House with driveway at the back

[HomeSeeker2025]

Hi all,

I'm house hunting and there's this one with a shared driveway to access all the gardens/garages at the rear of the houses along the street.

It's tricky to explain but hope the pic attached is clear. The house is circled in orange and the shared driveway is the light blue dashes.

The gate to access is locked (I think) but I worry about it being used as a dumping ground or attracting undesirables or am I being paranoid?

Also worried with the house being right next to the driveway access which doesn't look as nice as I'd like, but maybe good as less noise from another neighbour that side.

Does anyone have any experience of a similar set up?

I'm in an apartment so very sheltered. Any thoughts welcome!

From the pic looking on my phone I can't make out where your parking

I wouldn't we have shared parking at the back and all was fine until a family moved in with 4 cars plus constant visitors with cars and repeatedly parked in my space or would park behind each other so it was really hard to get out of the space. Plus all the crap that gets dumped round their. Its been an absolute ball ache. Although this isnt a drive its parking spaces so might be different

I’d rather park on the front of my house, you only need one knobhead neighbour blocking the way………

It looks like the driveway is at the front. And at the back you have a back lane.

I wouldn’t say this was a drive - surely it’s just a back alley/access way? You own a drive, it’s part of your own property.

We have a garage and driveway thats sort of at the back of our house. The driveway sort of runs behind our back garden, can fit 2-3 cars. It’s got another garage and driveway next to it for the house on the other side, but the split between them is clearly marked by a brick line running through. We’ve never had any issues with anyone else parking on the drive, and we have a security system so one of the cameras points over the garage and drive for extra reassurance. The only issue we’ve ever had it people parking in front of the driveway and blocking it, but thats sort of thing can happen regardless of where the driveway is.

Saying that, the one you’ve pictured looks more like an alleyway with access to the back gardens, in which case I’d be worried about people dumping rubbish down there and teenagers using it as a gathering place to smoke as I had the same issue at a previous property.

We had parking like this in our old house. It wasn’t N issue. We did have allocated spaces though.

Nope. A drive and garage are deal breakers for me.

My garage is to rear of my property but access via a shared road. The access road is actually owned by the electricity company, and we all pay to rent a key to access the gates for the road.
plus points : no maintenance, and (in theory) highly secure. No problem with being blocked in. Better than parking on the road which can be a race track and makes it awkward for emergency services.
negative points: people refuse to lock the gates, because they don’t want to pay for the key rental annually. So one or two house that do have a key leave it open for others/there business partners etc. I was beaten up as one householder wanted my key, they didn’t get it! (I’m 5’2” female mid fifties who fights dirty) Ironically opening the gates is a pain, especially when the weather is horrible. We do get some antisocial idiots who think they can do whatever they want. There are cameras up, but reality is this happens in a lot of the country, private road/gated access or not. It does look awful as people just don’t care and dump all sorts outside their garages, which the electricity board do make them clear up every so often.
on balance, I wouldn’t buy a property like this again, but it’s immensely better than no parking at all.

It looks like what we have here, and what we fondly call 'the back passage'. 😂

If you have sufficient parking at the front of the house then I can't see there would be any problems. You would need to find out who owns the road though, and who is responsible for maintaining it. There is also the question of right of way.

The road at the back of ours is maintained by the council and is a public road although it doesn't really go anywhere except back on itself.

Thanks for all the comments.

I should have been clearer but there is a driveway at the front, and most of the houses on the street have driveways so it wouldn't be used for parking.

This back road seems to be for access to the back of gardens/garages at the rear. There's a photo (attached) and its all grassy and overgrown at the back, no tyre marks so no evidence of cars driving up there at all.

Good shout about finding out who it belongs to and how we access it.

It feels a bit exposed looking at the pic from the back but if the road isn't used much maybe it doesn't matter so much.

I'm trying to share the Rightmove listing but struggling for some reason.

I'm going to view it and hopefully get out there to have a look round to see if anyone's dumped anything out the back of their gardens.

At the front where the cars are?

It only takes one family to ruin your enjoyment of your own space. I moved house to get away from awful neighbours in this type of set up. They would block us in and then claim to have had a drink if we asked them to move their car, but would be sober 30 minutes later when they needed to pop out.

I lived with almost the exact set up - the houses all had drives and parking on the front, but we had our garages at the back which could be accessed via a shared lane. Some folk also parked at the back either in the garage, in front of the garage or next to it. Never had a single issue.

Would be a solid no from me.

Thats not a shared drive though? You have driveways at the front and the blue lines are back streets.

Looks lovely with a large back garden and storage.
I'm sure the other residents wouldn't put up with undesirables hanging around the back.
You've your private parking at the front and private garden,.which will get lots of sun being the end house.
Ask neighbours what it's like. It will give you an idea of the place.
Good luck with the viewing, you'll get a feeling if you love it.

Son lives in a property and they have the same setup. It becomes a dumping ground for the whole area and security at the back is a big issue with people wandering by at the rear all the time.

Our last house had a back lane between the house and garage, with the garden actually behind the garage. Never had a problem.

We have a standard front drive, now and it can a pain when the road outside is busy or some plonker parks directly opposite then disappears for the day, just to avoid paying for a proper car park.

It’s not a driveway. We have similar that runs behind my block of houses, never been an issue.

its that al rubbish piled up outside the next door block? That would bother me more.

I lived in a house with exact same situation. I was also next to the alley/gate.

It was honestly never an issue. It was good not to have another neighbour that side to be honest. It was a locked gate so no one else was ever down the side causing a problem. Some houses used it daily to get cars out of their garages. One had a sofa delivered to their house along it (presumably it wouldn't fit in the front door!). It was fine. I'd buy another again without hesitation, as long as there was a locked gate.

Most of the houses also had drives at the front for cars.