to buy a new house next to social housing?

[plentyofsoap]

I had a casual conversation about a house we are looking to buy with a group of friends today. One who is a friend of a friend said it sounded lovely, but we would be mad to buy near those in social housing?! I once had a neighbour who caused me huge problems and she owned her house therefore it makes no difference to me. This was ignored by her. Am I missing something or is she just being a snob?

I owned an ex-council house some years ago and one immediate neighbour had bought, one was a lady on her own with 2 kids, 1 a teenager, 1 an 7/8 year old with some learning difficulties. Both sides were absolutely lovely.

I now live in private rented accomodation. We had the original Neighbours From Hell next door until a few years ago. Horrendous. A couple about our age, both drug addicts, both alcoholics, both absolutley puddled. There was nothing we could do other than call the police every weekend and also involve my landlord over a dispute with a gate at the bottom of the passageway which I wanted off as post was pushed through to blow away into the passageway, no one could get to my front door and the lock was broken anyway resulting in me being locked in or out with a young baby on several occasions.

There is a new estate just around the corner from me. 50/50 social rented/shared ownership. Its been built for about 18 months and already has a reputation for being 'rough'. However around the other corner is an older council estate (60s/70s built houses) and although it does have a bad reputation, some of the residents on there wouldn't want to live anywhere else. But the resell value of any of the properties is massively affected by the postcode.

Meanwhile my friend lives about 2 miles away in an ex council house. Probably 80% are owned now, though it is a big estate. I'd give my left nipple to live where she lives! Its beautifully kept, quiet and safe for the residents, the majority of which I would suggest are older.

So my advice would be to proceed with caution. Agree re the comments look at the number of bedrooms which will have an impact on whether larger families can move there. No problems with larger families but they can tend to be a bit rowdy! I'd also personally avoid estates with or very near to 1/2 bedroom flats. I'd rather take my chances with families if I have a family that single folk/couples. The problem with large blocks of flats is you do sometimes get groups of people with similar issues (such as drug abuse or leaving prison) all in one place which IMO can make their problems worse. And everyone elses.

And don't just look at that estate when making your decisions. We had a huge 'sink' estate for want of a better word the other side of town. It has been 'redeveloped' over the last 6/7 years. Which has involved knocking the houses down street by street and rebuilding. Whilst they are rebuilding the families from the houses knocked down are rehoused. They have priority preference on all the housing lists which means they could go anywhere in the area with minimum waiting times as they were top of every list. Quite a few families have chosen to move to areas with very long waiting lists (think 7 years +). This has resulted in families from a very rough, very poor part of town where unemployment, drug and alcohol problems, teenage pregnancies, high % of offenders etc etc etc are the norm, to being neighbours with more 'normal' working class neighbours and the clash hasn't always been good.

I am sure some of the families have benefitted from seeing a different way of life. And am sure some of the families have embraced their new neighbours with open arms and cups of tea. But I know there have been massive issues as well.

The sad thing is that many of the families who moved away from the original area to start afresh somewhere else, have now moved back in to the newly built houses. Which were beautiful when first built. Now when you drive through the fencing has been taken down and scrapped, gardens turned into dogshit infested weedpits and the new eco efficient energy systems are running at full capacity to grow weed!

Complete waste of money. The houses themselves don't make bad estates, its the people that live in them!

Very interesting... think I may be loitering around the house in the next week. Its not far from where we live now (not London) and I have relatives that live a minutes walk away who have been there since they were build. No problems reported. The house is in a row of three and only one is currently occupied and I am tempted to speak to them about any problems. I will also check the crime stats.

We've had a lovely big estate built near us which had a mix of social housing, part buy and private housing on offer. My BIL bought a part buy and its been a nightmare.

The SH part now looks like a giant car park with cars jacked up, kids everywhere at all times of night hanging around the beautiful play area they built and to top it off because it is now known as a notorious council estate none of the private owners could sell to move on so have rented property out cheaper than the local rate as they cant get tennants.

Bil is stuck there because the house price has dropped drastically because its not a desirable area even though the houses are lovely and he bought it when prices were high.

We're on a great Council estate with brilliant neighbours because all the drug dealing drunks with loads of kids were moved into the bigger houses on BILs estate! We had 4 very dodgy years living here.

Go and look on a sunny day like the previous posters said and dont think the Housing associations are very helpful with problematic tennants because it can be a real battle.

We bought a flat on the edge of a council estate and paid £20k more than a flat in the estate. The estate is lovely with no problems at all that I can see I am thinking of selling up and moving a few roads into the estate and saving £20k

I have not had occasion to complain to the housing authority (LBHF) - but I have complained to a housing association and they were incredibly on the ball.

It totally depends what kind of an estate it is. My friend just bought a beautiful flat opposite an estate. She never spoke to any of us who live in the area unfortunately. She's now moved in, went for a walk to the local offy to find it had a buzzer on the door. She was buzzed in to find all the products behind bars, even the person serving. She then had to walk home passed a gang who followed her all the way home. No amount of complaining to anyone is going to stop that intimidation. She hasn't been out on her own again

I found the HA extremely unhelpful. They didn't want to know.
They know if they move families, the problem just starts up elsewhere, and also they were plainly afraid of some tenants.
A female staff member told me she didn't want to offend Mr X as 'he knows where I live.' He knows where I live too, just opposite, I said.
"How do you cope?' she said.

But of course you wouldn't get any of that in writing.

it really could vary depending on the social housing - i bought a flat on the edge of an estate and it was OK for a few years but when my children got older it was horrible, the play park was full of broken glass and teenagers having sex, children were attacked, there were people throwing stones at my window. and it took two PCOs 13 days to arrive.

