OT (along with most posts): Houses

Congrats, all will work out just great.

Tom De Moor

Congratulations. But, 30 years?! WTF?

Believe me, unless the house is newbuild, or relatively new, you'll be broke for much more than the rest of the year once you start repairing all the broken things and / or redecorating..... trust me on this. It's why we will only ever consider relatively new stuff these days.

Are you gona fit neons, big exhaust, go faster stripes?

Or just tastfully lower it a touch and keep it looking stock with a big boiler etc?

I'm only 24 :) and it keeps the repayments down for now

Well its relatively new (depending how you define that I guess) and in the last 2 years has been completely redecorated with new bathroom and kitchen and carpets all through. All it really needs is a lick of paint in a couple of room to match it to our stuff :)

Have you looked at how much extra interest you pay on those extra 5 years over a standard mortgage?

It may be quite painful, but going for the shortest term you possibly can is something you'll be thankful for in a few years time.

How new is 'relatively new'? - even our 6 year old house has had niggly things wrong that would cost money to fix if I could be bothered ;-)

I'd never buy a new build house.

This house was built in 1939 and is better built and designed than any of the "breezeblocks and fibreboard" s**te that you get now.

As for broken things, I don't remember anything being broken on this house in 30+ years. Had the odd leaky tap, and a little outbreak of rot about 10 years ago, but it's been fine.

I suspect it could be that this is an exceptionally well made house, but it seems more likely to me that new houses are built like Peraduas compared to this MB W124 of a place...

Anyway, conga-rats to Carl.

Don't lower it. Causes all sorts of alignment problems.

Yep and it isn't doable. Things will change in the future though - we're both still paying off debt from uni plus we both now should get decent salary increases each year so when we move on from this place we should be in a better position to reduce the length of the mortgage. For now it gets us in our own place and on the property ladder and thats better than throwing money away on rent!

Relatively new in that it wasn't built in the 60s :) Sometime in the 80s. It's in really good nick though, I'm sure they'll be some niggly things to do, but shouldnt be anything major.

"Pete M" wrote in message news:t_hKg.11860$Z snipped-for-privacy@fe3.news.blueyonder.co.uk...

Ours was built 22 years ago and it's noteably better than any of my mates 'new build' houses.

I don't recall any part of our house ever breaking. The shower leaks a little bit - but that's about it.

Seconded :)

Yeah, dont wanna muck up the foundation geometry! I think the stock look is good, maybe with the bigger boiler along with boost gauge and dump valve.

Cool.

I wanted a place built in the 70s - lovely retro-style semi, it was. But it sold before we got there.

I wouldn't want something as old as my mum's or brother's places - both built in the 30s - always seem to need something doing - wiring going wrong, damp patches to fix etc.

At least something from the 80s is likely to have half decent gas central heating and won't need a rewire for another 20-odd years.

Actually we were looking at some older stuff as you tend to get nice big gardens, driveways and garages. New houses you get weeny gardens and 1 allocated parking space, unless you've got lots of money to spend. Rubbish.

Cheers dudes :)

That's new enough to avoid most issues.

My mother's place has, in recent years needed - repointing, new kitchen roof (on the 30 year old extension), rewiring, new windows, new bathroom, new kitchen is still needed, still doesn't have central heating, a new garage etc..... that was built in the 30s, though.

Yes, the basic structure is a hell of a lot stronger than a new house, but all older houses need a lot more maintenance than anything built in the last 20-30 years.

I'd love something like I spent my teens growing up in - big 40s bungalow with mahoosive amounts of parking (you could get at least 10 cars on the driveways), big double garage and nice big garden. But of course it did have damp problems and we rewired a lot of it too. And re-did the asbestos roof. Somewhere like that was a bit out of our price range down here though!!

Let's hope so!

I rather liked my parent's house - 30s built, looked good, decent size rooms etc.

What about something from a couple of hundred years hefore that and off mains gas?

cheers, clive

Good luck, have fun, keep an eye on remortgage deals where you can shorten the time keep repayments the same, and save a bucket on the interest.

Ours is from 1901, I think it may have been rewired. Some parts could do with re-plastering if we strip wood chip off.

In a lot of ways I'd love an older house for that kind of reason - big rooms, plenty of outside space, but the upkeep of something like that is just tiresome. We looked at a place in Aberdare - around 100 years old, built like a brick shit-house kind of place. I have no doubt it'll still be there in another 100 years (our place will be long gone by then.....) but it needed some major rewiring work and had a fair bit of damp. Nice thing was it had loads of land and a barn at the end of the field that was the garden.

I just couldn't live with somewhere that needed constant work to keep it in shape, though..... having an Alfa 75 is bad enough ;-)

You'll be fine. 80s places are definitely better built than very new stuff, but not so old that you have to worry about re-roofing, damp and wiring issues.

Have you exchanged yet? If not, there's still time to change your mind. :)

Seriously though, well done. Pay as much extra money into your mortgage as possible, even if it's the odd £20 here and there, because it'll benefit you more than twice over at the end. I think I saw a rough estimate recently that an extra £50 a month shortens the average

25 year mortgage by 3 years or more. Get yourself as long a fixed-rate mortgage as you can, because interest rates are on the way up. If you have anything left over for making improvements, it might be worth thinking about spending some money on things like solar panels for heating, what with the way energy prices seem to be rocketing etc, it's a feature more people will want, so you'd get the money back later if/when you moved out.