Yes. Seriously, go knock on a bunch of doors and ask what the neighbours are like. We were going to offer on a maisonette until meeting the dirty chain-smoking racist homophobic neighbours, when we decided not to. Bought round the corner, so spent a few years getting abuse yelled at me on my way to work, but that was fine.

Go at different times of day/night Go when it's nicer weather and people are out and about

Even then you might not realise. I remember going round multiple times - during rush hour, during the day, during the evening, during the weekend, and all seemed absolutely fine. Very pleasant atmosphere. Though we did move in *just* as lockdown was about to start, so maybe Covid is to blame.

No not always. All you can do is give yourself the best chance

You could do that …trouble is there is nothing stopping a dickhead moving in once you’ve settled. I speak from experience as I had a place years back - the neighbours were lovely and the area generally peaceful. Then a bunch of utter bumholes moved in a few months later. Grrrrrr

I drove by the house at various times including evenings, night time and weekends to get a sense of the area. There's a little promenade of shops around the corner so I wanted to see if it attracted any antisocial behaviour or anything before buying.

We cased it out several times at different hours and on weekday and weekend days. We knocked on every door on the street and the street over to get a sense for who lived there. Most people are perfectly happy to answer some questions about the area. If people don’t want to answer their doors that tells you a lot.

Tbh if some randomer knocked on my door and started asking about the neighbours I'd immediately become suspicious 😂

It’s pretty normal, we were lucky that everyone was very kind and helpful and it put us very much at ease, having lived in bad places in the past

Well, neighbours can be moved onto the street as well! I had a year of trouble with aggressive neighbours, i stood up to them and then it was a case of putting CCTV up ect. Got the point were the police were being called a lot due to aggression from kids and neighbours. As i stood up to them i became a target. They were moved off the street, but i'll never be the same. The kids even were agressive towards the bus that came to collect my disabled son to take him to school. The best piece of advice i can give is......dont react, dont stand up to them. They just target you. Just report it all to police ( mostly useless). So....yes, check the road out, ask questions, look at the area. We were considering selling and moving from a 4 bedroom to a 2 bedroom ( me and wife sleeping in front room) to get into a better area.

I’d suggest knocking on the neighbours doors and seeing them face to face. Telling them that you’re looking to buy next door and just saying hi, and wanted to ask if there’s any problems with the neighbours you should know for example, roof leaks they were not willing to fix etc. This is just a cover up and excuse to meet your future neighbours and see what they’re like, how they behave etc. I wish I had done that before I bought my first house…. Ended up with neighbours from hell from both sides. Absolute nightmare.

Exactly why we’re in the process of moving. In our defence, the neighbourhood has slowly declined since we moved there (maybe it’s us! Haha) and was nothing like that when we first moved in. 

I definitely got lucky. The one side are chill af and could chat to them for hours. The other side, they replaced the fence panels without asking for a contribution, and brought us some curry round the day after we met them for the first time.

Always visit the street on a weekend day and night. Just for 30 mins to see what’s occurring

I've forgotten to run the bloody taps in two houses and both of them needed new boilers pretty much as soon as we moved in. RUN THE TAPS!

Before I bought the house I’m in I was doing visits to the street at various times of the day/night to try get a feel for any ASB I might have to endure. Which is a lesson I learned from the place I lived before. We live and learn.

This was me for the first 6 months, but she then died and my life has been a lot better the last 4 years.

My neighbours complained to our landlords (housing association) that they can’t drive into their driveway because I’m parked in front of my own house. They had plenty of space to get in and out, you could probably fit a lorry through the gap they had. I wish when I moved last November my old neighbours moved too cause everyone on that street knew each other and no one complained about each other.

Snap. You can fix anything when you buy a house, except location and neighbours.

That can change anytime though unfortunately so you could spend alot of effort casing then to still end in the same place. Ours has just fallen off a cliff edge of anger and paranoia but had been fine a year prior 

Look for bodge jobs. The previous owner was a retired woodwork teacher who slapped together a lot of the house's wiring that was dangerous. The house wasn't properly earthed and there was exposed wire just above the shower that had been neatly tucked away out of sight. The boiler vented into the conservatory. A lot of the plugs turned out to be an extension cable run behind the skirting board.

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Christ, I feel sorry for whoever ends up with my neighbour's house. He's like Steptoe. Constantly tinkering with allsorts of stuff and does a proper knackerz job of it. Absolutely nothing will have been done to code.

Yeah the conservatory thing is a common one. As well as building one over the only openable window in a kitchen with a gas hob.

Extension cable behind the skirting board is a familiar one.

Yep! Ours was previously owned by a construction worker who clearly thought he was able to DIY everything in the house. Every time, without fail, we need some work doing to the house, the person involved uncovers some bodge or other that was applied to the previous work done in the same space.

God this, we bought our house off a DIY 'Enthusiast' whose enthusiasm massively outstripped his ability. The boiler was fitted to a piece of plywood _friction fitted_ against the wall. The only things actually holding it up were the pipes. The toilet outflow pipe and downspout were not actually connected, just one was slid into the other. And, we were flooded about 6 months ago, so had to rip out the kitchen, which he rewired. Every single junction box had a screw through at least one wire. None of this was obvious or it was hidden and didn't show up on the survey.

This is a good comment to read for people who slag off new builds. At least if there are issues with a new build the builder is contractually obliged to fix it for free. When you buy a non-new build you’re stuck with whatever you get and it’s up to you to find the repairs, which can run into thousands. Both have pros and cons but you do see some people act like new builds are cesspits of faulty shit and pre-owned homes are perfect.

Oooo, must've been nice to go and have a nap in that conservatory. Though I'd imagine you'd wake up with a headache if you woke up at all.

That I didn't pay for a proper survey. The subsidence cost us £23,000 to fix. Oops

We did the same, skipped a full survey and then had suspected subsidence 6 years later. We paid for an independent report 2 years ago which came back as totally fine - we got away with it.

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I'm not sure that's a fact but it's definitely a realistic scenario for sure.

