To buy a house next to housing association properties?

[Brightskiesahead]

I need some advice/opinions please.

Soon to be divorced and left with some equity to buy a small house for me and 2 primary age DC.

One has come up on a new build development which is great on paper. Detached, 3 bed, garage, 2 parking spaces and west facing garden. It's in budget. I can't stretch to the next house type up. But the house types I'm looking at are next to housing association properties. The immediate neighbour is a disabled property then its 5 terraced houses of HA.

Would you buy it?

I can't investigate the area as it's not complete yet. The general neighbour hood is lovely (I live close by currently).

An amazing assumption that someone renting their home is going to be a society scumbag and that somebody paying for their home in monthly instalments is going to be a great loveable law abiding citizen.

Didn't the guy who killed 39 Vietnamese immigrants own his home? Wouldn't fancy being his neighbour either

Isn't a mortgage just like renting from the bank, if you default you could lose the house

I’ve worked within social housing for years. I find that for new build estates, the HA may well give preference/priority to families that are working (so as to pre-emptively remove some of the problems other posters have mentioned). They also may have a Local Lettings Plan in place which limits who can be placed in the properties - eg: 2x families with children only over 12, 3x families with children under 10, 80% must be working etc. This is to ‘mix it up’ a bit so you don’t end up with the problems mentioned before. Definitely call the HA to check if they’ve got a Local Lettings Plan in place.

Having said that, I absolutely would not buy next to HA properties. I live on a new build estate and we specifically chose a property as far away from the social housing as possible. Having worked within the field for so long, I know how shitty and how much trouble some (and I really mean some) HA/Council tenants can be.

Yeah, you sound like someone who works in SH. Some do tend to look down their noses at the tenants.

Thanks a lot for starting this awful thread OP. I feel like total shit now.

I live in a HA house and so do all the neighbours on one side of me. They are all friendly, helpful people we all look after each other and get on.
On the other side of me is a couple who own their house who are a nasty pair of wankers and make my life a misery with their screeching voices, loud music and horrible behaviour.

If this thread was about travellers people would be falling over themselves to say how dare you judge a group of people by a tiny minority with bad behavior but council/HA tennents are all scummy, weed smoking, anti social scruffs who don't care about their houses or gardens because someones mother lived next to a bad one once

All I've read lately is about how they've had to give out food instead of vouchers for fsm kids because MOST parents use them for fags and booze and let the kids starve.
How single parents should have learnt to use contraception.

According to a PP we don't look after our houses because we don't work hard like home owners and get our houses for free!

I am so depressed and sick of this shit

Tenyearsgone:

I was talking about the drug dealers who live in big private houses who supply the ones further down the chain. But those sort of dealers are ok by MN standards.

Just as long as they do it behind closed doors and don't lower the tone.
........
It's not really that, it's more what you don't know won't hurt you. If you had a neighbour who was an importer of drugs but presented as a business person in imports, you just wouldn't know any different. It's when people are obvious and have loads of people in and out of their house at all times that suspicions are raised.

Apart from my neighbours either side (who I know are not drug dealers, known them for years, one is retired now), I haven't a clue what anyone does further up or down the road or opposite. I do, however, know there is never any trouble, there are no disturbances and I don't feel nervous in my road. They could be big time drug dealers I suppose :-). Or worse

.

Nobody is saying all people in Housing Association properties are problematic, or that owner-occupiers are all wonderful, we know that isn't the case. People are people wherever you are. However if you are buying a house you want to get at least some idea of what people are like in your immediate area and if you feel safe, especially if you have children. Another consideration is will your house sell easily in years to come or will potential buyers be put off by your near neighbours.

This is quite normal and nothing to do with snobbery.

I find it fascinating. Our house is 15 years old. We bought it 3 years ago. Out of 40 houses in our street, 10 are HA. Nobody could tell which.
They are building 200 houses over the back to use, 70 will be affordable. Some of the shite being posted on fb is horrifying
OP, if it's a nice estate and nice area go for it.

From what the op posted, it sounds nice, Spider. I think she will go for it after doing a bit of research.

