Turn key or fixer upper?

Suspicious Dave

Girlfriend and I looking at several houses at the moment and we have differing ideas on what we should buy. Everything we look at seems to fall into 2 categories. a) decent house, 3 bed semi in decent estate in turn key condition or b) 4/5 bed semi in great estate that needs lots of work. With option b) we can't really afford to buy the house and do it up as we would like so it would be done over the next year or so.

Quick poll, which would you go for in our position?

Milk & Honey

Get the best location you can.

L1011

You're inevitably going to want to change things in the turnkey property anyway. Never known someone leave a house unchanged after buying

germack3

Best location with possible future return......
a renovation can be good to put your own statement on the property with out taking out good stuff you paid for...

Aye Bosun

With out hesitation, option B. I was pretty much in the same situation last year, still doing the place up and will be for a few more months, but it's well worth it.

riclad

option b, you can do it room by room,at the end you,ll have extra space ,
which you may never have in option a.
I,D much prefer an older big house than a turnkey standard 3bed semi d.
leave last 2 rooms til last, concentrate on doing 1 bedroom,frontroom, kitchen first as those are the rooms you spend most time in.
by great estate i assume you mean, quiet settled estate in a good location.
And a renovation may increase the value, in the long term.

seamus

Depends on your own circumstances as well to a certain extent.

A fixer-upper can turn out great if you sink the time into it, working room-by-room to get it exactly the way that you'd like it. Then you end up with a good family home that you've totally made your own mark on.
The main drawback here is that in order to get it just right, there will be a lot of sitting around, building up funds, etc. This means that half of your house feels like a building site for two years or more, which can be surprisingly stressful when you have to live in it.
Especially if you leave early for work and come home late, I would find myself constantly annoyed that I had no time in the evenings to work on the house, which turns into stress in the long term.

"The money pit" is obviously a comedy movie, but the best comedy is that which includes a good dollop of reality in it.

If you think you can hack it, then the fixer-upper is probably the way to go, you may not have another opportunity to do anything like it. But if you would go mental living on a building site for two years, it might be worth looking at the properties which require less work.

germack3

that’s a good way of doing the renovation as long as both are committed, that can be long and drawn out, it can end 2 ways divorce or worse marriage, make you or break you….