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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to be pissed off about the house next door being converted into bedsits?

101 replies

belfastbigmillie · 09/03/2013 19:27

We live in a residential street where all the other houses are families or old people. The people next door to us sold their house but now it turns out that they sold it to builders. They are converting it into 2 studio flats (definitely without planning permission because we checked). There is only about 2 feet between their house and ours and we share a fence etc. It overlooks our garden. I'm not too happy about it. In my mind studio flats = young people/noise/ parties or single dodgy blokes. Either way it doesn't feel good to me. Can I do anything about it? Will it devalue our house? BTW we don't live in the kind of area where it will attract professional singles etc.

OP posts:
LessMissAbs · 09/03/2013 20:44

So what I get from the OP (and others) posts on this thread is:

Don't get an education beyond school level;
Live at home until you rent or buy your own place but do not share with other people or live in a flat, it must be a house;
Treat those people who don't do the above and become doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers, etc with great suspicion due to their dodgy backgrounds;
Keep your brick to throw at strangers handy.

AThingInYourLife · 09/03/2013 20:49

YANBU at all.

The last thing you want is this kind of dodgy unofficial multi-occupancy bullshit going on on your street.

It will devalue your house.

Not because of the neighbours being poor, but because of them being more numerous and without the infrastructure to support them.

If you're from Belfast, you know where this ends up.

getmeaginandtonicnow · 09/03/2013 20:51

Have been a student. Have lived next door to students. My DCs are students. No thanks - YANBU OP. Have yet to meet a student who doesn't have loud music playing at all hours, it's miserable when you're the neighbour. No, they're not bad people etc etc, just young, but it doesn't make it any easier to stick!

LessMissAbs · 09/03/2013 20:52

Not because of the neighbours being poor, but because of them being more numerous and without the infrastructure to support them.

AThingInYourLife I don't think you have read the whole thread. With there only being two studio flats, its rather more likely that the OP's household will contain more members than the house that is being converted.

kim147 · 09/03/2013 20:53

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

AThingInYourLife · 09/03/2013 20:56

There's no way a house will be converted into two one room flats.

The only reason to split it into flats is to squeeze in more people.

Multiple households jimmied in where once there was one can cause massive problems.

LessMissAbs · 09/03/2013 20:58

Apparantly its quite a small, ex-council house AThingInYourLife and will indeed be converted to two studio flats, according to the OP.

cozietoesie · 09/03/2013 21:02

Noise and nuisace can occur pretty well anywhere and unless the building is listed or in a conservation area, just about the only thing that's going to prevent planning consent these days is - I think - parking. But doing something without building control having a look at the plans is just plain daft - not to say potentially homicidal in some cases.

Original poster
belfastbigmillie · 09/03/2013 21:03

Well, we'll report it to the council and I'll return with an update.

OP posts:
rainrainandmorerain · 09/03/2013 21:12

There are good reasons for objecting to houses being turned into flats which have nothing at all to do with snobbery.

Planning permission aside.... if you're in a terraced house and nextdoor's conversion means that what was the front bedroom becomes the living room, you're likely to get extra noise. If you get a big telly in there and regular house guests up late, they don't have to be that antisocial to cause you a lot of noise and disruption. of course, you can have a huge telly and lots of people up late in a bedroom - but it's less likely, unless you are talking bedsits.

Check on the plans where new staircases and doors will be installed. This will mean footfall and doors slamming etc where you didn't previously have them.

Parking can be an issue if the property has no offroad parking, or even if it does. You don't need to be a genius to work out that having 2 or 3 cars per household means a lot more competition for space than 1 or 2 per house.