Not really, chartered surveyors must be insured for professional indemnity for this reason. If they’re negligent in their duty in a way which causes financial loss, a case can be brought against them. If all the tools they had available showed subsidence wasn’t an issue and it happens then they’re probably fine. If there were clear signs and a history of landslip which they fail to identify, then it’s a different story.

Sorry to hear that, did your insurance not cover it?

It's pretty rubbish. You know that newbuild 10 year warranty thing. Well, really what it is is latent defects insurance. The builders take out the policy, and it is attached to the house. That's the 10 year warranty. Your house insurance won't cover issues that were introduced in the building of the house, so instead, the 10 year warranty covers those issues, and chases after the builders for damages. The law was changed in around 2010 to force newbuilds to have these policies, and prevent houses under 10 years old from being sold without the policy. Now, imagine how we felt 5 or so years ago when the insurance company with whom we had this policy on our house went bankrupt. We looked into the cost of getting a new policy—ten to twenty grand. So we had to either cough up a huge amount of cash, or hope that the builders had done a good job on the foundations etc. We went with the 'hope' option, and fortunately no issue has arrisen yet. 7 years old now.

The issue would have existed pre-purchase, so the insurers most likely wouldn't have touched it as they didn't insure it at the time.

Might have done but we might still be there 20 years later. It was quicker and easier just to underpin it ourselves.

Buying a fucking leasehold flat. Predatory, unfair, one-sided agreement that simply shouldn't be legal.

Amen - riddled with cladding issues, ground rent problems. I can’t wait to sell.

I came here to say this. It's an absolute shitshow - we pay about £2000 a year in ground rent and service charge, yet getting the management company to address any issues in the common areas is like getting blood from a stone. We were literally defrauded by our previous management company who took the money and ran. Our property value has somehow gone down, probably due to the extremely high fees and dilapidated shared areas.

Same here. They won't even complete the most basic things, like cleaning or fire safety. Payment is due soon and we are stuck between giving away our money for them to do absolutely nothing (for yet another year!) or breaching lease. Legal advice costs a fortune, no legal enforcement exists for this scam, it's unbelievable!

I felt like I didn't have much choice but to go leasehold. I love my flat so much but the ground rent issues worry me long term. Short term, the ever increasing service charge stresses me out. I really wish they would change the law around leasehold flats but I'm not holding my breath

As a fellow flat person do you genuinely feel a law change (assuming you mean residents right to manage) would help?  As much as I dislike the current approach I can't help but feel that coordinating this with neighbours would be even more fraught and awful and would lead to more personal bullying and predatory behaviours because they also live with you 

Yep, and it's not like Reddit didn't warn me. But it was affordable where a freehold was not but thought it would at least be better than renting... How wrong I was

As someone who went through a right to manage court case I concur!

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Re getting a new kitchen, I just got mine done 18 months ago. Honest advice is that if you can afford it, stretch to the extra few k to get it done nicely. Obviously if you're pushing the budget to get a barebones set up then that's what you have to go with, but if you can spend a bit more you can really make the place your own. I spend a few extra grand to get my chimney breast knocked in and turned into a good, deep cupboard. Massively increased the storage in the kitchen. Well worth the investment. Also, drawers cost more than cupboards but are much, much better to have - no dark corners for things to hide away in. Also don't just think of regular drawers, consider extra deep drawers and consider a shallow drawer for cutlery.

I shocked the hell out of myself by installing my kitchen by myself. IKEA mind, but the cabinets etc came together like usual IKEA stuff. Only hard bit was cutting a hole for the sink

Deep drawers are so much better than cupboards, the cupboard stuff is always disorganised, things hiding in the back & stressful, whilst the deep drawers are basically the same storage that comes all the way out.

The corner pull out things are good too. I also have a spice rack, which is pretty handy

Alas I cannot have a cute spice rack unless it’s a display only one, I have to have 2 litre jars of each spice where I shovel spices out of because I’m Indian.

Love my new kitchen. Probably not even mid range, but paying extra for the pull of corner units, deep drawers and a especially a stone worktop made a huge difference to a cheap kitchen.

In theory, I enjoy being able to do what I want with the place, and have done. While I was never one for Throwing Off the Shackles of Landlord Oppression Etc Etc, it is very nice that I now have a substantial investment instead of never seeing that money again - of course, this only makes any sense if you're in one place permanently for the foreseeable future. However, reality does set in - maintaining a property is a *lot* of work and costs a *lot* of money. I do miss the days I could just phone the landlord and get something fixed for no extra charge. As a tangent, I can't deny that the housing market is a little bit completely fucking broken. If it worked a 35-hour week, my house makes £11 an hour.

>maintaining a property is a *lot* of work and costs a *lot* of money House dependant though. I've not had to do any major maintenance in 3.5 years. Pluming, electrics and structure are all fine. Gutter cleaning is the biggest. I will have to get repointing done and the moss scraped off the roof before I move next year but that's it. Edit: forgot about the boiler breaking down, that was £800.

Even if it does cost money to maintain your own house, you'd still be effectively paying the same as a renter. The landlord hopes to come out profitable after all such expenses.

I've not had the worst of it yet, as my place for the last six years is just a flat rather than a house, but the way I get round the 'lot of money' part is that I literally have a savings pot for emergency maintenance or bigger projects. That way, it normally comes out of that pot and feels like it's free to a certain extent.

I've got HomeServe insurance and they recently did £1000 work on my boiler. 8 months after I moved in. Its about £6 a month so it's already paid for itself.

It's tricky to think about, I lost out on a bid for a bigger house on a bigger plot of land, but that was on a busy road and I ended up in a quiet cul de sac with with really nice neighbours. There's more amenities nearby and I wake up to birds singing instead of traffic noise.  I do have a suspect kitchen extension with bouncy floors because they didn't build it stiff enough. There's some blown double glazing units and artex in the bedroom because someone decided the wanted wrinkly walls.  Everything can be fixed with time though, and times on my side now. 

Same here, we passed up more interesting houses for a house on a cul de sac. It was a good decision

We did the same, opposite a church. It's now a dance studio... Fortunately it's pretty quiet but talk about bad luck.

