Too open downstairs. £300k to sit in the same room as my washing machine, no thanks. Photos seem very careful not to show the stairs too, are they straight out of the dining room?

Not knocking it too much, it’s a nicely done up house (though it needs a dose of colour to put some soul back in). I guess if it’s only a two bedder you’re less likely to have folk running up and down the stairs while others are having a country supper with friends form town, or Fortnite on full blast competing with 1400 spin speed and someone trying to revise for exams.

Obligatory, £300k will buy my whole street and we could be neighbours comment:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-65893687.html

If it cheers you up , grandmother in law sold up to go into care home, prefab and paddocks very near M1 and 25. Sealed bids, the winner wrote a long handwritten letter about how they loved the property wanted to raise their kids there, blah, blah and then overbid by about 200k.

To all those pointing out what £300k will buy in your part of the world, also bear in mind this is one of the cheap to middling parts of Bristol!

5K is irrelevant and a less than a 2%, the real question is if the house is really what you want and are you using the over paying reason to tell you that it isn’t?

You have been looking for a while. You have found the house you want. The amount over the asking seems reasonable for your area, if not elsewhere. A few local stw’ers are ready to show you the trails and pubs. I’m not sure what you are hesitating about. Get on with it.

seems BS5 is a far more STW place than i imagined 😉

I live on the opposite side of the park. Echo the Dark Horse comments – 2nd best pub in bristol. Church Rd definitely getting better and better, been in the area 4 yrs and have noticed an obvious improvement. i don’t think you’ll have paid massively over the odds…

Does St Georges park still have the flowy skatepark? Worth every penny then 😀

Nice to hear St George is an up and coming area.

When I was a yoot, it was the sort of place you locked your car doors as you drove through it , hopefully without having to stop at the lights 😉

Zero sympathy or advice; i’d say cougar nails it though tbh.

Thanks everyone for all the advice! Very helpful. 🙂

I think you’re right, there is nothing major to worry about. I also suspect it was slightly undervalued, in order to generate a lot of interest/bidding war.  Will be able to afford the mortgage notwithstanding the survey result, as we have a big deposit.

On the garden point – it’s only a 3 minute walk to the best park in Bristol IMO, so that makes up for it!

Not decided on kids yet. But if we do have them, it won’t be for 2-3 years (I’m 35, and other half is 28) and hopefully a loft conversion is possible, making it a big 3-bed then.

Lastly – I can’t believe how many STW people live around the area! Cheers for the shout-outs, and would be keen for drinks at the Dark Horse and to check out the local riding.

Glad you’re feeling happier about it!

Depending on how long you’ve been looking, there’s a small slice of the purchase price you can put against not having to carry on bloody house hunting!

You paid a very good price for a lovely house in absolutely pristine order. You won’t need to spend anything on it at all. By contrast you could have paid £200 or less for a shabby wreck like we did and spent £100,000 just getting it into a saleable liveable condition.

don’t feel hard done by – you could pay double that for a nice condition 2 bed cottage near here, and its not anywhere particularly near jobs..

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-53274711.html

I think it sounds like you’ve made peace with yourself OP, but I’ll stick my oar in anyhow.

I think you’re fine, we recently sold a place a couple of roads along which was nice but not so brand spanking inside as that looks. Though it amazing how good the photographers can make a place appear. Anyhow, ours was similar, bigger garden but not such a whacking great extension. Put it up for 10k less than that one, got 15k less than you paid in the end. I think you’re pretty bob on to be honest.

St.George is mint, you’ll love it. If you do see it through tap up Ross of ShutupandRide, based in Dropouts cycle club. Top bloke for mtb tinkering

I too ended up with an open house style viewing that then went to best and final offers (all but one couple that viewed it offered at least the asking price). Ended up selling for over £250k for a 1 bed flat in the Cotham area of Bristol that I bought (100% my own money) when doing my PhD.

There was less than £10k between all bidders on the final offers with less than £5k between the top 2 so not a lot. they were the first people to get their initial offers in and seemed the most promising buyers in the best and final as well as being slightly higher than the next ones down so they got theirs accepted. As it turns out the completion did drag on a lot longer than I had hoped as they made a mistake on their mortgage application which did cause some tension as their solicitor was not communicating delays but all went through in the end.

