House Buying / House Hunting Tips

Location and orientation

• Look out for South, South West, South East facing rear gardens. A North, North West, or North East facing garden will see very little sunlight. Very little will grow and it will rarely be pleasant to sit in your garden. This is especially the case if you are looking at a very small garden which could be entirely in the shadow of your own home.
• It is worthwhile to take a compass on house viewing trips so that you can be sure of orientation as this can be especially difficult to work out on an overcast day. Remember that the sun rises in the east, moves across the south, and sets in the west. It's arc is quite low in the sky during the winter months.
• Also look out for other people's homes shadowing your garden. You may view in the middle of the summer when the sun is high in the sky, but think about what will happen at other times of year when it is quite likely that you will suffer from shadows due to other buildings or tall trees near your garden.
• Shadowed gardens tend to also be damp gardens.
• Remember that a house with a south facing rear garden will have a north facing front garden. Estate agent photographs tend to be less flattering for these homes.
• If you have children, how close are schools, parks, play areas, swimming pools etc ? Is there a lot of traffic outside the house ?
• Look at the the other houses around your house. For instance, do you really want the only detached house in a street of mainly terraced or semi-detached houses ?
• Do houses in the street you're looking at have adequate garages or off road parking or is it a street which is littered with everyone else's cars ? Disputes due to parking problems are quite common in such areas. Some streets in Cambridge now allow parking on the pavement directly outside the doors of houses.
• Shared driveways are another potential problem well worth avoiding.
• If you're buying in a terrace then do they all match or have some been painted odd colours ? The same is true for semi-detached houses. If the other half looks odd then that will devalue your home.
• Before committing yourself, take your time and visit a few times so that you experience what your possible new home is like at different times of the day / week. Some locations seem otherwise OK but are marred by rush hour traffic, late night revellers, next door neighbours with noisy car stereos etc.
• It's also worth knowing what was on the land before the home you are considering was built. You can find out by looking at old maps. Some homes are built on top of previously industrial land which can be contaminated. For instance, there are new homes in Cambridge built on top of the gasworks. Land used for gasworks tends to be contaminated with, amongst other things, cyanide. Dreadful things have happened in the past due to contamination. While you'd be very unlucky to see effects as bad as this, surely we've all heard of Love Canal (if you haven't, here's an article on wikipedia about Love Canal).
• Much the same goes for electricity pylons, mobile telephone masts etc. You may be skeptical of whether these things are dangerous, but when you go to sell your home at a later date your buyer may not share your skepticism. So it's worth avoiding these things whatever your own belief is.
• Proximity of shops might be a benefit. However, being next door to a contentious shop might not. For instance, the 10% (and growing) proportion of the UK population who are vegetarian may well not see having a butcher shop next door as a benefit, so expect this to make the house more difficult to sell in the future.

