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Best value/most interesting property for least cash in the UK

Geography comes first for me. Get the basics right. The east coast is drier, Sunnier and colder. It can also be very windy. The West Coast is wet warm and definitely windy.
Next come all those social things. How quiet do you want it to be? Do you want facilities and amusements?
Third is the age of the property and your skill level. Anything built before the 1970s will be prone to problems. Building standards were different, and the older it is more likely it is that you will find rot, damp and et cetera. These things can be solved but you have to be prepared for them. Pretty houses tend to have problems.Unless you are rich and don’t mind having standards imposed on you, avoid listed properties.
As to price, keep away from popular areas. The coast is going to be a no no wherever you look. If you can see the sea then you will pay double everywhere.
Pretty rural areas are not necessarily expensive if there is nothing there, but the populations are not always welcoming in those situations. The exception is Scotland. Areas of rural Scotland, and I don’t mean the glamour of the highlands, are both beautiful welcoming and have lots and lots of facilities. Get yourself about 5 to 10 miles from The coast, and you can find very very well priced property with a fantastic view not to do and good neighbours. In particular in Scotland I would look up the east coast above Dundee but not as far as Aberdeen. The weather there is beautiful and although it’s quite flat there you have a mountainous backdrop in view.
 
Total and utter bs. I have never lived in a house built after the early 60's.

I wonder what you write to something that really wound you up :) lol
Anyway the point IS that in the 70's building regs became far far tighter. Foundations, cavity wall specs, roof ventilation, damp proof courses etc all were more tightly specified. As a rule of thumb, any house built after the mid 70's should have got the basics right. before that, it varied according to individual builders, the local planning officer and etc. Doesn't mean ofc that some splendid houses were not made before that date, simply that after that date, 'affordable' houses would all be made to certain standards. FWIW, of the 15 homes I've lived in so far, only one was built after 1975, and of the rest, only 2 were a bit of a pain.
As I said, it's all solvable if you understand old houses and have good DIY skills, but if you don't, and haven't, modern housing is less of a gamble.
None of which is total BS.
 
I wonder what the longterm impact of lockdown will be on property prices in London and the South generally. If working from home becomes the norm for a lot of people the incentive to stump up £500k for a ex-council flat near a tube station is somewhat reduced.

i remember queuing up for one room type flats in wandsworth and lambeth [ ex council ] . never was successful back in the 80`s
 
I wonder what you write to something that really wound you up :) lol
Anyway the point IS that in the 70's building regs became far far tighter. Foundations, cavity wall specs, roof ventilation, damp proof courses etc all were more tightly specified. As a rule of thumb, any house built after the mid 70's should have got the basics right. before that, it varied according to individual builders, the local planning officer and etc. Doesn't mean ofc that some splendid houses were not made before that date, simply that after that date, 'affordable' houses would all be made to certain standards. FWIW, of the 15 homes I've lived in so far, only one was built after 1975, and of the rest, only 2 were a bit of a pain.
As I said, it's all solvable if you understand old houses and have good DIY skills, but if you don't, and haven't, modern housing is less of a gamble.
None of which is total BS.

But isn't the mid-70s when the quality of many in the building trade went down as the spec 'build them quick' started ? Also when if the door of the guest loo misses the loo by more than an inch the room is too large ?
 
It would have been somewhere in the 70's that conventional build started to be phased out, so, internal stud walls and the like became normal. I also remember one estate being built then (I left school in 1977, and it was not too long before then), where the outer walls were poured using shuttering. I remember the cursing from people moving into them too as the techniques were new and the builders and providers of the pre-built panels were still learning.

Insulation and hence lower fuel bills apart, who would live in a modern cave, the windows cut to minimum to reduce heat loss, and with the total PITA of stud walls?
 
My understanding is that houses built immediately after the war in the 1940s were about as good as it gets. Cavity walls, good sized gardens etc.

I don’t think the 70’/80’s is any kind of high water mark.
 
Well, that’s me done for then. Our place is listed, in a conservation area, and built some 600+ years ago. It’s still standing, which is a plus...
 
Well, that’s me done for then. Our place is listed, in a conservation area, and built some 600+ years ago. It’s still standing, which is a plus...

It will depend a bit on grade 1 v grade 2 and your local council, but so long as you want to change absolutely nothing, do not want to remove or add a hedge of garden fence or shed, and similar such trivia, you'll be fine.

Personally, I've been to the fringes of that, and never again.
 
There's two sides to a property being listed and it depends on what you're looking for. Our flat is in a listed 1950s block which means residents can't fit PVC window frames or swap out the original front doors. It drives some people nuts dealing with the drafty wooden windows. Other folks appreciate the integrity of the original design being kept. I guess about a 50/50 split.
 
I'm on a short holiday break with SWMBO in NI/ROI... currently in Derry/Londonderry before heading south to Donegal, Galway, Limerick, Kerry, Cork, Kinsale, Waterford and Dublin before home via Belfast ferry... saw 4/5 bedroom property plus land near Derry for 180K Euro ... is there is a catch for the EU passport?
 
