Property Matters: Would You Buy Your Own House Today?

Here is a question most homeowners probably never ask themselves.

Knowing everything you know about your home today, would you still buy it?

When we first view a property, we see it very differently. We notice the kitchen, the size of the bedrooms, the garden and whether we can imagine ourselves living there.

Perhaps we stand in the lounge already deciding where the sofa will go.

What we don't necessarily see is what that house will actually be like to live in.

You might not know what the road is like at eight o'clock on a Monday morning. You may not know how difficult parking becomes in the evening, how cold that back bedroom gets in January or whether the neighbours enjoy a rather louder lifestyle than you do.

Then there are the things you cannot see at all.

Searches might reveal planning proposals nearby, highway matters, drainage issues or other information that could influence how you feel about the property. A survey could uncover work that will need attention sooner than expected.

Recent research suggests that buyer's remorse is far from unusual. The HomeOwners Alliance found that 37% of homeowners surveyed had regrets about the home they bought. Among younger homeowners, that figure was considerably higher.

That raises another question.

Are we sometimes buying with our hearts rather than our heads?

There is nothing particularly wrong with that. A home is probably one of the most emotional purchases any of us will ever make.

You can look at ten perfectly sensible houses and feel absolutely nothing. Then you walk into number eleven and something simply feels right.

The problem comes when that feeling causes us to overlook the questions we should be asking.

Would you still love the house if you discovered it needed £20,000 worth of work?

Would you buy it if you knew a major development was planned nearby?

Would poor energy efficiency change your mind?

What about flood risk, subsidence, a boundary problem or an extension where the paperwork was not quite what you expected?

And then we come to one of the most unpredictable parts of buying any home.

The neighbours.

You can order searches. You can commission a survey. You can check planning applications and study the EPC.

There isn't a search that can guarantee you will get on with the person living next door.

Perhaps that is why buyers need to spend more time looking beyond the front door.

Visit the road at different times. Walk around the neighbourhood. Look at what is being built nearby. Ask questions. Get proper information and, importantly, use the professionals involved in the transaction.

Yet even after doing all of that, buying a home will always involve compromise.

Very few of us can afford the perfect property in the perfect location with the perfect neighbours at the perfect price.

So perhaps the real question isn't whether your home has faults.

It is whether, knowing those faults today, you would still decide that the good outweighs the bad.

This week on Property Matters, Gareth Wax, Hamish McLay and Tiffany Fairbrother will put that question to each other.
Knowing what you know now, would you buy your own home again?

And perhaps an even more interesting question.

What would make you walk away?

Property Matters is live every Tuesday at 1pm.

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