It's also worth thinking about what is actually needed in terms of local housing. Round here, there is a lack of affordable family homes, but a lot of one and 2 bed flats, for rent, not sale. There's been a big rise in buy to let mortgages and conversions along the lines the OP describes. It is all about making money for landlords, and has nothing to do with a pool of affordable housing. You don't have to be a snob to object to this.

redplasticspoon · 09/03/2013 21:15

Studio flats are hardly bedsits. You sound too worried about this.

saadia · 09/03/2013 21:25

YANBU the house two doors down has been turned into a hostel and we get an assortment of people coming and going, sometimes loud and they dump rubbish everywhere - once in our bin. There have been times when five police cars have turned up, no idea why, but it is depressing.

LapsedPacifist · 09/03/2013 21:32

'YANBU the house two doors down has been turned into a hostel'

The OP said the house next door will be turned into 2 bedsits! How the hell does that compare to a hostel?

AmberLeaf · 09/03/2013 21:33

Good post/points Rainrain.

Everyone saying the OP is being unreasonable, would you really not give it a second thought if this were happening next door to your house?

I very much doubt it.

Really not getting a 'snob' vibe at all from the OP.

rainrainandmorerain · 09/03/2013 22:06

FWIW - we lived (owner occupiers) in our old terraced house for 10 years. Next door on one side was a housing
association family house, same layout as ours. The family had a couple of problems which affected us too but were always sorted out amicably and they were good and nice neighbours.

As soon as I put our house on the market, the house on the other
side (one v quiet old lady resident) was sold and the buyer started converting it into 2 flats.

Several peo

piprabbit · 09/03/2013 22:10

Some of our neighbours suddenly had loads of scaffolding put up.
Being a bit nosy, I had a look on the planning website and found that their planning permission was turned down 48 hours before the scaffolding arrived.

Building work is now almost complete - still no planning permission. I'm wondering how they are planning to swing that one.

cozietoesie · 09/03/2013 22:12

Unless the planners both find out and take action, they'll likely get away with it.

piprabbit · 09/03/2013 22:14

As the neighbours opposite hate them and opposed the planning application - I suspect that complaints have been made.

rainrainandmorerain · 09/03/2013 22:16

FWIW - we lived (owner occupiers) in our old terraced house for 10 years. Next door on one side was a housing association family house, same layout as ours. The family had a couple of problems which affected us too but were always sorted out amicably and they were good and nice neighbours.

As soon as I put our house on the market, the house on the other side (one v quiet old lady resident) was sold and the buyer started converting it into 2 flats.

Several people viewing the house lost interest when they realised it would be flats next door - another made an offer and then droppes the offer on the grounds that the conversions made our house less desirable.

My response was that ANY house you buy could have the house next door turned into flats... it's not something you can control. But it didn't matter. (same argument with nightmare neighbours - if I turned up to view a house and there was screaming and shouting and fighting in the garden from the neighours, it would put me off. But then i could move in next door to saintly neighbours, only for them to move out the day I moved in and be replaced by hell-neighbours).

The point is, the flat conversion next door made selling my house harder, and it wasn't something i was expecting.

rainrainandmorerain · 09/03/2013 22:17

(sorry, dud post earlier)

williaminajetfighter · 09/03/2013 22:29

OP sorry you're getting so much grief from the 'I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony' posters. There are people who LOVE to post if they see a sniff of snobbery or what they perceive as elitism or whatever.

YANBU. Only you know the neighbourhood that you live in and can anticipate what the changes might mean. Get the planning permission thing looked into. Once it sets a precedent then other houses can be converted and numerous conversions might be a problem.

Everybody is a bit of a NIMBY and its human nature to not want to see your neighbourhood take a turn for the worse.

specialsubject · 09/03/2013 22:42

doesn't matter if you live in a mansion or a shed, they are breaking the law. Report them.

sukysue · 09/03/2013 22:42

It's only 2 flats I thought you meant about 10 bedsits!

AgentZigzag · 09/03/2013 22:47

I suppose I have minimised the OPs situation williamina, it's just her naming of the groups of people she sees as the lowest of the low got my back right up.

thornrose · 09/03/2013 22:53

I didn't see snobbery or elitism, but when the OP described single men living in studio flats as "dodgy" that got my back up.