House Hunters International - General Discussion

[juliet73]

19 hours ago, Tara1665 said:

Puerta Vallarta couple...did anyone else find it strange they were concerned about a bedroom with balcony for their 6yo and not concerned about letting him go to the infinity pool , with no gaurd on the cliff side,  by himself while they watch from the balcony? I mean how hard would it be to put a child proof lock on the door?

Is that why they put him in that tiny room?  

[proserpina65]

On ‎01‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 0:26 AM, JasmineFlower said:

I can't stand these episodes where one spouse will be traveling a lot and doesn't seem to care at all that the other spouse will be alone or alone with a kid a decent amount of time and their comfort zone isn't what the other spouse's is and what they want sits at odds with that. This was an otherwise cute couple in Devon, England, but I liked the husband less and less as the episode progressed because of this. You know what wasn't in that after? Her with friends, her son making friends, or her and her son socializing or mentioning any of that being easy where they wound up. Annoys the heck out of me.

Yeah, the house in town was much better for her (at least based on what we were told/shown).

[proserpina65]

On ‎01‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 6:10 PM, Spunkygal said:

I did not like the Devon couple. She was afraid to be with a child in "the middle of nowhere" (give me a break!!) and he wanted rural but bitched about a nearby farm. He wanted peace and quiet and didn't want to hear a tractor. Never mind that the tractor wouldn't be running 24/7 and would probably be in operation only certain times of the year and during the day when he's at work. And I get irritated when they see a church and immediately say "oh there must be a cemetery nearby." Well, buddy, those neighbors are quieter than tractors. But I don't t remember seeing a cemetery near the church/house they chose. 

Some of us are unreasonably freaked out by cemeteries (me and London real estate guy Richard, for example).  I could never buy/rent someplace where I could see a cemetery.  It's crazy, I know.  That said, there were bigger issues to that house, imo, than the possible proximity of the dearly departed.  Closeness to shops being a big one.

 

Quote

It's like people who buy a house near and airport and complain about planes or next to a zoo and complain about the noise from the animals.  Clueless.

Or the ones who move next to a farm and complain because cow poop smells.

Edited January 18, 2017 by proserpina65

[CherryAmes]

Yeah,  not being walking distance to stuff would have been a major dealbreaker for me when we lived in England because I don't drive.  Train service is awesome there but that's for getting into London or wherever not for popping down to the store for a loaf of bread!  Even people I knew who did drive weren't always happy to drive on the "wrong" side of the road or else didn't have a car anyway so it was a moot point.

[WildPlum]

On 1/17/2017 at 1:32 PM, Tara1665 said:

Puerta Vallarta couple...did anyone else find it strange they were concerned about a bedroom with balcony for their 6yo and not concerned about letting him go to the infinity pool , with no gaurd on the cliff side,  by himself while they watch from the balcony? I mean how hard would it be to put a child proof lock on the door?

Or just extend the railings and make the second tier of railings into a locking "gate" so that at night the patio door could be open for a breeze but the balcony would be completely enclosed.

[chocolatine]

I just watched the Sicily episode. Did I understand correctly the renovation ended up costing $90k on top of the $18k purchase price, and it was still unfinished after a year? If so, I don't understand the appeal of buying in that tiny Sicilian village. Other than the friendly people and the bread art, there didn't seem to be much going on there - no beaches or vineyards, and not close to any larger cities. He could have bought a vacation home for a similar amount of money in a much more interesting/scenic area of Europe, like the Provence couple from a few weeks ago who spent $112k total for their beautiful place.

[magemaud]

Gangi Sicily was way too "sleepy" and isolated for my taste, but I guess it would suit an artist who wanted to "get away from it all." Yes, he did say that he spent $ 90K on the reno and that it was almost finished. I found this info about the "One Euro" house incentive:

In 2014, the local administration under a dynamic mayor began disposing of abandoned houses with some being given away and others being sold for a nominal price. The recipients had to agree to spend at least 35,000 euros on restoration within five years. The giveaway is a means to stimulate tourism-related activities and diversify the local economy, which was primarily dependent on agriculture and animal husbandry. The scheme has proved a great success.

