AIBU not to want to buy a house on a busy road?

[2Earlgreysplease]

We are torn over a lovely house which is very close to a busy road. My husband loves the house and thinks we will learn to live with the road by building sound proofing fences etc.
My gut is telling me we are making a bad decision, but I don't want us to decide against the house if I'm just being paranoid. Help!

Dont if u dont have to. Apart from noise the filth generated by traffic is unbelievable. Your family will be breathing it in. Go look at the leaves of plants on a main road, covered in black soot.

Also am woken every day at 4.30 by lorries heading into town. No I haven't got used to it in ten years. I hate it.

OP's other post gives a bit more info.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/3294857-Moving-from-a-quiet-London-street-to-a-house-on-a-very-busy-A-road-in-the-country-advice-please-am-in-a-dilemna

How close? My (short) road runs between a very busy road and a fairly quiet road, joining the two. Like this -> H with my road being the horizontal bar. I wouldn't want to live on the busy one, but mine is almost silent.

I wouldn't do it. We went for a not completely ideal house in a quiet cul-de-sac. We've had 6 months and counting of living in a bit of a building site while we gradually improve it. Watching my toddler zooming around outside on her scooter with next door's kids makes me confident I've made the right decision

I've lived near a railway line. Absolutely fine until they did engineering work on the line at night using very bright lights. However it was only for two weekends. Saying that on my current road they replaced a sewer and that lasted 2 months in the summer.

We also bought a house on a main road. I've no idea why I let my husband talk me into it, I was not convinced at all. It was however a lot more house for our money than we could afford in a better location.

The end result was neither of us would consider living next to a busy road again. It was a terrible mistake.

You couldn't open windows in summer, as the noise was appalling, things like the back patio and the front windows and curtains got dirty very fast due to pollution, we always had to have window coverings at the front for privacy. It never felt private, you always felt on show when coming and going. Parking when we had guests was a nightmare.

I really wouldn't recommend it. When we viewed houses to buy again, one was on a main road, but set well back and behind a brick wall, and as we pulled up we both immediately said "oh shit the location" and it was a no straight off.

Even our friends and family who were very positive when we lived there said after we moved and they had experienced it " I wouldn't have bought that, beautiful house, but the road...".

I’ve just read the other thread, no I wouldn’t buy that house. I don’t mind a bit of road noise, but the not being able to get in and out would be stressful.

It depends on the house. We're adjacent to a main road though actually on a quieter road, and the angle of the junction means the garden is screened by buildings. It's a much larger house and garden than we could have afforded elsewhere, so that is a big plus.

We don't open the windows at the front, which is a downside. But they're triple glazed, so indoors we don't hear traffic noise, and the back garden is quiet because of the noise being screened by other buildings.

Being on a main road is a disadvantage (except in snow because our road is always gritted!) but I wouldn't say it's a complete "no". You have to set it against the disadvantages of the other houses you're looking at that aren't on a main road.

Another one who grew up on a busy road.. I love the sound of traffic at night.

You really would get used to it.

If you're noise sensitive and don't like the sound of traffic, you won't get used to it. I lived a row of houses back from a busy road for 10 years,could still hear it and never got used to it.
It does depend on whether or not you can block noise out or not. I seem unable, DH on the other hand never noticed the road noise.

We have just made the same move - got us a FAR bigger house just moments away from our old quieter street (not that quiet though, still London)! I'm also worried about windows/heat, and going to put in pepper AC for the attic rooms next year. Having triple glazing and solid shutters installed too!

It depends on the set up. We live on a busy road but we don’t use the front of the house. We’ve got a lovely big back garden and shared private drive and parking around the back. The house has got very good windows so we barely hear the road. I know pollution is a concern but in London I don’t think there’s anywhere with clean air. This house was around 50k cheaper than similar houses around the corner and I’m glad we bought it.

I personally love the sound of cars and find it very soothing at night time but then, I have always lived in big cities so am used to it. I wouldn’t want to live on a main road purely for safety reasons rather than the noise as I have young DC and a cat.

Yes ours was a lot cheaper. It was a large detached Victorian house, and would have cost approx 150- 200k more elsewhere. But still given our time over again the compromises we made actually living there were not worth it and we wouldn't have bought it had we known.

We now live somewhere rural, at the top of a very secluded private drive. So we went the complete opposite in reaction to it. I think you either adjust to it or you don't. As much as we didn't hate it, we never ever loved it, and we wouldn't do it again, we wouldn't even view any on a busy A road now, it would be an immediate deal breaker.