Did I feel that they overpaid?

On one hand no, they got a very nice flat in a rising market (was worth £10-20k more by the time we completed) and they didnt outbid the next ones down by much at all really. Not enough of a difference for me to not give it to someone else if I felt they were in a better position but these buyers were lovely and really loved the flat and it just made the decision very easy.

On the other hand yes, but that is my feeling about the property market in general and I felt guilty that someone has to spend that kind of money to get a 1 bed flat these days. I am still living in a rented house and I am building a house as I don’t want to go back into the housing market as a buyer again.

Update on this, following developments that have occurred since.

Unfortunately, despite already being in remorse for paying so much and almost pulling out as a result (but usefully thinking that all was relatively pristine), that was not to be the case.

We moved in December 2018, but soon discovered a mass of defects (both major and minor) that a) were not picked up on our homebuyers’ survey and b) we hadn’t noticed either / the sellers neglected to inform us of, but were quite clearly aware of.

Of course the homebuyers report is woefully full of caveats and generalised content.

E.g. Roof pisses in rain in numerous places, with longstanding wet rot in many batons and valley boards and requires a complete re-roof and additional flaunching/guttering work etc required + extension roof needs re-roof to remedy the various leaks there too. £7k for that. Sash windows are painted shut, save for one that has all weights and pullies broken, plenty of rot present and all rattle in the wind. So double glazing/draft proofing etc came to £5.2k. Rising damp in dining room that affects a large area, rotten sub floor throughout hallway and living room, consumer unit not earthed, no extractor fans in bathroom or kitchen, garden level 6” too high, amongst many, many other more minor issues.

Of course one has to expect some maintenance to be required, especially in an old property, but £20k worth of unexpected works has been an entirely unpleasant shock.

Expert report obtained by our solicitors (funded my legal expenses insurance) puts diminution of value at £20k, citing clear negligence / failure to meet duty of care by surveyor, although other side’s solicitors obtained an expert report, which essentially puts diminution of value at £1k, with an almost absolute denial of all points.

Currently considering the next steps, but ultimately, we have paid £325,000 (£305,000 purchase price + £20,000 of remedial works, some of which will need to wait until we save more funds) for a house that is worth £290,000 at a push. None of the remedial works are adding value, they are value-neutral essentially. This was only ever going to be a short (ish) term house, but we are effectively stuck now. Bitter lesson learned, but maybe the true lesson was to follow instinct and pull out of the purchase, or, rather than relying on a pitiful survey, full of caveats to cover the surveyor’s behind, it’s instead best to walk round with a number of builders before committing, to see what their view on problems/remedial works is. The mere thought of the sellers having received so much over asking price that they did not deserve and having avoided undertaking any of the remedial works they were well ware of, is galling.

Sorry for rant!

+1 for getting walk round with decent builder* rather than paying for building survey, but difficult to find someone you can trust and if surveyors eff up you should at least be able to claim 🙄
* or someone knowledgeable

My sympathies dvowles82. I got **** over big time on my house as well and the flat I moved out of before hand. Property and the buying process is a complete minefield TBH.

At least your house looks good, I feel like I’ve had my pants pulled down big time and my house still looks absolutely shite. 👌

Sorry to hear about the issues. Following this thread as we are renting in BS5, know the Dark Horse, Leigh Woods etc…would like to maybe buy around there sometime if it ever looks possible!

Welcome to owning an old house. 🤣

And you didn’t really overpay tbh, up here offers over generally means at least 25% above that in a good area.

My sister’s BIL paid 1.1M for a house that was OO 600k in Edinburgh.

And it needed absolutely gutted.

