better house or better location?

craptakular

craptakular

craptakular

Soldato
Joined
7 Jan 2007
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Sussex, UK
I guess it is the old problem many face, in about 18 months I will be looking to buy a house (probably on my own) in Kent, specifically around the Maidstone area.

However, I can get more for my money in Chatham, Strood or Rochester but the location isn't as good as maidstone, but Chatham, Strood and Rochester are on HS1 but Maidstone has a direct slow train to London.

Do I go for a two bed room terraced in Maidstone or a bgger two bed terraced in Medway (with a driveway, possibly conservatory and or garage)

Places like kings hill and sevenoaks, Tunbridge Wells, West Malling etc are out of price range.

I am thinking of the rougher medway towns as then if I go to on to a consultancy I could access London easily for work.
 
Location, Location Location!!!

As above, if I was you I would buy something that needs some work in a good area. Add value by sorting out its niggles/bringing it up to date as you can afford. Good areas tend to hold their value when market is poor, increase quicker when the market it strong and sell more easily when its time to sell..

Seen a few friends buy in not so great areas, within 3 years they are selling up and moving to a better area as they have had enough... Moving isnt cheap!!!

Just my 2p!
 
It's a balance. As long as the less good house fits your needs, then it's probably better than one in a worse area.

Depends on whether you can live with the trade-off. Do you get in a massive **** when you can't park outside your house? If so, maybe a driveway is going to benefit your quality of life more than a good location. Etc, etc.

Generally, I would go for the better area. Particularly when living on your own - you will spend more time away from the house getting out and about anyway.
 
Location.

We paid a massive premium for our individual house in a countrified location, it is absolutely worth it in my opinion.
 
Kimi said:
If i could choose i would get the cheapest house on the best street
Click to expand...

This is what I did, despite wanting the best place that was ready to move into. My dad raked out this lovely Victorian house near the centre of town that was for sale, tt would have suited them perfectly but you really wouldn't want to live in the area, it's like the worst of East London.
 
It's a balance,
But then again Ai don't find places unsafe that other people do. Most of it is in their head.
Where I'm now is less popular than where I used to live, yet I've had zero issues here. And cars broken knot at old place.
But neither can it be miles away from work etc.
And I certainly wouldn't downgrade the house to a point is useless for you.

My main two are piece, kitchen and garden size, really don't care about rest of house. Unfortunately that doesn't exist in this market.
Area comes well down the list, partly as I have a works van and get paid when I leave the front door, and partly the house matters far more than location(want to set up a cooking business slowly with no capital, so kitchen size is important, as you need to use separate freezers and other such rules), within reason. Ideally would want to buy somewhere in a cheap area you know in like 5 years will get massive regeneration.
 
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Location. You can improve a house, you can't change the area. If you don't feel safe where you live no amount of nice house is going to help.
 
I'm gonna buck the trend it seems. Best house in the worst location you can put up with.

I don't like interacting too much with my immediate neighbours as then you can never truly fall out with them, and that's so much worse than never really knowing them :p This means location is less important to me.

But then, I don't live in London so the nasty places are easy to avoid.
 
Balanced approach but erring more towards location. We are much happier living in a 3 bed terraced house in a nice area compared to our previous house which was also a 3 bed terrace but had psycho neighbours, ASB in the street etc. Had we stayed in our previous area we probably could have got a 4 bed semi/detached for the same sort of money.

That said, choosing a good location is harder than choosing a nice house IMO. I guess the holy grail is finding somewhere that is on the up - good enough to live in today, but will become much more desirable in future (e.g. the HS1 links you talk about).
 
How important is the train? If HS1 is a priority you can always drive to ebbsfleet and park. Most locals would prefer to avoid Chatham, Rochester and Strood.Maidstone is ok but can have its own problems, some areas are as ugly as sin.
 
It's far more important to not live next to ****heads, but far harder to know ahead of time.
 
Once 'tactic' I adopted was that I decided I would never live directly adjacent to a flat again, on the basis that in my experience they are more likely to attract people we could have trouble with (renters rather than owner-occupiers, lower income etc).

The above is of course by no means foolproof and of course you get decent people living in flats and idiots living in houses, but just playing the averages I feel it should work out better. Moving here at least I knew the neighbours would have paid over £200k for their property so unlike previous area very unlikely to be smashing the place up etc, probably professional families etc rather than unemployed.

Obvious extension of this tactic is to get a detached property but in nice areas they don't come cheap so it make take a while to achieve that dream whilst meeting all the other criteria we have.
 
I'm in the "trade-off" group here. It strikes me that much of the "location, location, location" stuff is very thinly disguised postcode snobbery: look at me, I live in X. I'll happily accept that there are areas that you would not want to live in through any factor other than desperation to live somewhere, but sometimes it's OK to live in a middling area if you get a better house out of it. And to point out the obvious: if everyone thought like the location people, how would areas ever move up-market? Because sometimes they do.
 
I'm looking for a large house with basements for office, man cave, gym

I live in a Victorian town. Which means their are some large houses but are close to the town centre.

Avg 3 bed semi £175k
Large house in town £300k
Large house 1 mile up the road 1.5-2 Million.

The expensive house in on the main route into town.

All depends on what you can compromise on.

Were looking at the £300k house which instead of selling when we want to move we will convert to 5 flats for our retirement fund.
 
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