[debraran]

13 hours ago, CherryAmes said:

Yeah,  not being walking distance to stuff would have been a major dealbreaker for me when we lived in England because I don't drive.  Train service is awesome there but that's for getting into London or wherever not for popping down to the store for a loaf of bread!  Even people I knew who did drive weren't always happy to drive on the "wrong" side of the road or else didn't have a car anyway so it was a moot point.

That's true. My daughter lived there a  year in college and a year afterwards. I said once to her, not thinking, well isn't there a bus or train and she's like " To London or other large cities but I want a grocery store"  Her second time there, she lived in Brighton (I missed the HHI show on that city) and could walk to stores, restaurants, beach, it was much nicer.

[mojito]

Gangi, Sicily. I'm with you, @magemaud, I'd rather spend my money elsewhere. I wonder what percentage of the homes are occupied? I imagine having rats for neighbors and hearing bumps in the night and wondering what it might be. 

[thosme]

I was in Greenock, Scotland about 2 years ago.  My husband and I stopped at  a grocery store to look for pretzels (4 different bags of pretzels in an entire aisle of chips, but that's not my point.). Anyway, I went to the covered parking lot and waited for my husband.  There was a long line of cabs and people getting in them continually.  I was fascinated because I had never seen anything like this before.  In my young twenties I was in cities and my roommates and I would walk back and forth.  From my mid-twenties on I've had cars.

[Peanutbuttercup]

Granted I don't know that much about children, but were those Amsterdam little girls a bit too old for cribs, diapers, and not knowing how to walk up and down stairs (the dad mentioned to the mom, "you're going to have to teach them how to use the stairs")?

[Babalooie]

We can only hope that Negative Ned Amsterdam dad meant how to use the stairs SAFELY, like holding onto the handrails.  Who knows with that guy!!!

[mojito]

Poland (by way of the UK) to Australia:

Nice couple. They had their priorities, and stuck to them. I can so relate to their excitement at being in the land of sun that the size of home wasn't a very big deal. Proximity to the beach (and more sun!) was. She was happy for the large balcony despite it's total lack of scenery. An outdoor life is what mattered most. Good on 'em.

[NYGirl]

Except it was such a small apartment with no bedroom for the baby..  

[mojito]

Indianapolis to London:

I'm with the husband. That pub place was very tempting. I wondered how one handles going in and out of the home after pub hours? The place they picked was nice and the street was attractive.

[Ohwell]

I guess the place the London couple picked made the most sense, and it was nice, but I loved the place over the pub.  If I'm going to spend some time in another country, I'd much rather live in a fun, safe place, and that pub did look like it was in a nice, safe neighborhood.  Plus, the kid was too young to be negatively influenced by living over the pub.  (To be sure, I wouldn't be living over a pub if I had a teenager though, lol.)  

[chocolatine]

5 hours ago, mojito said:

Indianapolis to London:

I'm with the husband. That pub place was very tempting. I wondered how one handles going in and out of the home after pub hours? The place they picked was nice and the street was attractive.

Maybe it was a 24-hour pub?

[NYGirl]

Richard!!!  Twice in two weeks I got to see my British boyfriend.  I was about to go to bed and then I heard....the voice!!  I slowly sat back down.

I loved the block of the apartment they picked but boy oh boy that pub apartment.. I loved it.  I too wonder how you get in after hours.

[Babalooie]

The pubs in the UK are family friendly and the pub grub is tasty and comparatively inexpensive.   I would love that place, butterflies and all.

[Irlandesa]

I would imagine they would have keys to get into the pub if it were closed.  And I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't employ a little TV magic where they don't actually go through a bar area but that the apartment and pub share a main entrance and that the pub can be locked separately.

