Meeting the neighbours before buying a house?

[Pigtailsandall]

OK, I'm very prepared for people to tell me I'm being weird or to not to do this, but would it be very strange to knock on a potential new neighbour's door before buying a house?

We have moved from London to a nearby market town where everyone so far has been very friendly. We have found a house which is ideal - it is a 1930s semi, and earlier this week, our offer for it was accepted!

Now, our old London neighbours were horrible. They played loud music and had parties almost every weekend in their garden; they also did some structural work in their house without a party wall agreement. They were bullies who complained about everything - and I really mean everything - our tree dropping a few leaves on their side, the fact that we left the house too early (at 8am to go to work) but then let their dogs bark in the garden from 6pm. So, understandibly, I am very cautious about having nightmare neighbours again. And with a semi, you share a wall and see into each other's gardens etc. even though the area otherwise is very quiet.

So I thought, would it be very strange to knock on the neighbours door to say hello and introduce ourselves before the contracts are exchanged? Just to suss them out (and they might be curious about us too!)

Edit to say - if you lived in a semi where the other side was on market, how would you feel about this?

well that’s fine.. I’m not making them come round to say Hi, just saying I would like it if they did 🤣

Yes absolutely a must! You can do all the research you want on the internet but nothing beats real world experiences which you’ll hear from the neighbours.

The people two doors down are selling and have had no luck. It could be because their immediate left hand neighbour is absolutely unhinged. She's also my immediate right hand neighbour.

She wasn't there this morning though, and there was a viewing. We were loading some stuff into a van on our drive, so I just gave them a little smile and a nod. Young family. I think he wanted to come over and say hi but probably didn't want to intrude. I'd have happily answered any questions though.

If they do buy and move in though, they had a baby and a toddler, so good luck to them with that batshit neighbour who blasts music 24/7. Would I have warned them about her? I really don't know. I'd hate to ruin a potential sale but living next to that woman won't work with two young children (or even with no children. We have no kids and she's an absolute menace).

You kind of do if you want to live in some resemblance of community. No need to be besties but in numbers is strenghts.
If people know each other in a basic way, they are more likely to look out for each other. For example burglaries are less common in areas where community know each other. Probably because people are more likely to report suspicious behaviour around property of people they know.
It also showed during Covid. We shopped bits for our elderly neighbours and vice versa. When another neighbour collapsed at home, her kids stayed with neighbour until the dad arrived.

There are lots of reasons to know your neighbours on basic level. Good reasons.

No, it's during normal hours and I do try to be considerate about it.

I feel like introducing yourself should fall on the people who have been there longer. I'd introduce myself. I don't need to be involved socially, but it's good to know you can knock on a neighbouring door in a real emergency. Just normal community stuff.

It’ll help, but it won’t necessarily give you real answers. My neighbour kisses peoples arses and pretends she’s lovely, but she’s the noisiest bitch in the street and we now hate each other 🤣

A man has bought the house next to me and is renovating it himself , loads of cock ups and poor workmanship , I said to my husband if he sold it I would be tempted to tell any potential buyers to get a full survey for safety reasons !!

I’m not sure. Fair enough if you click I guess but most people have nothing more in common than the geographical area in which they live.

I don’t know that community is a thing anymore - I quite like the idea of living somewhere where people mind their own business.

Our old neighbours did that to us and we didn’t find it weird at all (although, they didn’t tell us they were knocking on to look for red flags in us, and I’ve only just realised that they might have been doing that!). They knocked on, introduced themselves as the buyers and said they were moving from out of the area and just asked us what it was like.

We put our house on the market a month or so after they moved in (nothing to do with them!) so just bear in mind that it isn’t foolproof.

Sure; each step in house purchasing is not intended to eliminate risk but to minimise it. Like most things in life.

I thunk it might give us pause for thought. There's a similar house not too far away that we were also interested in, but it was 90k more expensive (though bigger too) so if it was something really significant like a prop drug den, we might go back to see the other house

Oh that would be cute! We are just south of London. Good luck with your new neighbours!