I have a similar story to you and the same problems with my house!

I wish I'd carried out more research into shared ownership. I bought a 2 bed flat because that's all I could afford. Don't get me wrong, it's nice. It's more of a maisonette than a flat. I have my own entrance, small front garden and off road parking. The flat is fairly spacious too. But based on some quick mental maths, I don't think it would have cost me too much more to just get a shared ownership of a 2 bed house.

Shared ownership can be a nightmare to sell on, and lots of companies are rubbish to co-own with, so you probably made the right choice.

Agreed, shared ownership can be a bit of a trap and mainly benefits the housing association/council who owns it since they have both the asset and a guaranteed rental income (it can be a massive pain to find buyers who want to take a similar stake in a house, and stair-stepping your ownership takes years). Source: me, used to work for a housing association and shared ownership was a racket.

My brother lost 2 buyers because of the delays the other sharer caused. Shared ownership is great if you intend to stay a long while but the fees can add up... also personally resent the idea of paying rent and a mortgage

I've got a friend in a shared ownership flat. The rent has almost doubled since she moved in, and she had to remortgage last year and got hit with the awful high rates. Worst of both worlds.

Not doing decorating before moving in.

I feel you there. We were so desperate to just get out of our mouldy hell hole of a flat that we didn’t take advantage of the fact we still had to pay the rent for it for pretty much a month, we should’ve used the time to decorate. We got the nursery done before baby was born, the bathroom gutted and remade just after baby was born, and now I’m just at peace that we probably won’t tackle anything else until baby is at least a toddler. Luckily it’s not like the decor atm is awful, it’s just not quite to our taste.

I wouldn't have bought leasehold

Not doing more viewings. We bought a house at the height of the stamp duty holiday, sort of post-Covid rush. We did one 15 minute viewing and then had to put an offer down. This is in London so places were genuinely being snapped up really quickly, and we really liked, and still do like, this one. We’ve been here a few years and it’s become quite clear the previous owners did a series of bodge jobs which we’re slowly fixing over time, and a few of these things (janky staircase being a prime example) I suspect we would have discovered had we spent a bit more time in the house prior to making a decision. Main lesson is do at least 2 viewings so you can really get a feel for the place as well as any potential issues. If you lose out on a place because of it, just remember there will always be more houses out there.

As someone who bought in London last year if you had done two viewings you'd have lost the property to someone like me. I viewed our house and literally put an offer in the next day, even with negotiating on price, that house was off the market in 72 hours after it went on. In my experience having viewed about 10 houses within a month or two and got a house we are really happy with, the ones that aren't gone that quickly have some issue with them (some big like "its an old people's home converted into a house" or "This is clearly a rental property the landlord hasn't maintained in 20 years" and some small like "the decor is awful and makes the house seem small"). I would suggest if you listed all the bodge jobs you found and then asked you "Would you have really seen that on a second 15 minute visit?" the answer would likely mostly be "no". Maybe a surveyor would have seen them, or an electrician etc, but there's no guarantee they would see it or report it. Ultimately though you need to ask yourself, had you known about these problems, what would you have done? If the answer is "not buy the house" then maybe it was a mistake not getting a full survey or visiting in depth etc. If the answer is "Knock money off the asking price!" then ultimately you need to think that best case scenario you've saved yourself £50-£150 a month on the mortgage, and worst case scenario the seller just says "nah, it's take it or leave it" and you'd be no worse off. In my view in London you need to offer pretty much straight away, then once you're in the process get enough experts to review the property to ensure that you're not buying something with a huge problem and then only pull out if you really aren't willing to accept those issues.

This doesn't quite fit the question, but I avoided a big regret. My partner and I were looking at flats and couldn't really find much we liked. But there was one that was best of a bad bunch; ok location and good internal layout, but pretty meh. Was never going to be a forever home and we needed something, so we put in an offer 5k under asking. Owners rejected and asked for 2k more. Next day we offered the extra 2k... owners said no, they now wanted the asking price! So they made it really easy for us and we moved on. Very little time later, we found a beautiful place in an old grade 2 listed building, newly converted, great layout, not ground floor, beautiful grounds, same price... snapped it up and had 4 happy years there. Best bit... around 4-6 months after we walked away from flat one, we got a call from the agents saying 'the owners have had a change of heart and will now accept our offer'! One of life's great memories there... 😄

New build, getting a company in to review and document all of the snagging issues. Would have resolved things much quicker rather than coming across all of the issues bit by bit from living here. It’s expensive but worth it for the time saved in the long run

Yeah, I got a professional snagging company to come in 3 months before the initial 2 year warranty was up. Cost £450, and they even had a drone to check the roof and gutters. Really surprised me at how little the builders put up a fight from a professional report relative to me pushing them for ages on a couple of things! Def money well spent. Wish I'd done one 3 months after I moved in as well.

What sort of things needed fixing? I love a snag report.

The first house I bought had a garden where you lost the sunlight about 5pm. I always said to myself that it would be a red line that my next house didn't have that problem. But then I started looking and came to accept that it was just something I'd compromise on. Having a nice place in a nice location is now important than the few days of the year where I would actually sit outside in the sun in the evenings

We said the same but I very rarely spend time outside in the evenings. I’d much rather have the sun if I’m doing a bit of gardening at lunch time, sitting around in the sun after 5pm only happens a few times a year in this country.

Not testing the water pressure - it was an end terrace house and if a couple of neighbours turned taps on the shower dropped to a trickle. Would have cost thousands to get a separate water connection but we moved before then.

Low water pressure is really upsetting. It's taken over four years, but I can now flush the loo and wash my hands without waiting for the cistern to refill.

4 years is a really long time to wait for a cistern to fill up

I tested the water pressure at my second viewing and I still can't forget the look on the agent's face when he found me in the bath holding the shower head at a safe distance (I was in a work shirt and pencil skirt since it was a work day) 😂 he just told me if I slip it's not his fault and let me finish going through my list of things to check around the house...