I would love the convenience of pub grub but I'd worry about the noise.   They said it was well insulated but it wasn't that busy when they were there and insulation wouldn't help much if the windows were open.  Smoke and conversations outside of the pub would waft up.  I also thought the neighborhood looked a little isolated even if it was more centrally located.  I like trees so I would have gone with the one they chose.

[Kohola3]

16 minutes ago, Irlandesa said:

I would love the convenience of pub grub but I'd worry about the noise.

And the smell.  Someplace that cooks a lot of greasy food can be pretty malodorous.

[Ohwell]

Yeah, I can understand that there might be issues with the smell and smoke and noise.  I don't know how long that couple plans to stay in England but if it's for a year or two, I think I could have handled it.

Like I said, the other place made more sense but I still liked the pub.

[biakbiak]

On 1/21/2017 at 2:43 PM, chocolatine said:

Maybe it was a 24-hour pub?

Unlikely in London. 

I lived above above a pub in Dublin one summer and it was the smell rather than the noise that got me, the noise issues might be different if I was trying to get a toddler to bed at 8 pm which is when it was it's busiest/noisiest. We had a separate entrance and it was handy for grabbing a pint or food when feeling super lazy.

Edited January 23, 2017 by biakbiak

[chocolatine]

5 minutes ago, biakbiak said:

Unlikely in London. 

Why? The 24-hour drinking law went into effect in 2005, and plenty of pubs have taken advantage of it since then.

[biakbiak]

34 minutes ago, chocolatine said:

Why? The 24-hour drinking law went into effect in 2005, and plenty of pubs have taken advantage of it since then.

Most of the ones that are smaller and more neighborhoody, as this one seemed to be, havent.

Even most of the bars/clubs (as opposed to pubs) who took advantage of the change still close at 2:00 am/3:30 am so really aren't 24 hours.

Edited to add BBC article about the10 year anniversary of the law showing that very few pubs, stay open past midnight even if they can. Which has definitely been my experience when visiting.

Quote

Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that - contrary to the headlines - actual 24-hour licences were extremely rare. Closing times have been extended by an average of less than 30 minutes, says Brigid Simmonds from the BBPA. Most pubs do not stay open until midnight even if they are allowed to.

Edited January 23, 2017 by biakbiak

[AlleC17]

I loved the pub apartment too...they wanted to be close to pubs and restaurants, right?  ;-p  I think before signing that lease, I would want to get an idea of the noise at night.  I stayed in a wonderful B&B in Armagh, No. Ireland once and it had a pub.  The noise was pretty bad at night on the weekends...weekdays, not so bad.  I did like the place they chose.  Nice neighborhood.

Edited January 23, 2017 by AlleC17

[Ohwell]

If the pubs close down before midnight, then it's not so bad.  I do recall seeing British tv shows where kids are in the pubs so I guess they really are kid friendly.  So the only thing I would be worried about is the smoke.  

[BlossomCulp]

Unless things have changed since I lived over there there is no smoking in pubs anymore.

[Ohwell]

That's great!

[chessiegal]

No smoking in the pubs when we were in London last June.

[chocolatine]

No smoking inside the pubs, but people can go outside for a smoke between pints. If you live above the pub and like to keep your windows open, smoke gets into the apartment.

[Irlandesa]

2 hours ago, chocolatine said:

No smoking inside the pubs, but people can go outside for a smoke between pints. If you live above the pub and like to keep your windows open, smoke gets into the apartment.

Exactly.  I'd be worried less about what happens inside of the pub and more what happens outside of it.

[StatisticalOutlier]

15 hours ago, Irlandesa said:

Exactly.  I'd be worried less about what happens inside of the pub and more what happens outside of it.

I remember how thrilled I was when smoking started being banned indoors.  Then everybody started smoking outdoors, and I now wish they'd all go back inside and I'd just avoid the places that were smoky.  Avoiding the outdoors is a lot trickier.

[abbyzenn]

London couple - I thought the apartment w/ the scaffling was better because it was larger but I knew it wouldn't be the one they picked because obviously someone was living there.