The House

• We started in a terraced house, and they can be made very nice. However, if you've ever had problem neighbours in a terraced or semi-detached house, it should be quite obvious what an advantage it is to be detached (I should note here that I'm happy to say that our current neighbours are wonderful).
• If you have children or pets who can be noisy, or if you like loud music or movies, or if you will be decorating a lot when you move in to your new home then you could become a problem neighbour yourself. It's not the ideal way to meet your new neighbour. Detached houses avoid these issues and give you more freedom to do what you want when you want. Having a detached house is my personal top priority.
• Party walls between terraced and semi-detached houses vary greatly in their construction. The best are surely block or brick walls with a cavity between them. These should approach the isolation of a detached house from its neighbour. Most such houses in the UK have either a single or double brick wall without a gap. In the case of recent and current construction you may find just a wooden frame with plasterboard and rockwool between homes. I'm staying well clear of such construction.
• Some semi-detached houses have entrances apart and the living rooms together while some have the entrances in the centre with the living rooms apart. The latter have far lower chance of being a problem so far as neighbour noise is concerned.
• A house which has scope for improvement is a great opportunity. Even if you don't immediately intend to extend the house yourself, you might find later that you need the extra space and extending may well be cheaper than moving. If you decide to sell it could also be a big attraction for your buyer. If you're moving into somewhere which already is extended then you don't have this potential. Many older terraces and modern houses built on 3 floors have no potential for extension at all.
• Tired looking decor isn't really important. Paint is a very cheap thing to buy in comparison with the price of a house. There is a reason why "do up your house to sell" TV programmes emphasize doing these cheap things instead of expensive things and that's because it can fool the buyer.
• Beware of flashy decor as it can cover a multitude of sins. The new and trendy will probably look old fashioned rather more quickly than simpler decor.
• Houses which need a little maintainance may look a bit less attractive but at least they are not covering up their problems (true "renovation projects" are a different thing, though, and will cost a lot of money and time).
• In my opinion a survey isn't really worth much. I've seen how quickly they are done and how apparently objective figures for such as energy consumption are actually made up on the spot without referring to any measurements or bills. I've seen a "damp expert" completely miss a leaking pipe (which was fixed at my expense later on).
• The mortgage company will insist on a survey (which might these days be part of a Home Information Pack) but really it is you who needs to check actual bills, and have a good look around to make sure that you can see no faults. After all, you are the one who needs to live there. Climb in the loft with a torch, look for damage, ask about anything which looks like a leak.
• Smells of smoke, other people's cooking, pets etc. will go away quite quickly. You may find a bargain that others have ignored if you're willing to overlook these things.
• Do you want a better bathroom or kitchen ? It's not expensive to change. £3000 buys a nice kitchen and £1500 buys a nice bathroom. Offer the seller £5000 less than the asking price and pocket the difference.
• Is the property leasehold ? If so, how long does the lease last ? Your property will decline in value over time due to the lease getting shorter, or maybe you could buy the lease - but that could be expensive too.
• Is the property a "stable house" or "coach house" built above other people's car parking spaces ? This is a modern trick to sell land which on more spacious and older developments used to be committed to garages, but they're trying to sell it to you. What happens if one of the neighbours regularly returns late at night with his car stereo turned up loud ? Or if one of the neighbours does his own car maintenance ?
• What's at the bottom of the garden ? The neighbours on both sides might be fine, but you need to check on all boundaries.
• Cavity walls are important. Take a look at the brickwork. If the bricks are in a regular pattern, all looking the same size, then you probably have cavity walls. If they are in an irregular pattern, some narrow ones (you're looking a the ends of bricks) then you probably do not have a cavity wall. Cavity walls were introduced in order to avoid damp problems in houses. They also lend themselves to being fitted with cavity wall insulation. If you buy a house without cavity walls you have a much higher chance of damp inside the building and you also can't lower your heating bills by fitting insulation in the cavity. Cavity wall insulation is extremely effective, and also very cheap to install in the UK due to generous grants. I like low fuel bills and I'd not consider a house without cavity walls. One of the big differences between 1930s and 1950s houses can be the heating bill, with the latter much lower if they've been insulated.
• A house without cavity walls may also not have a proper damp course. This is a strip of impermeable material in the brickwork a little above ground level. You can have a chemical damp course fitted, but this is potential trouble again.

Desirable Features

• Are you a gardener, or do you enjoy sitting outside ? Note the orientation of the garden as covered in the first section.
• A large garden is an obvious feature in itself. Size is more important than current condition. Even quite fancy looking landscaping is relatively inexpensive. You can never make a small garden bigger, but you can easily make a large garden nicer.
• It takes a long time for fruit trees to establish themselves. If you would like your own (organic if you want) fruit then it's valuable to move into a home which already has them.
• You may think that not having a garage is unimportant if you're intending to cycle or walk to work. Remember that some day you may well need to sell the house, and in any case garages offer very useful storage space - even for your bike.
• If you have, or want, children then an enclosed, sunny rear garden large enough for play equipment is probably a good idea.
• Some designs of home are much more spacious and allow in much more natural light than others. If you like a bright and spacious look, keep this in mind. Windows are more expensive than bricks, so many houses do not have adequate natural light.

House Selling Tricks

• If lights are switched on in the house you are viewing, try turning them off. Many houses have small windows and need lights on, or have many rooms with north facing windows which rarely get any natural light. They will always be gloomy unless you have lights on in the day-time.
• Remember that impressive furniture will not be left in the house and that even the nicest kitchen or bathroom won't last forever. Especially with new houses, it's much cheaper for the seller to provide such things than to provide a larger house. Don't be distracted by them. New houses are especially likely to skimp on expensive features such as garages, parking spaces and gardens while misleading you with "eye-candy".
• If you find yourself in a house which has been obviously emptied of furniture in order to appeal to a buyer, think about how large the rooms will look when you move in with your furniture. Houses which are being lived in will tend to have a more realistic level of furnishings and clutter.
• New features fitted to sell houses are often not of the greatest quality - I've even seen plastic "wood panel look" interior doors. Would you choose such a thing for yourself ? How about the framed bits of wall-paper so beloved of TV property programmes. Do you really want them in your home ?
• Rooms which don't exist: Sometimes buyers advertise their dining room or some other room as a 4th bedroom. It looks better on the details than in real life, and it's possible with virtually any house which has a dining room.
• New houses are starting to be built with higher ceilings. This is done because it gives a sense of spaciousness in otherwise small rooms. You and your furniture have to fit in the floor area, not up the walls.
• The word "Townhouse" is a way of describing a terraced house by using a fancy name. It's still a terrace.
• Is a "free" flat screen TV or some other luxury item being included in the price ? There's a reason why. It has very little value compared with the property you're buying and they're hoping it will distract from some other deficiency.