I don’t think you did pay £325k for a house worth £290k because (as suggested above), you’ll likely find all this kinda crap in any old house you buy. you may have overpaid a bit, but the costs would likely be there in any old gaff – just tell yourself its worth it for ‘the features’. A new roof and double glazing will certainly add a little value to the place, if not as much as your spending. It’ll also make it much easier to sell in future.

whenever I stupidly burn a large amount of cash (for example, buying a house in feb 2008, at pretty much the exact peak of the last housing boom), I console myself with the idea that, compared to my net earnings over my lifetine, its nearly always moot. Lets say your career average earnings are 30k, times a 45 year career, total you’ll earn is £1.35m. Double that if you’ve got a partner. Even if you overspent by £25k, that’s less than a percent of your lifetime worth 🙂

Those building surveys that mortgage providers insist up on should be the next “ppi” type shite to be investigated and refunded to many who stumped up for **** all.

I don’t think you did pay £325k for a house worth £290k because (as suggested above), you’ll likely find all this kinda crap in any old house you buy.

It’s a point. Until recently this end of BS5 was a bit rundown. It was working class housing in a poor area for over 100 years, and most of the houses hadn’t seen too much TLC. Most of my homeowning friends have bought here, and their woes include a chimney breast knocked out without support for the stack, a floor that was rotten and held up with car jacks, a front wall so damp it needed £10,000+ spending on it pretty much on day one… there might be a few pristine places coming on to the market but the vast majority will still need some work!

That said, hiding an actual leaking roof is an absolute shambles 🙁

Ours had a bottle of soap on the utility room sink when we looked araound but no plumbing there for the waste water, leaked down the walls from the fab glass extension, and almost burned the house down with faulty wiring which we had to replace in the bedroom lighting. The sealed-in cistern in the ultra-moderm new onsuite leaked water down the inside of the original brick wall into the kitchen and necessitated a new rebuild of the wall, dining room wall and instalation of new toilet, the other bathroom leaked out of the moderm shower and required going in throught the original 1887 lathe and plaster ceiling. that took a month of drying out with a dehumidifier and replastering a room…. I could go on.

I won’t tell you our insurance premium, you would weep. And of course we live 100m from teh Thames, so most companies won’t cover us anyway!

Victorian houses are great. The modern extensions are less great

With a very uncertain future for the UK economy, I reckon your money is safer in a house.

as others have pointed out you are kinda looking at the situation a bit skew wiff like…

Over the ownership lifetime of any house there will always be bills to pay and things to fix. Kitchens get old and dated, bathrooms go the same way – I am at that point now where both of mine need renewal, it is I grant you a massive pain in the butt to have to deal with such things early on.

The important thing to remember is you really have not lost any money, that sum only gets realised once you have sold the house and moved on and then it is usually circumstances that drive that decision rather than profit or loss (although I understand one is far more preferable than the other). Agents ‘valuations’ are their best guess at what the property is worth, the true value is what the market actually pays.

Clearly there was something that drew you to the property to start with and also motivated you to put a bid in, try not to lose sight of that when dealing with the darker points as there is nothing worse than not enjoying the house you live in.

Save up for the remedial works, look at any proceeds from the legal wrangle as ‘bonus cash’ rather than something to be relied upon and you will get through it in no time!

All sash windows in houses I lived in when growing up were pretty much exactly as you described, either painted shut or rattly, broken and propped open with books or an old ice cream tub – I assumed that was just how they worked.

My ‘mortgage required report’ was a work of fiction. I went to local pub and asked who knew a builder, bunged him 500 quid for a walk around and he saved me, seriously, 500k. I bought it but only with a massive list of stuff they couldn’t reasonably argue against.

I looked at a place up the road oo 1.25m, same builder, riding mate now, came with me and we estimated 600+ of work to do. Some guy paid 1.29 for it and I’ve now met him and he’s at least 500k in a hole to get it habitable. I hate houses.

You knocked 500k off a 1.3m house blimey that’s some negotiation.

Seriously though what needs doing to a house that’s gonna cost 500k?! Has it caught fire or fallen down?

If i was selling it and became aware of your unease id sack you off as troublemaker end of.
If you won the bidding war stand by your offer and pay the bill. Dont mess with other ppls lives.

The OP could instruct a RICS surveyor to value it and then he would know for sure what his house is worth. Would cost about £250 and them you would know for sure.