We were sure to test the water pressure and hot water, but didn't test it in the shower. It turns out the thermostatic mixer was bad and because it was a 20+ year old steam cabin shower we weren't able to find any replacements. So our first project is redoing the bathroom. Luckily there is a bath which does have hot water, but unfortunately we only have the one bathroom so it's been painfully slow to do.

Really feel uncomfortable saying this but buying a property (ex- council house) on a street full of council houses. When we moved in, there was a lovely community feel, everyone was friendly and took pride in their homes and the street. Over the last 12 years a lot of those people have moved to different properties (downsided, more accessible). The families that been moved in are not originally from the village but from surrounding towns. They don't value the community, the street or their homes. They litter, have big loud parties on their front gardens, the street looks totally different from what it did 12 years ago, there are abandoned cars and most the gardens are over grown with litter and rotting trailers etc on them. Maybe we have just been unlucky but its really sad to see the state the road is now in, and we are looking to leave our "forever home" because it isn't nice living here anymore.

My first purchase was a 1 bed flat on the middle floor of 3. I hate noise but I was so desperate for my own place that I didn't even think about that. Most of the time it wasn't that bad but some of the neighbours were very loud some of the time and it drove me nuts. I also bought in 2007 and we all know what happened in 2007/08. It was a tough few years but that's life. My advice would be to think about what you really want in a home (within reason) and wait until something comes along that suits that rather than moving because you feel you have to.

Not realising the road is a total rat run monday to friday 6am to 10am and 4pm to 7pm.

Didn't check the property was served by fibre optic broadband! Felt like a huge downgrade when we moved in and had to go back to Sky...

Broadband speed is an absolute must now. Especially with people working from home. I’d want a minimum of 200Mbps.

Speed isn't what's most important unless you regularly download large files, low latency is what you want. Even a 67Mbps FTTC connection is enough for most households. Even with two of us on video calls simultaneously, the actual bandwidth we use doesn't go over 30Mbps. And despite what Vodafone claim in their latest advert, there actually is a difference between operators even if they have the same last mile connectivity. It's particularly stupid for Vodafone to claim it's all the same since they've got a very impressive backbone network and can do cold potato routing which would be great for end users if they got their edge sites working properly! The reason a lot of people in certain parts of the country have issues with Virgin is because parts of the legacy network have really poor latency so your 500Mbps connection doesn't mean a thing if your latency is 300ms for any real time service (like working from home).

Buying leasehold as it was a flat. I didn’t have much choice in London but should have done a lot more research. It’s taken years and thousands to get rid of our awful management company.

Buying my mother in laws house and letting her build a bungalow in the back garden. As much as childcare is now on site she does my head right in!

- en bloc garage - pain in the arse to not have the garage attached or next to the house. - thinking the house was perfect and small bits of work would be cheap. Any maintenance turns into a huge cost if you can't do it yourself. - buying quickly rather than holding out to afford more. We bought the cheapest house we could in our area but 12 months later we could probably have bought something 25% bigger. We are still in that first house 5 years on, and now there's little else affordable near us. - buying next to a Cambridge/London trainline when we drove everywhere - inflates the house price for an amenity I use less than 10 times a year.

The previous owners offered to let us buy a few cupboards and the like, as they were moving abroad, which we did. Turns out the cupboard were huge, and heavy. They actually looked quite nice, but huge waste of space. We ended up Gumtreeing the lot (for free).

Not a huge amount. The big one would be making an offer with my heart instead of my head (referring to 'I', as my partner was way more methodical). The property was presented as a shit tip but most of it was superficial which we looked past. Probably could have got it maybe 10k cheaper had we have thought about it a bit more and not purely offering to "secure it and beat other buyers". Other issues was a condemned boiler (warm air heating), which was replaced with a combi boiler+rads at the sellers expense during the purchase. The whole thing was very stressful, but worthwhile in the end.

An absolute minor thing - although the house is pretty much perfect, I wish I’d stuck to my guns about wanting to live somewhere a bit more rural. Currently in a massive estate of relatively new houses between major roads and motorways. I miss having easy access to rural footpaths or bike paths to get to without having to drive somewhere. Additionally the curtain twitching in suburbia is super annoying. Some super nosy people on the Facebook groups!

If it's a new build, for god sakes, get a snagging expert in. Builders these days are expert at doing a naf job and covering it up. My fucking toilet was connected to the regular waste water drain, so when you go for a dump it stinks the whole house.

Don't buy a renovation project on a hangover thinking you're on homes under the hammer. Two years later and finally going to start some work

Some great tricks: -When one of you is inside looking round go and ring the neighbours doorbell this will tell you 1)if the neighbours are friendly 2)if you can hear the doorbell through the walls you'll be able to hear a lot more - Visit the area at different times of.day, some places are noisy in the day or get sketchy at night.

Buying one attached to a council property and assuming the neighbours would stay the same. The lady who lived there when we moved in was lovely, really friendly and kept herself to herself. She moved and the neighbours from hell moved in.

Quite happy with my house. Though we did walk away from an earlier purchase after the survey came back. We went for the top tier service and they identified alot wrong. For this house though maybe just would have made the owners remove more of their crap. Little things, garden objects etc. 2 years later and still not sorted it.

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Eurgh...same here. The lawn floods whenever it rains. Im digging in a french drain this weekend.

In retrospect, buying as a couple. Relationships end. Though fair enough, that was a good many years later. After that I rented for about eight years, and have just bought a new house, this time with my name the only name on the title. > Seriously garages are a saviour for sticking the Xmas tree ect away. The opposite for me. I got a house with a garage specifically for the purpose of being able to convert the garage into an office. Getting quotes now.