My only worry and this would be for any house is how quickly can I sell it if I need to, I have bought my forever house to sell two years on. I have no problem with social housing but buying a house is too big a commitment to not look at all possibilities. You could swap the word social housing to being next to a pub/next to a main road/ railway/electricity pylon it it effects value resale then you should be careful.

I don't think for a minute it has anything to do with being snobbish either. Just that each estate is different. Some are fine. You can't predict what could happen in years to come though.

Depends.

We live in a privately owned house in a council house area. It's arranged so that it's one street private houseing, one street council housing etc.
Agree with posters above who said it does affect the resale value. Our house has hardly gone up in price since we bought it 8 years ago. But as it's so much cheaper than similar house 1 mile away, we save money every month by not paying out on a more expensive mortgage, more on interest etc.
The house itself is lovely. I love it. All the private housing is occupied by young professional couples, singles or families.

The council house tenants are lovely too. Never had a problem at all, and this is in an area considered to be rough (although that is a myth, it was rough 10 years ago, but has considereably improved since then, but the label still sticks).
It can get a bit noisy on a hot day and there are hooded youth hanging about in street corners, but it's never bothered me and I've never felt threatned. I walk straight through the gang of youths and they are always polite and move aside and say hello .
Their parents have a tight reins on the kids. One kid said something to my DH about wanting to nick his bike, and my DH went straight to his parents and said what he said and his mum promptly told him off and apologised to my DH. That kid never said anything since.
They always enquire about my 2 small DCs too, saying how much they've grown etc.
And I have walked around at night time and and walked back from night outs in town without a second thought.

My parents have a house near council housing near London and it is very rough. So it really depends on what kind of social housing it is.

Walk around the are you are looking at, see what the people are like. Have a drink in the local, look at crime statistics, read the local paper. Make a judgement on evidence.

This.

I second the advice to check the area out and talk to the neighbours if you can. DH and I bought an ex-council house in an estate where we already knew several families and they all love the place so that was a pretty good recommendation to us.

I think that living by newly built HA is worse, because these days , in order to get social housing, you almost have to have serious problems. This , obvs, doesn't mean that everyone in HA is a nightmare, but lots are. I lived on a newish Ha estate, and...never again.
However, there are older council estates that I would happily live on, because they tend to have been in the tenants families for years, and when those houses were allocated ordinary low income families could get a house, so those estates havent become dumping grounds for families with enormous problems.
Sink estates have been created by the social housing sell off, and lack of new council homes. When my gp s got their council house, council estates were seen as the height of convenient modern living, and most were nice communities.

I live on an estate that is a mixture of social housing, privately owned and privately rented. The majority being privately rented. There are about 5 social housing houses (ours being one of them). Are most problematic neighbours are the ones who privately rent. Unfortunately we live in-between 2 privately rented house and both neighbours are fucking pains in the arse! Both are young male professionals with flash cars and they all play banging bloody rap music and drum and bass music ALL the time. When they're not playing music they're revving their cars and racing around the close at 50 miles a fucking hour! Funnily enough the quietest residents are the social housing tenants. (Although I don't tell my kids to keep quiet at 6am at the weekend any more to piss off the next door neighbours ).

Our not are

IfNotNowThenWhen ours is a new build estate, and as I said above the problematic residents are the ones who rent privately. They change tenants almost every year (been here 5 years now) and every single one have been trouble and totally inconsiderate. Being a social housing tenant myself I know that most want to keep hold of the secure tenancy so don't do silly things like playing loud music etc.

It's not uncommon sadly. I used to work in an estate agent as a teenager and the ammount of times people would be really interested in a property only to change their minds once they realised it was near a council estate was unreal. That and people asking in advance. "Are there any council houses near this?", fucking snobby cunts.

I know lots of people who live in social housing, including members of my own family and they are perfectly nice, respectable people with jobs who've never broken the law. Both my parents grew up in council houses as well and I will never look my nose down on it for that reason alone.

Incidentally my street is right next to a small council estate. We have never had any trouble from there, the trouble we've experiences comes from the private rentals and privately owned properties on our own street!

I live in social housing, so am not being snobby. If we ever manage to buy a property, I personally would rather it wasn't next to social housing because of our experience with the completely useless housing association found here.

One of our neighbours who owns his property has had his windows smashed, his car ruined with blue paint, his locks superglued repeatedly and has been verbally and physically assaulted by one of the other neighbours who rents his flat through the HA. Despite nice neighbour complaining to the HA and the police, nothing has been done about this scumbag.

Sorry but that's enough to put me off for life. We are hoping to move because of our own problems with scumbag neighbour, but at least we dont own this place!! Nice neighbour is well and truly stuck because scumbag neighbour has ruined the garden, communal hallways etc and no one wants to buy nice neighbours flat!!

And why oh why do people in social housing ALWAYS sit out the front (when they have back gardens) I just don't get it??

Seriously? FFS! I don't sit out front at all, I also can't sit out in my back garden either because my ear drums would burst from the music played at club level by PRIVATE TENANTS on the estate.

something i never noticed tbh.....

fucking snobby cunts

that sums it up nicely pixie

Snobbery? That's madness.

It doesn't matter how nice the people are who are living there, the estates are an outright eyesore. There's a reason people want Victorian or Georgian terraced houses and not 1970's tenement-block style architecture.

I must live near sinkholes.

i agree it is not snobby to notice that people keep broken washing machines in their gardens and have not worked for three generations.