Those building surveys that mortgage providers insist up on should be the next “ppi” type shite to be investigated and refunded to many who stumped up for **** all.

I’d quite like the money back from mine. Thankfully nothing as bad as the OP but more than enough that I wouldn’t have bought this house, even at the low rate I did

Sounds like something you could beat yourself up about for years to come, or make the most of it, adjust the plan slightly to enable you to ride out any sense of negative equity and enjoy living in Brizzle in the meantime.

Life is short, little is certain, money is temporary.

We bought our house in Southville (one of the earlier up-and-coming areas of Bristol) in 2010, for £310k. At the time, it felt like a huge amount and of course it came with Victorian running costs. As has been said, these inner urban formerly working class houses often haven’t been well maintained.

If you like the house and the area, then forget the numbers once you’ve bought it. It’s only worth a certain value on the day you sell it and, so long as your next house is more expensive, it arguably helps to have price falls (as the cash gap closes). It should only be a concern if you plan to cash out of property soon altogether.

Thanks all.

It’s the deviousness on the part of the sellers that has really made it hard to swallow. E.g. We move in and there’s a handwritten note that said ”when we were moving our stuff out the loft, we noticed some damp patches. You may want to look at that.” – i.e. pleading ignorance, but when we went up there, it was pissing in rain in several areas, there was (old, water stained) cardboard laid to catch leaks, old gaffa tape at base of chimney breast, mastic on areas of the roof felt to try and stave off leaks.

And…the survey didn’t comment on the front valleys where it’s worst, as it was (deliberately) piled high full of stuff (placed there by the sellers to cover up the leaks and rot). So of course both the surveyor has a get out clause (not being able to move stored effects), and the sellers can plead ignorance.

It’s the same theme for most of other defects, covered up with paint/furniture/caveats, lies. E.g. ”Ah, we don’t bother using the dishwasher” – we move in, and it simply doesn’t work!

As above though, just one of those incredibly expensive, frustrating problems one has to learn and grow from: 1. Don’t get a survey, 2. Walk around with builders and get their opinion, 3. Don’t trust sellers – satisfy yourself with your own evidence.

The above said, the latter posts above are right – not the way to look at things, and just best to get on with enjoying living there and not worrying too much about the future.

Anyone that’s bought a house in the last 10 years has probably over-paid, once the economy tanks post-Brexit, inflation rises and the house market collapses…

The standard survey exists to benefit the bank not the purchaser and cannot be relied on. The bank wants to check you aren’t committing fraud by getting a mortgage to purchase a house that is vastly overvalued or buying a house that is about to fall down. They know all houses need money spent on them, so they don’t care about it needing 30% of the purchase price to make it ‘nice’, which is why their terms and conditions exclude so much.

The bank surveyor for our house didn’t even step foot inside the house, they just looked outside!

On the plus side, they only way you can ensure a trouble free experience is to buy a new house with a warranty, but this has it’s own drawbacks. Good luck with your claim!

If it can be extended into the loft, and you plan to do this I wouldnt regret it. I did the same once, but not by as much.

If you are going to leave it as is, and it is not a long term home, have another think.

Anyone that’s bought a house in the last 10 years has probably over-paid, once the economy tanks post-Brexit, inflation rises and the house market collapses…

while that may come to fruition- you cant live in the bank with your money (which will also be tanking when inflation rises – along with rent rises because of all of the above)

I know where id rather be.

We are about to put my wife’s house on the market, we’ve told the estate agent of all the known issues (basically everything bar the roof, walls and floors need replacing) but are reliant on the estate agent passing that information on 🤔

It’s a bit gutting now, but in the scheme of things, if you’re planning to make it a home, and it’s as good as you say it is, then it won’t matter too much.

It depends what you’re prepared to take on. I got the tour around a ‘doer-upper’ in the Dales (owned by friends of my daughter) last night. The substantial amount of work needed didn’t phase them at all, and it will be beyond stunning when it’s done. Plus they now own this:

I was gobsmacked, my daughter said it had a small waterfall in the garden 🙂

Apparently it fills right up almost to the gate when the river is in spate.