Owning your own home

Ooh yeah. So much potential and would look so much better after some serious TLC, and you could do it yourself on a sensible budget if there weren't any underlying structural problems, damp or similar.

I would definitely keep that fireplace! Love that combination of a modern house in a nice mature garden and I have a thing for wooden cladding. I'd be tempted to take that down, shou sugi ban it and put it up again if it's fundamentally sound.

The price is probably affected by the next door neighbours (a traveller site - wouldn't bother me, I don't think everyone is that open minded) and the floodplain thing. Although I'm not sure how real the flooding risk is: the Lea is very managed, last flooded in 1947, the rubble dumped on the marshes after the blitz raised the whole area by 2m and although the Lea system last filled virtually to capacity in 2000 a lot of extra work has been done since then including the Olympic Park flood mitigation measures, Three Mills Lock etc.

All that said, it's still in a medium risk area so even if you didn't have flooding problems you might have a getting a mortgage problem.