house on pedestrian access only street

[stilllovingmysleep]

Would you consider buying a house on a small road with pedestrian access only? (that's the question really!)

[ragged]

yes for sure

[Psipssina]

We saw a beautiful house last year, only got to see the photos as it was snapped up really quickly - it was much cheaper than it should have been because it was accessed via a long footpath with no parking anywhere near.

We couldn't have managed without parking anyway, sadly - three children, various school runs and so on. The thing is though - how do you move in with no removal van? How do you get deliveries - esp large items?

Do you have visitors who can manage the walk from the nearest car park?

That sort of thing.

[stilllovingmysleep]

exactly, that's my worry. But about building work? what if you need to do something major like a loft conversion? what about deliveries? the moving itself? visitors? bringing shopping in?

Nearby streets have no restrictions and they're less than a minute away but I'm really worried about the parking issue.

It's pretty, a lovely house that we can afford on an extremely quiet villagey like pedestrian-access only little street. Children can play freely there etc. But I do worry whether my heart is speaking rather than my mind.

[Eastpoint]

Do you have children? Complete pain if you have shopping to carry in, a pushchair & two children too small to be left in either the car or the house. Think about coming back home with tired children when it's raining in the winter. Fine if you are a single adult who shops frequently buying one or two days food at a time.

[eurochick]

No. Just too inconvenient.

[SanityClause]

I have done, before we had children, and then again with a toddler and baby, for six months.

I agree with the comments about parking. We could usually park close by, but sometimes it was quite a way, and you might have to carry a lot of heavy shopping bags. However, because there was restricted parking, we often had to knock on a neighbour's door, or they on ours, to ask them to move their car, which meant we got to know our neighbours quite well, so it was a very friendly place to live.

Our house had a loading bay nearby, so deliveries were not a problem.

We were in a village centre, where there were lots of bars and restaurants, nearby, so it could be quite loud at night, particularly in summer, when we had open windows.

You would need to carefully consider the logistics, but all house buying involves compromises, so it could well be worth it.

[Psipssina]

In that case, ask the neighbours how they manage - sounds like things could be done with a few adaptations.

Ours just had no parking anywhere, you would have to walk about half a mile.

[stilllovingmysleep]

we're going for a second viewing and I will ask the vendors. For example, they've done a conservatory in their house: how did they manage to get builders in?

[ragged]

We walk or cycle to the shops & everywhere else (cycle trailers, too), so most of this doesn't apply to us (we have 4 kids).

I imagine the price being asked reflects the limited market demand.

Moving heavy furniture back & forth would be the challenge, ime, but that's a one-off usually. The movers have little trolleys for this kind of purpose, so fine as long as there's a smooth enough paved path.

[Pico2]

Is worry about it being difficult to sell later.

[stripytees]

No. I don't even have a car but I can think of way too many issues like deliveries (a parcel might get to you but what about a new sofa?) and getting work done in the house (for example the guys who ripped out my old kitchen insisted on having parking space right outside the front gate and when my new engineered floor arrived they would only offload it to nearest access point so you would be carrying the heavy boxes all that distance). Unless the house was really special, it just wouldn't be worth it.

[OctoberOctober]

No. I found it annoying enough when I took ds to a play date the other week where I had to park in the next road and carry sleeping brother over there with me. Same type of road, total pita if you have kids.

[PlainHunting]

No. It would be really annoying and inconvenient.

[Ruhrpott]

We bought a house on a single track lane which is bad enough. Not sure I would buy one with no access. We have problems with deliveries. Trying to get an engineered wooden floor delivered was fun especially when they rung me up from the bottom of the lane in a 19 ton lorry, even though I had warned them about the lane before I committed to the order. I had to turn them away and tell them to come back in a ford transit van.
We also had to do the removals ourselves with a few trips in a rented ford transit as no firm wanted to do it for a reasonable cost. TESCO will deliver to ours but they complain as our neighbour parks on the turning circle and blocks it.
You can quite often get deliveries to the nearest point and then have to do the last bit yourselves. Everything is possible but much more difficult. We also have to take the bins down the lane every week as the bin lorry can't get up either.

[sianihedgehog]

Unless you're elderly or disabled I can't really see it being a problem, unless there's absolutely no parking or access nearby.

[meadowquark]

I moved into the house with pedestrian access (about 30 meters walk to the front door from the allocated parking). I would not want it if I had babies/toddlers, but as mine are 4 and 7 and do not need buggies (obviously) and do not fall asleep in the car, it is OK. The house has lots of other benefits which outweigh the parking.