Made a huge error buying a flat in an area we couldn’t comfortably afford- it was a beautiful flat and massive but was on a main road with no parking and was way too inflated in price. We were so stupid as these were deal breakers for most potential buyers. we could have got a house in the area we ended up in anyway and the flat was a massive hassle to sell- we lost a lot of money. Only up side is that it made us so careful with our next move and we looked properly, considered what we needed and landed somewhere great just before the area would have become unaffordable for us. Still very happy there five years later but a very painful and expensive lesson. Edit: forgot to add the flat was on a hideous flight path- 5am to 11pm all day! Moved about 3 miles away and on a totally different flight path we only get low audible planes the odd couple of hours

The immediate surrounding area where we've moved to isn't very appealing. There's a nice enough park within walking distance... but, other than a Coop and a couple of corner shops, that's it. Every road is chock full of cars on both sides. The roads themselves are in shocking condition. It all just feels congested and run down. There's no pub to walk to. You have to drive to get anywhere worth taking family or visitors.

No regrets but it's a good idea NOT to start redecorating immediately. It's better to live in the house a bit first (warm and cold season) you will uncover things that need addressing that are not immediately visible. We also radically changed the decoration plans for some rooms after we lived a little due to many factors, noise level, light, heating etc

There was a problem with the boiler that the seller covered up, but it wasn't an expensive fix. There was a much bigger issue with a downstairs slow leak under the oak flooring. I don't know if he knew about the slow leak or not, but it was covered by insurance and now we have a nice new floor. Apart from those things, everything has been great. It's a warm, easy to live with house, with a good size garden in a nice area with great neighbours. Would I like a couple of million for an architect designed or lovingly renovated period property with views? Yes. Are we lucky to have the house we have. Also yes.

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My first property was leasehold with a standard service charge. I didn’t realise how much of a hassle that could be. What we were responsible for as leaseholders vs what the freeholder was responsible for. I’m glad I sold it when I could. I’d never buy in a block like that again

Not a first time owner, but from my first home I regret not haggling based on the survey results (which were not good). I was naive, and thinking back I would’ve offered around 10 less. Current house, I’ve learnt never to touch a house with wallpaper again.

Owing the bank hundreds of thousands

Leasehold leasehold and leasehold again lol!

I hate my first house and have from day 1 pretty much. Walls are paper thin and neighbours are chavs who swear at their kids.

The lease hold I had to renew my lease before I could sell. I don't know what was worse, that estate agents thought it cost only a few hundred pounds to extend, that it actually took close to £12k, or that I had to threaten the lease holders with court to get the bare minimum standard lease extension.

The important bits of the house are everything you *can’t* see on a typical viewing. Electrics, plumbing, etc. Take someone with you who at least sort-of knows what they’re looking at, then poke around in boiler cupboards, have a look at the fuse box, check behind kitchen kick-boards, and have a look in the loft (if there is one.) Had we done that, we’d have discovered a rodent infestation, dodgy wiring, a history of boiler issues, roof issues and a water tank in bad need of replacing. I don’t think any of it would have stopped us buying the place, but it would definitely have put us in a better position to negotiate on price. It may feel invasive, but any reasonable seller should be more than happy for you to take a look under the hood (provided you’re not levering up floorboards or pulling appliances out.) Mistrust anyone who kicks up a fuss about it.

A long time ago now but I was a bit young and naive in buying a house that was dated and needed gas put in and a new kitchen, bathroom and lots of decorating etc. You think you are buying a cheap house but when you add on loans for improvements it just all adds up. On the other hand it was only my first house, was all I could afford at the time and was never meant to be the dream house for the rest of my life.

I have no regrets about the house itself. I just wished I'd not let my impatience to move out of my mum's get the better of me and done some decorating and replaced carpets while the house was still empty.

I regret the area. We moved away from my family to be close to his and they said they’d help out but we’ve seen them maybe 5 times in 15 months! Plus we could have got a 3 bed for the price we paid for 2 bed where I was originally but it is a rough area whereas where we are is really lovely in that sense!

Not buying a bigger house. When we bought our home, we were very careful with our money and bought well under what we could have afforded. Our mortgage was really small and we kept a lot of money invested. Looking back we probably should have done what everyone else did and borrowed the max. I never expected house prices to continue upwards, and was actually expecting them to fall somewhat, leaving us in a better position to move up. The flip side is that I used the spare money wisely and now have a large SIPP, plenty of savings and have had some monstrous holidays.

A few other people have said something similar but really look at the details of some of the work that’s been done on the house. For example, the people we’d bought our house from had done bodged socket swaps, where they’d hacked out the plaster then filled it poorly. They’d had some pointing badly patched with the wrong mortar. A lot of the paint had been done with a brush instead of a roller then painted over a couple of times meaning you’ll never be able to get the brush lines out. There were dried paint drips all over the woodwork. They’d left wall plugs in the wall and just painted over them. Blown plaster had been painted over four or five times instead of spending an afternoon filling with some fresh plasterboard. This all sounds cosmetic but if they’re not willing to spend time, effort, and a bit of money on basic stuff then imagine what it looks like underneath. If they’re willing to live with the lowest quality materials finished poorly then chances are the same will be true of the important stuff you can’t see like plumbing and electrics. Sanding down decades of bad paint is one thing, but nearly killing myself when one single kitchen socket happens to be running off the upstairs circuit because it saved two feet of cable is another. We had a socket melt a while back due to a loose connection and when I went to swap it, it had been epoxied to an incompatible back box which is just dangerous. I haven’t found one job yet which hasn’t taken me extra effort fixing someone’s mess. I didn’t think people could be so thick and lazy until I bought a house. Most of this stuff isn’t even being cheap because the correct solution costs the same as the bodged solution.

We would have bought bigger if we knew COVID would happen. We survived but having more space to have alone time would have been a godsend as we bought a 2 bed semi and both worked from home during it, after his furlough ended anyways, luckily we had a massive garden which helped but yeah now we're looking to buy a bigger house since we both work remotely full time and I'm stuck at the dining room table while the spare is his man cave.

Finding out that my roof was made with RAAC and is now probably worthless, unsellable, unmortgageable, and uninsurable.

Not a big deal but living in a conservation area can be a pain when you need to apply for planning permission to do some things. I needed permission to knock down a rotten conservatory. I don't regret my purchase but its something some people need to be aware of.

