I pulled off years of thick ivy from a brick bungalow. No special tools needed. Just lots of patience, thick gloves and pruning clippers. Once you get a good handful of vines, they pull off relatively easily.

When I got my mom's house ready to sell, I had to deal with ivy growing on white stucco on the north side; also on gray brick chimney with gray weeping mortar. The house was 50+ years old. The ivy had been dealt with from time to time, but there was still a mess.

I agree with "worthy", but must add that on stucco, at least, we used a scraper, too, because not all pulled off easily. And, it left "rootlets" or "suckers" or I-don't-know-what-you-call-it-attachers stuck to the stucco because they couldn't work their way into it. Those were a mess to get off. Kinda scraped/sanded/covered with paint--they were mostly up high. Then, we repainted the area.

I think we cut the bases of the vines days before we started, hoping to let the stuff start to die. And, there're products at the garden center to put on the cut stems to kill them, to keep it from coming back.

If you're really interested in the house, maybe put it in the offer that the seller has to deal with the ivy or a $$$ allowance for you dealing with it. With a stucco exterior, and this is just my opinion based on my experience, the ivy didn't seem to damage the stucco like it might have damaged brick, so I wouldn't let it stop me from buying if that was the main concern. Maybe pull off a test piece?

Yes, the ivy truly looks a mess. I was able to pull of pieces of vine and could see no damage underneath. However, the patio has thick vining that looks as if it is grown into the stucco. It's comforting to know that there are chemicals to kill the ivy and that removing ivy is doable. I will ask for a price decrease because of the ivy. The family ( lived there 53 yrs. ) have already moved out. Thanks for sharing your experience.

I wouldn't be so quick to remove the ivy. It looks really nice and provides the stucco protection from the UV rays of the sun. I doubt the little ivy tendrils do any serious damage to stucco.

So remove your ivy and paint your house green every 5 years or so.

Thirty years ago during the year before I retired from the US Navy (Submariner) we rented a house in Fairfax, VA.

Turns out the owners of the home had gone back to their native South America.... but during their stay here they had cultivated the ivy growing on the chimney for many years.

I had never seen Poison Ivy with trunks the size of a large baseball bat!

Sorry, no tips to share. We did not try to remove it.

It was POISON ivy and not English ivy???

Yes, POISON ivy.

We lived there for a year.... I suspect they'd been cultivating it for many years!