I need advice and input and insight and other things beginning with 'in', please.
We are now looking through our pot of 'second choice' houses since the house we loved and wanted has been spirited away from us by a particularly dastardly vendor/gazumper combo.
There's this house that we liked, but...
As you can see (can you? is link working?) it's been done up very nicely (black paint work and radiators not to my taste but hardly deal-breaker) by the builder who lives there. He's installed a lot of 'character' back into a 1920's house that was a shell when he bought it. So he's added 19thC pine floorboards downstairs (all screwed in, not a creaky one in sight), installed reclaimed cast iron fireplaces everywhere he can (not over-keen on all of these - toddler-head-smashers - but they look nice) and beautiful, heavyweight reclaimed doors. House in excellent decorative order, as those slimy bastids who work at EAs like to say.
We like it - enough rooms, nice features, excellent refitted and large kitchen, huge expansive gardens...
Ah yes. The gardens. This semi has its own back garden, which the vendor has bricked over and done something a bit twee with a pergola, etc. All un-doable. There are further lawned and bedded areas behind that - it's an L-shaped arrangement and the green space behind the house took our breath away. Loads of room for kids' dens, a veg patch, greenhouses, sheds, playhouse, swing, whatever. He even has a chicken run out there.
BUT: all this green space beyond his bricked-up, pergola area is rented from the Council. He pays a peppercorn rent of £10 for half of it, and a further £10 for the other half, which his next-door neighbour didn't want. The Council basically owns a strip of land behind these houses (all of which used to be council houses and two or three of which, still are) and most people don't take on the option of renting extra garden space because of the upkeep. Apparently, people who own this particular house have rented this land as garden space for the last 45 years.
An additional anomally is that his garage, which is in the back garden at the end of the bricked-up part, is partly on the house's land, and partly on the Council's land. The house has been bought and sold twice since the 80's, when garage was built, so does this mean it's 'ok'? Seems very fishy to me. We'd want to convert garage into office for DH and utility space, so it would make a difference to us if someone came along and asked us to tear it down.
One of our main reasons for being very interested is all the garden space. It backs onto a strip of woodland that's owned by the local council for the benefit of the village, which is nice also. House is on a mian road (30 mph though) which is a big down-side for me, and there are also rumours of a by-pass from the local town being built across this main road at some point in next 10-15 years. We are told it's v. unlikely to happen in next 5, certainly. This is not our forever house - we envisage being in it for next 3-5 years (until DH gets a job in another part of the country, basically).
What would you do? Would the fact that the Council own all the lovely green parts of the garden put you off buying? (I suppose there's a chance they could claim the land back - despite what the EA says, there is enough room to build a strip of houses there, and they own the land and access at the back, too.)
Am seriously confused, and aware my judgement is clouded because I'm 21 wks pregnant and would dearly love to be settled somewhere before the baby arrives!
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Nice house, lovely garden - but council owns garden! WWYD?
21 replies
ReshapeWhileDamp · 15/08/2010 07:42
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