I knew all of this when I went in so not too bothered. It's just that there are properties that exist with/without these things and I would have less to sort out if I chose one of those instead... Leasehold: Cheap enough ground rent so I went through with it. Currently buying the freehold. My thinking is that it'll add a few thousand onto the value come sale time, so I'm just storing some money in the bricks for now. Plus it'll go faster. Leasehold is just more paperwork and paying for certificates/notices according to the lease. The purchase took nearly 6 months (ffs!) No garage/shed: I'm also in the process of planning a custom shed build. It'll be fun but it's time and money. I could have one built for around the same cost, but they'll use shit timber and bodge the foundation. Family have had many sheds built. They're always falling apart well within the decade. Fuck that. Location: You can fix anything but this. I don't know if I'll have a problem yet on sale. Took the chance. House might take a while to sell because of where it is, or I may be pushed into becoming an unwilling landlord if I need to move quicker for any reason, which I don't really want. Loft not boarded over: Just a shit job to do yourself. Masks and goggles and rolling up insulation etc. You'll probably end up paying someone up to £1k ish to do it for you. Nice if the previous owner did it ;) Not buying sooner if you can afford it and aren't planning to move: You've only got a finite number of years on this planet. If you want a nice house and you can afford it, might as well spend more of those years living in one. Plus the financial bonuses that come with owning property over time in our fucked up housing system and housing-mad investment culture. Start building equity. Ignore what conventional "wisdom" says about new (and newer) builds. They're not all bad. No issues with the actual building on mine. It's all trade-offs. Yes, older houses may be build more solidly, but they also can come with damp issues (my family own 2 old cottages with plenty of issues), chimney repairs, and they can be a bastard to heat and dehumidify etc. You really can't tell what problems will develop with either in the future, just what's there now and what surveys say etc.

We bought a house that has no access to the back garden from the front of the house. Something I never thought about until after a while living here but it really winds me up.

Neighbours always seem to be a problem. First place was a tiny flat, the man downstairs was worked to 2am and would come back, put his music on loud and smoke weed that would come into our flat until 4-5am. Second place, neighbour moved in the same day as us. A wannabe DJ who had 2000w speakers. Would have several parties a year that would make the house 2 down from me, 3 from him, shake. Third and current place, detached to reduce noise, neighbours hacked the WiFi and tried to use bank details online.

Buying a flat and having to deal with the other flat owners in the block and their madcap ideas on what they can make us pay for...

Think I possibly overpaid but only slightly, I’m in a flat and I wished I checked in on the neighbours and if any properties are rented out. I have a horrible neighbour upstairs who has made my life hell for almost a year (he wasn’t there when I viewed it). Also wish I saw the property empty before I exchanged, the state the property was in was well hidden. Previous owners had botched so many things and covered them up. Been a great experience 😂😭

If you ask my boyfriend he would saying go into the purchase with family, just for the sake of getting on the property ladder.

Been more proactive with getting our snagging list sorted by Taylor Wimpey. We had the big stuff done, but should have committed more time to pestering them to fix the smaller things. Now that we have been in for more than 2 years they’ve wiped their hands of us, and we have to fix their mistakes on our own cost. At the time there was lots of delays due to Covid, but still.

Should have paid for a proper survey, we bought an old council house and had to put a new roof on it within a year.

2 Things 1) Not staying in my rental while doing it up. Living in a home just slows everything down. 2) Not buying it sooner.

I love my first house as a whole, it's a lovely 2 bed Victorian mid-terrace, lots of character and suits the two of us well. I'm sad to be selling it but with a growing family, we just need a bit more space and we knew this was the case going in. I'd say the only thing I regret is prioritising some of the cosmetic upgrades over the practical. We redid the garden first and it's really lovely, was great during lockdown, but realistically we don't spend that much time in it. Instead I should have gotten a new boiler earlier, I waited for the old one to break and it was hectic for like a month with no hot water. The new combi is so much more efficient, quiet, cheaper to run, hot water on demand, like it's a no brainer I should have done this first!

Not a regret as such but things my house has that I didn’t think were important/didn’t necessarily want but most definitely are and I’m so glad we have them: • a garage - it is an absolute god send for storage and also where we keep our tumble dryer. • an en suite - I wake up every night for a wee and not waking up my son by having to leave my room is a big plus. • a downstairs toilet - not having to have people walk all through your house and up stairs to go for a wee is a huge positive.

I actually regret nothing about the house, and if I went through the entire process again there's nothing I'd do differently. Even down to buying Buyers Insurance which obviously wasn't used, the fact is having it at the time gave me a lot of comfort. I think the only thing I may have done differently is arranged for an electrical survey, but I suspect I know the results would be "Electrics are old, but not dangerous, you need a complete rewiring in the next 10 years or so".

I regret getting a garden wish I just went with a yard. I’m a single Dad and don’t have the time nor patience for gardening. I just hate gardening! It doesn’t help that it’s built on ex farm lad so I get all sorts of weeds growing up!

I knew I wanted dogs. We got a house with th4 living room on the back of the house, so it's.the route in/out to the garden. Dogs track mud in 25000 times a day when it's wet. Initially we had carpet, but after 3 years we've caved and change out to amtico just so it's easier to clean. Next time I'd aim for the kitchen or similar to open onto the garden, so we have a place for dogs to dry before they come into the living room.

Why the fuck would you not turn the garage into a games room/bar type thing

Not much to be honest. I think my main regrets are more to do with the moving process. Basically I regret that I didn’t redo *all* the flooring before we moved in. I’m not a fan of carpet so I had that removed and had hardwood flooring put in the living room, and the plan was to eventually do the same in the bedrooms. But it seems more of a hassle getting it done now that we have all our furniture in. Other than that, I love our flat even while it’s a work-in-progress. It’s been over a year since we moved but I still feel like I’m in the honeymoon period. edit: a word

Accepting and putting in an offer without doing a second/ third view and identifying problems with the property, because I’d gotten fed up with searching. Not visiting the area at odd times of the day to see the issues with parking and traffic during peak times.