Canada to Waterloo - boy was the friend annoying.  You don't have to live in the heart of a city which is  an hour each way commute from your job to meet people.  It's not like she was looking at places in the countryside where your nearest neighbor was  two miles away.  I did think all three apartments were really nice and that city one would have been terrific if she was working in the city. 

Sicily guy - funny that he kept talking about wanting views and then the follow up centered on his wonderful patio which only had a view of the sky.

[mojito]

Toronto to Waterloo:

The friend was trying hard to get the home renter out of her comfort zone. I could relate to both women. But if you want grass and trees, you gotta go with that. I think moving to Belgium was a big enough leap. Baby steps....

Edited January 25, 2017 by mojito

[vesperholly]

On 1/23/2017 at 8:52 PM, chocolatine said:

No smoking inside the pubs, but people can go outside for a smoke between pints. If you live above the pub and like to keep your windows open, smoke gets into the apartment.

Which I can confirm, having lived above an outdoors-only smoker, is the absolute worst. If only they would walk 3-4 feet away from the building ... that's far enough to let the smoke dissipate, but nooooo they had to snuggle the wall and it was like someone threw butts in my window every time they lit up. Even keeping the windows closed didn't do it because the furnace vents sucked in external, smoky air. It was torture and I ended up moving house to get away from it.

[Tara1665]

 Netherland couple....she thought a houseboat with no railings whatsoeverwas ok for the 2 yo but the other 2 places were death traps.  She was a nut and who thought she was cute and by God she goes with her heart.   but he knew how to deal with her.  I liked the third one.  

[AuntiePam]

1 minute ago, Tara1665 said:

 Netherland couple....she thought a houseboat with no railings whatsoever was ok for the 2 yo but the other 2 places were death traps.  She was a nut and who thought she was cute and by God she goes with her heart.   but he knew how to deal with her.  I liked the third one.  

I turned it off after she commented that a floor looked "unfinished" -- she worried that the two-year-old would hurt her feet if she walked barefoot on it.  

Husband was cute.

[chocolatine]

6 hours ago, Tara1665 said:

 Netherland couple....she thought a houseboat with no railings whatsoeverwas ok for the 2 yo but the other 2 places were death traps.  She was a nut and who thought she was cute and by God she goes with her heart.   but he knew how to deal with her.  I liked the third one.  

Yeah, she was annoying. I thought the houseboat would have been perfect for a couple without kids though. I really liked the living space and decor in the third place, but having the washer and dryer in the kid's room was all kinds of awkward.

As much as I enjoy the NL episodes, was this the second Groningen episode of the season? I wish they'd mix it up a bit.

[JasmineFlower]

Extremely interesting he said she found him arrogant when they first met. Like I get it as a first impression, but after some time, it's not pot meet kettle as I suspected, it's just wow, no no, you're the arrogant one, honey. I don't think it's because his command of English was greater than hers either. She just came off stuck up and hard to please for the most part. Seems to me the "arrogant Brit" is more like a lighthearted, charming Brit who keeps her laughing when she might take things entirely too seriously. If he didn't crack a few of those jokes I barely would've have known she had the ability to have anything besides a RBF, let alone smile and laugh.

Very happy to not just see a country we rarely do on HHI, but a city I don't think has been featured before. Enjoyed the new setting a lot. I hope there will be something else in the area in the future and I would love to see more of Gdansk next time, though Sopot and Gdynia were charming and quite nice to see. Amazing how great those older properties looked and that the history of the city felt well preserved. With the devastation Poland suffered during WWII and certainly this area suffered a lot of destruction, I wasn't sure if the cities would seem older as they truly are or more modern.

[Christine]

Milan - does the woman realize that Milan isn't Bum F***, Italy?  We have Italian relatives who have lived there forever and we've seen every flat in which they've lived - all gorgeous, up-to-date flats, much larger than the last option they had but along the same line.

And could she possibly learn how to pronounce Milanese correctly?  

