One of many old trends.

1. Figure out the cost of new cladding for the home, removing the brick veneer, offer at a discount & see if the seller bites.

2. Check with a stucco contractor

3. This would look significantly better if painted off white, would that help?

It's called weeping mortar and sometimes it can look kinda nice.

I thought it was ice cream mortar, I don’t like it either, but white paint would help for sure. It would be an expensive paint job too.

I had no idea this type of brick lay had a name. Wow. I thought that it was a mistake or lazy job LOL

That's not a great example of it.

I guess you have to decide if everything you like about the house outweighs the exterior, or makes the cost of renovating the exterior worth it.

Where I live the housing market dictates that the exterior is not all that important to a lot of people if the interior meets their criteria.

I looked at my house out of curiosity because I thought it was ugly and I wanted to see the inside. And I ended up buying it because of the Floorplan, the amount of light the interior gets and the two private outdoor spaces. There are some prettier houses in the neighborhood and some of them are dark all day long and have odd layouts.

If I couldn't have both I would rather have the good interior.

Of course the landscaping helps but there is not a great picture of just the weeping mortar on this house. But I like the weeping mortar as it is,

Better than I like the solution here: on a pretty similar house overall. Notice that they raked the mortar joints next to the windows to allow shutters to sit flattier.

*Maybe white would work better than gray, but I am not sure painting is the solution.

Actually here is a closer picture of the first house

You can cover the brick with siding:

https://cementanswers.com/what-can-you-cover-exterior-brick-with/

Also known as 'extruded mortar'.

I have seen this in north Texas when I lived there. Personally, I would not paint it because the results. Ray so much. But I will say that I have disliked the exterior of a few of my previous homes. But I bought them because the floor plans were excellent as were the neighborhoods. They did grow on me as years passed. Yours is a challenge…I’ll admit.

Hammer and chisel and... lots of spare time?

Not a big fan. I’ve never seen that before. Can it be blasted off and then Acid washed?

Cebehatz, nope got a professional opinion and it can’t be fixed in any way that would make it look “acceptable”. What’s funny is this particular house is in a hot market. All surrounding homes on sale were pending within 3 days. This one stayed on market for three weeks and suddenly went off market. Hmm…

I would be really interested to see a pic of this house in its entirety - all we can see is the close up. Is it an attractive house otherwise? As others have said maybe this is your ticket into a good house in a desireable neighborhood at a lower price than you might get otherwise.

The color combination of brick/mortar/door is actually quite nice. The idea of painting it all white - ugghhh. It's the texture that is problematic (maybe), not the color. It would just become a white painted house with big globs of mortar oozing out, i.e. not an improvement. And then once the peeling and chipping began and dirt getting in all the nooks and crannies it would look even worse.

PS - I was being only partially facetious about the hammer and chisel. It would still look quite rustic, just not so..... blobby. Some of those other pics - OMG, even more extreme. How do they do that? Reminds me of those big funguses that grow sideways off of trees. Just wanna knock em down!

I would question if the black color is fungus or mold ?…that would add to the prob