Dodgy home improvements

I've seen a lot of bizarre home improvements in the time I've been interested in property, including the following:

• Loft extensions made by removing the woodwork which keeps the roof up - leading to a dodgy looking roofline and very possibly a collapsing roof in the future.
• Extension into the cellar. This is a good one. If you're lucky enough to have a cellar, you can convert your living room and dining rooms into bedrooms and put the living rooms in the cellar. OK, so there's not much of a view and it seems a bit dark down there, but it makes the house sound much bigger in the description.

Cambridge

• Cambridge is a relatively well off city, a very pleasant city and I'm glad to say that there are very few areas of Cambridge that are in any way "rough". Those small pockets that exist are are spread quite evenly throughout the entire city and in every electoral ward. There is no-where that could be described as actually being dangerous. Sadly it seems that people from one area often like to put another down while promoting the benefits of wherever it happens to be that they themselves live. I have no intention of joining in and pointing at any particular place as being bad, but urge you to go and look for yourself around any area that you are considering. It is not difficult to spot trouble.
• Note that crime rates are quite low throughout Cambridge. When we moved into the city from a village a dozen or so miles south west of the city our home and car insurance rates both dropped. Insurers have a pretty good idea of risk.
• There are sadly many houses in Cambridge on busy roads. It's OK to buy them, but expect values to be a little cheaper to take into account fumes, dust, noise and difficulty for visitors to park.
• There are some very nice properties near the river, but check their flood history carefully and find out how much home insurance will cost. We've seen floods on several occasions in the time we've lived in Cambridge.
• You may think that not having a garage is unimportant if you're intending to cycle or walk to work. Remember that some day you may well need to sell the house, one day you might have some reason to own or even just hire a car for a while, and in any case garages offer very useful storage space.
• Due to the high price of houses in Cambridge, there has been an unfortunate tendency for additional extra narrow homes to be built on other people's gardens. The result is often small gardens for both houses and parking problems, the latter made worse by the council often not handing out parking permits for such new developments. There are still plenty of really generous plots on the market, but you have to find somewhere which hasn't been the result of this penny-pinching.
• A surprising number of houses just outside (sometimes even considerably outside) Cambridge are marketed as being "in Cambridge". The new necklace developments (including Arbury Park) are also mostly outside the city boundary. There are benefits to being a city resident, such as cheaper tickets for the Folk Festival and other events.
• I once lived in a village which had a group of people in it running a campaign to get a CB postcode apparently in an attempt to get some of the Cambridge snob value to rub off. Note that some villages a considerable distance outside Cambridge in some directions do have CB postcodes while others a little closer in other directions do not. It doesn't really mean a great deal, except that insurance rates may be different.
• Cambridge has sadly been hit harder than most places by the Buy to Let house price bubble. As a result, terraced houses here are spectacularly over-valued at present and do not represent good value.
• Here is a list of Cambridge Estate Agents, but also look out for private sales.

The Market

• UK housing prices elsewhere are also currently distorted very strongly by the buy to let market. This has caused terraced houses to be valued far higher than they ought to be. It's a bubble, which I think will eventually slowly leak rather than burst. Expect it to leak rather faster for the most over-valued houses, though. This is a very very good time for selling a terraced house, but not such a good time to be buying one. It makes little sense to make an investment in something which is over-valued and the smart money is not buying terraces at this time.
• Prices of semi-detached and detached houses are currently depressed due to over-valuation of terraces. This is a very good time to buy a detached house.
• The current prices offer a once in a lifetime opportunity for some terraced house owners to sell, clear their mortgages and move up to a detached house. It's surprising to me how few seem to have realised this.
• Once upon a time, "a man from the council" assessed all the housing in the country in an objective fashion and put houses into Council Tax Bands. There was always concern about their methodology, so for instance some band D equivalent houses would end up in bands C or E. However, it was rare for a house to be accidentally valued two bands out from where it ought to be. Be suspicious of such abberations in the market as a band C property which costs more than a band E property. It is almost certainly overpriced and probably not a good investment for the future. There is currently extremely optimistic pricing amongst some types of house in Cambridge. If you want to pay Band C council tax, pay a Band C price for the house.

Politeness

I really shouldn't have to mention this, but I will anyway. Please don't make appointments to view properties that you're not interested in, and please keep appointments that you've made. When selling in the past I've had the dubious pleasure of spending time tidying up the house and sitting around waiting for the benefit of viewers who don't turn up at the arranged time (or ever). It is surprising just how rude some people are.

Finally, please give sellers some feedback whether or not the house is right for you. Sellers are always interested to knowing how viewers see their home.