[AuntiePam]

The flat they chose in Milan -- I'm claustrophobic and couldn't have slept a night in that bedroom.  Husband was very accommodating, I thought.  

[Ohwell]

On 1/27/2017 at 1:00 AM, JasmineFlower said:

Extremely interesting he said she found him arrogant when they first met. Like I get it as a first impression, but after some time, it's not pot meet kettle as I suspected, it's just wow, no no, you're the arrogant one, honey. I don't think it's because his command of English was greater than hers either. She just came off stuck up and hard to please for the most part. Seems to me the "arrogant Brit" is more like a lighthearted, charming Brit who keeps her laughing when she might take things entirely too seriously. If he didn't crack a few of those jokes I barely would've have known she had the ability to have anything besides a RBF, let alone smile and laugh.

I think that's a repeat episode, I remember some of us cracking on her RBF.  In the opening scene she wouldn't even look into the camera.  I honestly didn't understand why she agreed to do the show because, surely, it was beneath her.  

[chocolatine]

2 hours ago, AuntiePam said:

The flat they chose in Milan -- I'm claustrophobic and couldn't have slept a night in that bedroom.  Husband was very accommodating, I thought.  

The ducking under beams to get in and out of the kitchen and shower would drive me crazy. I thought the girlfriend was a piece of work, like having a functional living space was beneath her.

6 hours ago, Christine said:

And could she possibly learn how to pronounce Milanese correctly?  

Her Italian pronunciation was terrible even in the "three months later" footage. The boyfriend, who'd never been to Italy before, had much better pronunciation.

[abbyzenn]

I can't believe that guy agreed to that apartment in Milan - I wonder how many times he's bumped his head on those beams?  Seems like a very uncomfortable way to live.  The girlfriend seemed like a total drip.  And she said one of those things that really really annoys me about the gray tile in the bathroom.  It's an apartment you're going to live in for only a year or two and you can't put up with gray tile?????  How much time do you spend in the bathroom anyway?? 

[BlossomCulp]

13 minutes ago, abbyzenn said:

And she said one of those things that really really annoys me about the gray tile in the bathroom.  It's an apartment you're going to live in for only a year or two and you can't put up with gray tile?????

And a lot of the time it isn't even a year.  One I watched not long ago, IIRC she was a yoga instructor in Amsterdam, anyway after all the angst of choosing her Perfect Apartment turns out she moved to Spain within a few months.  Honestly people who are on HHI and aren't honest about their story should probably avoid having a social media presence on the Internet!  It's not hard to find details if you want especially when the story screams "what the hell" to the nosy viewer :).

Edited January 30, 2017 by BlossomCulp

[chessiegal]

I'm inclined to believe it's the producers who concoct the backstory, not the house hunters.

[cyberfruit]

On 1/25/2017 at 9:16 PM, chocolatine said:

Yeah, she was annoying. I thought the houseboat would have been perfect for a couple without kids though. I really liked the living space and decor in the third place, but having the washer and dryer in the kid's room was all kinds of awkward.

As much as I enjoy the NL episodes, was this the second Groningen episode of the season? I wish they'd mix it up a bit.

And I wish xfinity would stop messing around and quit removing on-demand episodes at whim because I haven't seen *either* of them! I love the NL episodes. 

Edited January 30, 2017 by cyberfruit

[chocolatine]

Just now, cyberfruit said:

And I wish xfinity would stop messing around and quit removing episodes at whim because I haven't seen *either* of them! I love the NL episodes. 

Did they remove them from your DVR? They may still be available on demand.

[cyberfruit]

23 minutes ago, chocolatine said:

Did they remove them from your DVR? They may still be available on demand.

No, they're not available to watch on demand. Xfinity doesn't load entire seasons and will remove episodes randomly. For example, episode 18 was in London and episode 20 was in Waterloo. I have no idea where episode 19 is located because it's not listed. Same with episodes 16 and 17.

Edited January 30, 2017 by cyberfruit