Indeed, but then I have been waiting for the last 12 years to be in the position of being able to buy, and also waiting for the property prices to fall to help me do so.
It's not happened yet, and I'm not prepared to wait any longer on the slim chance it might, and risk being forever unable to buy.
There is a fair bit of ex-council housing in the area, so you might be right about that. If it is, I (personally) think it's a more attractive variety of it - I've seen quite a bit of council housing over the years and though quite harsh in some respects this one does have some interesting details to it that a lot of later definite council housing is lacking.
It could be a bit earlier, as suggested, of course. There's what may be an original fireplace (looks original to me, rather than a repo, but I'm no expert so could be completely wrong) of that sort of 20's/30's era, it's art-deco style, completely tiled surround with art deco type pattern formed by tiles, hearth tiled in same, etc. Bakelite handles on all the doors, too.
There's also what may be original tiling to the floor in the 'pantry' (now utility/boiler room) and the short passage to the side door (the door in the kitchen is an alteration to the original structure from what I can tell, but one commonly made since next door has similar but not identically placed).
insides
Unless they were just waiting to see what happened. A lot of "normal" people will do that - just watch a crack to see if it gets any worse - and if it doesn't, they'll just ignore it.
btw, when we bought two years ago, we managed to spend =A350 less per month on the mortgage than we'd previously spent on rent - and with a fixed rate mortgage, and increasing rents, this will have saved us a lot of money by the time the fixed rate ends. Whether we'd buy right now as the market is slowing down is another matter. 1995 would have been a great time to buy!
Cheers, David.
Yup. Render is a major put-off for me, as is paint.
Hm. Rustic dragged bricks beloved of institutional builders such as councils. 1950s?
Get in touch with the vendor, presumably a bank, through the estate agent. They will probably be able to tell you more about the house - the EA will likely know more about the age, too. Ask them, they should know the area. Note: at the moment, the vendor will be very keen to sell as this place is losing them money. If you make an offer, have no truck with sudden tricks such as a small price hike ("Another thousand would be nice").
[snip]
It looked to me very much like council house infill from the 50s. The brick design looks very much like council houses of that era.
Was there much bombing around there during WW2?
AFAIK it hasnt been found to be subsidence. There are insurance cos that will insure subsided properties, some policies have a subsidence exemption, but where underpinned that should not be needed. Ask an insurance broker, not an insurance co.
NT
investigation
whether
someone!
I've found builders hav a habit of knowing next to nothing about struc matters, but have all the confidence to readily diagnose and treat them, and insist they know what theyre doing.
NT
I wouldn't have said they spent 'loads' doing up the insides. Not like they stripped back the patterned wallpaper, after all. They spent money on the kitchen/bathroom/heating, the rest is just throw a paintbrush around a bit till it looks presentable really :-)
Which doesn't bother me in the slightest, since I believe in doing a Proper Job on decorating etc, and in months/years to come will happily be taking the wallpaper off, prepping walls, and painting in colours of my choice - provided crack isn't a problem *and* my offer is accepted (and nothing hideous comes to light in survery).
I would agree there is a certain plain utilitarianism about it. But probably from that 'homes fit for heroes' era when council housing was intentionally aiming high, rather than squeezed by treasury parsimony.
In message , Velvet writes
Nothing wrong with ex-council property as long as you are careful about the location/neighbours etc..
The house you are looking at seems to be on a street of mixed housing, so less likely to be full of the riff raff that some estates are filled with.
Indeed, I've spent quite a bit of time in that street with viewing another couple of properties, had a chat to one of the neighbours (seems nice, little boy proudly showed off his guineapig), chatted to another neighbour quite a few houses down the street the other way. In general seems a quiet road, even on a saturday when there's traditionally a high level of children out playing and cars being washed/hoovered it still had the air of a quiet suburban road, which I found encouraging.
I have a very low tolerance to the noisier type of streets, so this has been an important factor, but I'm not naieve enough to think what I've seen is necessarily 100% accurate :-)
not rocket science.
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