What are the negatives people have experienced with listed buildings? My house is grade 2 listed (Vinny - you’ll have been past at some time, it’s in Halstead). It’s built like a tank, with proper foundations and cavity walls, which was pretty advanced for 1872. There have been some small changes over the years, expanding the kitchen and adding internal bathrooms, which are not as per original. For now it’s eminently liveable and I see no need to change anything further.
 
It’s grade 2, and we’ve made some changes. The council started off fairly standoffish, but when they admitted to never having seen the house, refused to come take a look, and we exchanged a few words (well, I transmitted, through a solicitor, an architect, a heritage consultant, and offered to follow up in person and send them the bill for our time) we found an accommodation and now have a pretty decent working relationship.
It also helps that nothing we want to do is that radical (famous last words), but your point is very valid. We came into this with our eyes open, but we’ve heard some nightmarish stories from others.
 
Listed, 1785, conservation area. Single skin brick, draughty windows - 21 of them. No real problems, it is not going to fall down. Local authority generally interested in the overall external appearance - so no plastic windows, solar panels, wacky colours etc. I dislike PVC windows and doors or wacky colours anyway. Secondary glazing fixed the draughts. Still higher than average utility bills (tall, 4 floors, single brick) but really there are few downsides. But not a gerry-built 60s/70s estate house with plasterboard walls, chipboard flooring, artex (argggggh!) ceilinged monster!
 
What are the negatives people have experienced with listed buildings? My house is grade 2 listed (Vinny - you’ll have been past at some time, it’s in Halstead). It’s built like a tank, with proper foundations and cavity walls, which was pretty advanced for 1872. There have been some small changes over the years, expanding the kitchen and adding internal bathrooms, which are not as per original. For now it’s eminently liveable and I see no need to change anything further.
In my opinion it comes down to the nature of the conservation officer. We have single glazed windows, and asked (to be fair, we knew the answer before we asked) about replacing these with sympathetic double glazing in some of the rooms. The response we got was a badly worded screed about how doing so would damage the enjoyment of the house by the general public as double glazing changes the nature of the reflectivity of the building in that elevation - that’s pretty well word for word what the letter said. The additional bit of information, absent in the letter, is about the fabric and style of the building, etc. Our reply, for the sake of it, invited the officer to assess how the general public would be enjoying that elevation of the building, what with it only being visible from the garden (not overlooked) and not from anywhere the public might be without a very long lens or without entering the property without permission. This led to the business of asking whether they knew the property or even its location. A similar discussion went along the lines of not replacing some rotted timbers as the decay profile of the building was important, and we had to let nature take its course. Further discussion as to who would have responsibility if the floor fell through into the cellar led to a satisfactory (to us) resolution. I should add that anticipating such a sort of reply, we had proposed to use reclaimed timbers of the same wood, age, and size, alongside the rotted ones, leaving the originals in place. But the chap really meant that we do nothing and we let the dining room form part of the cellar if that is what was going to happen. I don’t have the patience to deal with that sort of approach, and don’t think others should have to either.
 
What are the negatives people have experienced with listed buildings? My house is grade 2 listed (Vinny - you’ll have been past at some time, it’s in Halstead). It’s built like a tank, with proper foundations and cavity walls, which was pretty advanced for 1872. There have been some small changes over the years, expanding the kitchen and adding internal bathrooms, which are not as per original. For now it’s eminently liveable and I see no need to change anything further.

LLLOL, with little doubt I will most likely have passed it many times in a former life.

G2 and G1 were originally quite different but the restrictions placed on G2 buildings were brought nearer to those of G1 well over 20 years ago. It all depends on what anyone wants of their home. The short answer is that you'll be able to do VERY little without listed building consent. Going by the letter of the law any and all "development within the curtilage of the building" is subject to such a consent. That quite literally means that any structure or use of the building or land associated with the property is controlled, but as mentioned above, this can be a very minor or huge hassle depending on what you want to do and the local enforcement procedure etc.

For me, if I want a greenhouse in the garden, I do not want to pay for the privilege twice over, or be forced into erecting an "approved design", in a "approved position" on what is my land.

Planning restrictions on listed property can also take precedence over other laws. For instance, many moons ago I viewed a very old farmworkers' cottage. It was sound, but only just. The loo was a thunderbox by the front gate and a single skin fletton brick lean-to extension, with corrugated roof, had been added as a separate galley kitchen, probably in the 50's or 60's. It had one tap over a butler sink and that was it. Drainage was onto the garden. The original house was built around a HUGE red brick chimney, a bit like a tent about a centre pole, but of timbers and lath and plaster.
As a starting point, apart from repairs to the main building, the ONLY change offered as likely to be agreed was to demolish the lean-to and replace with a modern build of identical size and shape. That could include a shower cubicle. I can't remember what was proposed to replace the thunderbox.
 


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