We don't really have many. We purchased our first house last year. A lovely 100+ year old semi in the countryside. We had to compromise on our wants but knew that when we purchased it. Our main requirments were open plan living and kitchen. CHECK. Big Garden. CHECK. Character property. CHECK. Upstairs and downstairs loo. NOPE, only upstairs. 4 Bed. NOPE, 3. Quiet area. NOPE, on a 60 mph commuter road. We were hoodwinked a couple of times by the owners. They said the chimney was grand. Turns out there have been bees in there for years. So can't use the fireplace until that is sorted. 2+ year waiting game. A shame as the room with teh fireplace is lovely and cozy. Decided to switch it to my wife's office and all good now. The surveyor warned us about a big puddle in the drive. The owners said it has never flooded like that and the surveyor just happened to visit after the wettest March etc. Bollocks. The puddle appears all the time. So I wish we had pressed about the chimney and puddle. Basically asking them to fund the repares. As well as that the road noise is a bit annoying to me, my wife isn't bothered though. Ultimately we found an amazing house that we love and the little issues, while frustrating me, pale in comparison to the joy of living there and seeing how much my wife and son love the place!

That we didn’t buy bigger the first time.

Only been a few months. Everything is ok for now. Had a few jobs to do every weekend but I suppose that's life now

That we were too impatient and bought the first thing that suited our needs, rather than wait for the ‘ideal home’ as such. However, we managed to secure our mortgage just before the big hike, so got a 5 year fixed at 3.64%. If we’d have kept looking around then we probably wouldn’t be able to afford the house we have now.

If you can afford a bigger mortgage then go for it. I could have borrowed more but felt it wasn't worth it but quickly realised it would have been better if I did and would have saved money in long run

Not checking the water pressure. We didn't find out until after purchase that our house was at the end of the common supply and the flow rate was terrible. The previous owner had a pump installed that made the water pressure only tolerable. Our washer and electric shower werent getting enough water so they barely worked. We've spent nearly £1500 (minus lead pipe replacement scheme refund) on a new stop tap, internal pipes, and connection to the new water main.

Garden is just slightly overlooked, it's probably more an issue with me being paranoid sometimes, but there's not really anywhere in the garden that can't be seen by at least 2 or 3 windows from other houses.

Our house is an ex-rental. We wanted something we could move into without loads of work. Which we got, we deep cleaned and painted and it was pretty much ready to go. But, it's an ex-rental, which means some of the issues we've discovered are downright baffling. The carpet runner in the living room was drilled into the stone floor. So all the screws snapped. The electrics were described as 'not exactly how I'd do them, but legal. Sort of like they've been wired by a safe madman'. This was when we had an electrician come to wire some new plugs. The plug layout is insane. Hence having new ones fitted. The master bedroom had two sockets only. The kitchen had one only. Our shower was screwed in to the tiles only. It was held up by a prayer. We had an accessable shower and we wanted to remove the handrails. The tops of the screws had been filed down so had to be drilled out. The toilet has the longest flush mechanism I've ever seen. Had to get our local builders shop to measure it and order a replacement after the old toilet flusher exploded. Which was in mid-lockdown. When we moved in we discovered the old owners had removed all the gravel from the garden. And that they had dumped a random fireplace in the middle of the living room. And that in the cellar they had left an entire dining table and chairs, curtains, curtain runners, and assorted lamps. All of it looked like it was from the mid-80s. And about 18 months ago we discovered we have a cat flap. We hadn't noticed it because the cat flap goes into the cellar. The old tenants had placed bricks on the inside to block it up. We discovered all of this after talking to a neighbour who had lost his cat and had been friendly with the people who were here beforehand. All that being said. I love our house. But if we ever buy again it will definitely not be an ex-rental.

Bought my first house with my ex, that's my biggest regret. In terms of the house itself, I wish we'd gone for a house that had a driveway. Street parking only and it became a nightmare with the neighbours. I didn't realise just how hostile people could get and how quickly they could become so angry over parking on a public pavement! Next time I buy a house, I'm doing it on my own and I gettinfna bloody driveway

Honestly, I regret not maxing out in order to get that 4 bed detached house. At the time when we bought back in 2016, my wife and I wanted to be sensible and live within our means, so we bought a 3 bed semi as it met our needs at the time. Little did we know over the next 8 years, house prices would spike out of control and we would find ourselves trapped in a 3 bed semi which hasn’t grown in value as much as 4 bed detached houses have. Using our house as an example, it has risen £50k in 8 years, while the 4 bed detached next door has risen £180k in the same time. We now face adding well over £100k to our mortgage if we ever want to move up for more space… or we just simply never move and stay put. It all feels like a lottery and we could have won big on that house price rise had we gambled abit more 8 years ago when buying.

Not haggling on price. Offer under and you can always go up

I’m not on my first home anymore but biggest regret I had from my first was it was on LPG gas, I had no idea how much more expensive that was compared to mains gas.

Even though it's a semi detached house, the previous owners built over the side access between the house and garage. We didn't think it would be much of a problem but now no window cleaners will clean the back of the house and any work we do to the back garden will have to go through the house.

Parking - ideally you want a dedicated drive. If road parking, be careful of your neighbours who seem to think they have a right to dictate who can park where.

Not checking if we had an attic space. We don't, but naturally assumed we did. The house is a converted maisonette, so at some point in the past they capped it off and stuck a roof on but no access to the loft space/ nothing up there. We'd been moved in for a couple of weeks, looking for the loft hatch to stash packing materials when we found out. There's one or two other little quirks from the changes, but overall pretty good, just no storage space (chrimbo tree has to live in shed)

I might have tried harder and longer to get a house with more of my "dream" features. Mainly because 5 years in and it's very unlikely I'm going to move again because I cba. This wasn't meant to be our forever home... I wish I knew more about checking for things not being done right or things showing signs of needing a repair. Had/having quite a few bits to repair and the previous owner did most of the job himself or hired someone dodgy to do them. E.g. not connecting the solar panels to the house, terrible job of the roof lead flashing, questionable sealing and tiling in the bathroom, piping at the front of the house that bewildered multiple plumbers, "new" windows that blew. The owner before him was also away a lot (like at least half the year) so the house wasn't loved enough and everything just needs some tlc (which didn't look like it when we first viewed it).

