Reading a House Before You Buy It

Buying a house is one of the most practical decisions a person can make. Surveys, mortgages, boundaries, damp courses, the distance to the station. All of it matters. And yet I have met very few women who chose their home purely on the practicalities.

Most of us fall in love. Or we fail to, and buy anyway, because on paper it was perfect. Then we spend years wondering why it never quite felt like home.

So, with autumn viewing season upon us, here is how I read a house before anyone signs anything.

Begin before you arrive

A house is giving you information long before you step over its threshold. Pay attention to the approach. The street, the neighbouring houses, the trees. The route from the nearest shop. How the air smells. Whether your shoulders drop or rise as you walk towards it.

If you can, visit twice before the official viewing, once in daylight and once in the evening. Walk past slowly. Notice which windows are lit in the neighbouring houses and what that says about how people live here. Notice whether you would like to walk home down this street on a dark February night.

The gate and the path

I always stop at the gate. Is it easy to open, or does it stick? Is the path to the door straight, winding, overgrown, paved? What grows beside it?

An overgrown garden gate is one of my favourite things to find. It usually means the house has been waiting for someone, and that the previous owners had stopped tending the edges. Neither is a bad sign. It simply tells you the house will need to be courted a little. Some houses want to be won.

Every house has a story. The question is whether you want to be in the next chapter of it.

Inside: notice your body first

Estate agents will direct your eye to the kitchen island and the square footage. Let them. But before you look at anything, stand just inside the front door and notice what your body does. Do you want to go further in, or back out? Is there a room you feel drawn towards? Is there one you would rather not enter?

Our bodies are very good at reading houses. We have simply been trained to overrule them with spreadsheets.

Five questions I ask in every room

• Where is the light, and when? Morning light and evening light make a room into two different places. Ask which way it faces.
• Where would I sit? If there is nowhere you can imagine sitting down with a cup of tea, the room will probably never be lived in.
• What has this room been used for? A dining room used as a store room for years, a bedroom that was clearly a teenager's, a study that nobody studied in. Rooms remember.
• Where is the heart of the house? Every house has one, usually the kitchen, sometimes a sitting room or a landing with a window seat. If you cannot find the heart, keep looking. If there is none, think carefully.
• What is the house proud of? A beautiful staircase, an old fireplace, a view. And what is it embarrassed about? The cellar, the back bedroom, the bathroom that has not changed since nineteen seventy-nine.

Its personality, and yours

Every house has an archetypal personality. The question is not whether it is a good one, but whether the two of you would get on. A tall, formal townhouse can be wonderful for a woman who likes order and privacy, and quietly suffocating for one who needs to spill out into a garden. A cosy cottage can be heaven or a cage, depending entirely on who is living inside it.

Try describing the house in three words as you leave. Then describe yourself in three words. See how they sit next to each other.

And then, the practical part

None of this replaces a proper survey. Please get one. A house can have a lovely personality and a very unlovely roof. But when you have two houses that both pass the survey, and both fit the budget, and both are near enough the station, this is how you choose between them.

You choose the one that feels like it has been waiting for you. The one where you can already imagine where the kettle will go.

If you are in the middle of a decision like this and would like a second pair of eyes, a House Reading can be done before you buy, too. Some of my favourite readings have been in empty houses, just before they became someone's home.