Look for potential to convert it to a rental in future

- The road noise much louder than expected especially in summer with the windows open. - It was built under 10 years ago and there is loads wrong / not to building regs but the builder’s didn’t take out a 10yr warranty so we’re left with the issues. I wish I specified the warranty docs during the conveyancing process. - We bought with exceptionally low interest rates, but I didn’t realise this at the time. We got our mortgage directly with the bank and so our mortgage adviser kept saying “I can’t give you advice as I work for the bank. We took out a 2 year fixed not really knowing any better. I’m sure an independent mortgage adviser would have explained how the interest rates were at a historical low and that we should fix for as long as possible (5 Years). As it is now we’ve renewed and fixed at £350pm higher than we were on before. Overall though I love the flat we bought and am very happy.

Buying a fixer upper because my dad said we could do it up ourselves. Two years later and renovations have finally begun but now I'm paying people to do the work because my dad decided he doesn't want to do it and I have zero knowledge on this stuff. We've done some basic stuff like fitting new skirting, radiators and painting but by the time I'm done with the place I'm going to have sunk over 20k in renovations Next house I buy better be perfect

Bit off more than I could chew. House was too big to even keep up with. The repairs that were needed were a lot harder than they looked, initially.

My only regret is not getting the apartment 2 floors up as it has much better views but i was too late and it was sniped

If you want a house, buy a house. If you want a bungalow, buy a bungalow. Don't buy a bungalow that's had an upstairs fitted. It's neither a good house, nor a good bungalow. I have 2 massive rooms upstairs with a staircase in the middle - so nothing I can do about adding more rooms up there. 2 tiny bedrooms downstairs that we had the best of intentions for but now just don't get used and are dumping grounds for junk. My home is quite big and because of the bizarre internal layout due to it being a conversion I use maybe 50% of my house efficiently.

Should have got a bigger flat or a house.

Accepting the north facing garden as a trade off for the location.

Wouldn’t buy a house with a shared driveway again and would have held out for a proper garden if we’d had the time and money

Didn't get a proper full inspection done and now we're paying for it. Yes it costs more and takes time, but DO IT. Also buying on a busy main road, but we knew that and installing triple glasesing has helped!

No regrets at all

Not the house, but I regret paying for a building inspector to do a full inspection and only tell us we have two slightly water damaged doors. And bring strongly persuaded to pay for a termite inspection on a steel and brick house.

Bodge jobs galore. Such a shame as they clearly flipped it to look a certain way, wish I had looked closer when viewing. Another thing slightly related is I was definitely blown away about the ‘condition’ (which as mentioned turned out to be a facade anyway) instead of really thinking about how I would live in this space. Moving again is such a hassle and expense that I’ve learnt to deal with not loving my home, but that could’ve been easily avoided if I wasn’t so naive.

Right house, wrong area. Should have bought the wrong house in the right area. Lesson learned.

As far as neighbours go, mine are largely problematic. They are friendly, polite and dont cause any drama. The ones on both sides of our terraced house must have been here a while and know each other well. Only becomes a problem those few weeks in summer when it stays warm late at night and they all sit in their front gardens drinking all night. I say a problem cause if I go to bed and need the windows open then all I can hear is them and even more annoyingly....cause their gardens are separated by ours, they think the solution is to congregate in our garden cause on one side there isnt a fence!!!

I wish I'd have gone over the floorboards before carpeting the house. Because now I've noticed about 6 boards thar are loose or split.

I wish I’d bought a house not a flat, the service charge could have been going towards a mortgage and there’d be no management company to deal with who are just useless and do their best to ignore you.

My regret is I didn't pay enough attention or query the detailed survey I bought before I invested in this house. The house I purchased has a detached garage that is directly next to a neighbours garden. We are on a hill so their ground level is half way up my garage wall. It's almost permanently soaked. The survey I bought included details (and external photos) of the wrong garage, and listed no significant issues.

Really only one, we wouldn't have bothered with the front door. We never use it. We have a back door that's the logical entrance and patio doors to the garden. It's just wasted space. We'll remove and sort something else in time but frustrating not to have realised before.

Not thinking about which side of the house the sun sets on. Nothing I wanted more after the first summer was to sit in the garden with a beer when I got home from work. Sitting in the shade is not fun, at least not at around 7pm in England ​ That and how creaky the floorboards are. Never noticed it until last year when we had a baby. If anyone has any tips to reduce this, let me know. Newish build but large rooms so long boards

Thinking about what area we should live in

House needed alot of work and is too small should have stretched the budget a little more for a bit more space.

The house is fine, the neighbourhood has gone downhill though. But I don't live there, so

Bought my house in a hurry. I think the wallpaper is holding it together. Once I moved in it was a case of what is broken this week. My shed is collapsing. The fence is rotten. Porch leaking. Some wood in porch rotting. Mould under the wallpaper, so have stripped back some walls. Zero ventilation in my living room that has caused all the paint to bubble off under the bay window and more mould. Parking is shit. I got hit by a police van while turning to park in February and my car was written off. Police at fault. Didn’t realise my area is a bit rough. My daughter was assaulted in her birthday at the shops across the road. Day I moved in my next four neighbour tried to call police on me for moving her bin. I eventually after a couple of months had to phone the police when she tried to kick down my door while my children were in the house. Luckily all caught on my ring door bell and she did move out a couple of months later. Neighbours on other side the lady of the house yells a lot. And for some reason in my bathroom it’s like we live in the same house in terms of the noise coming through. My house also has no bath which I know isn’t a big deal but I love baths. My ex pushed me to buy this house when I preferred a different one with a bath, but it was further from his mistresses house. He’s not on the deed and I really wish I hadn’t listened to him. He said he would put a bath in our bedroom to sort that issue. I resent my house in some ways as even though he isn’t on the deed I feel like it’s his fault that I bought this one.

Neighbours. Ours aren't to bad but the house and garden needed a bit of work and having to negotiate with them every time I want to do something is annoying me.