You do realise you could buy a house on an estate where no HA houses exist at all, all privately owned but one owner decides to let their house out to someone on housing benefit?
Take people at face value, owning or not owning a home doesnt make you a better or worse person

I don't see what there is to worry about really, if the area has a good reputation. The house is detached so that's a massive bonus. Maybe you're not aware but the vast majority of properties aren't detached. The main issue I've come across in HA properties is weed smoking, but if you're detached you can easily keep it out by shutting windows. When you share a wall or a floor/ceilings with others it can be impossible to keep it out of your property, especially if you don't have a private garden so could have people smoking right outside/underneath your windows. Again with noise it's less of an issue with detached, even if the noise is your nearest neighbour. I'm pretty laid back though, don't object to hearing most types of music and can't be worried about the scruffiness of somebody else's front yard or things like police presence. You might have to use common sense and eg keep house and car doors locked and don't have things in the garden that aren't fixed eg plant pots. I've lived in plenty of areas like that and it's not an issue you just don't leave things laying around in the car or windows wide open when you're not in the room etc. Maybe that sounds bad to you I don't know but I've grown up living like that so I don't see it as a problem.

Another point is, is it in the route to anywhere? I find there's a different vibe in places which mainly have the people living there around and places which have people from possibly rougher areas passing through to the shops or pub. Those are the places where I've had to be more careful even if all the houses in my street were privately owned/occupied. My current place is all HA and everyone is quiet and nobody is outright nasty. I somehow managed to forget to shut my door one night never mind lock it. The next morning when the postie brought my parcel the keys were still in the lock, all my stuff was still here and nobody had murdered me in the night . HA doesn't necessarily equal bad.

@Brightskiesahead fellow single parent here. I've lived among HA in both a small block of flats that were mostly owned and in a terrace that backed onto HA terraces. While I wasn't worried about it and in the second situation had a great friend in one of the HA properties, unfortunately it became a big issue. In the small block of flats I was very lucky to sell before newly arrived tenants from HA became extremely problematic. Constant fighting, police involvement, guests round through the night, child protection issues, addictions and the list goes on. The second property, a terrace, while a very lovely friend lived in the HA terrace we backed onto and her neighbours were so lovely too, a couple less than lovely families moved in and the community completely changed with loud music, fast cars, litter in the street. It was constant. There was something daily that was challenging.

I now live about 3 streets away from a HA and have no problems whatsoever. HA families and home owner families all use the same school and community facilities without issue. The HA properties are in their own cul-de-sac. There are 2 properties just behind me and over about 6 houses that are HA too and the only issue is one has had to be asked to stop parties through to 3/4 am in the summer. It's a couple with 6 kids between them and they are respectful when asked but then do it again a month later. I've decided if that's the biggest problem, once a month music into the night, it's really not that bad. Their dc are lovely and very well liked at the local school.

After three experiences I have to say what we have now is ideal. And that's not b/c of the 90% of wonderful people in HA properties, it's the 5-10% . FWIW many of my family live in HA properties, are hard working and kind people though they have all steered their dc not to go that route and to stay at home and then buy somewhere small so they don't have some of the challenges they've had to deal with over the last few decades.

An estate agent told me to always buy the worst house in the best street/area and I think that's actually solid advice.

We had a similar experience when buying our new home. The larger HA area is cluttered with bikes and benches etc on the front, it’s unkempt and noisy. It’s been built about 5 years. The newer and much smaller HA area is nice, appears well looked after and fairly quiet. Its not being a snob, it’s an honest observation.

Your house is a massive investment, you have to think in the future, what would effect its resale value. Considerable thought must be put into the area and plot of a new build with buying off plan.

Lol at all the people acting like they have no idea what you're talking about.

I would avoid if possible. Yeah you could be lucky with your neighbours/the area, but you have a higher than average chance of not being lucky.

I live on a street which is a mix of HA, rented and privately owned. My house (owned) is surrounded by HA properties. All my neighbours are lovely.

My only gripe is that i get targetted by door to door sales people - apparently they know I own my house because my front door is different to everyone elses.

I wouldn't, OP. My parents, my brother and his DP and kids, and my aunts and uncles are all scum.

Seriously, what bigoted shit. You should be fucking ashamed OP.

People on here a massively over reacting. OP has just pointed out the obvious , that there CAN be trouble and asked for views, those that have come back defensively, OP hasn't done anything wrong just asked for opinions. They clearly don't want difficulties potentially selling in the future etc and have children to think about. I think Op needs to just research that specific HA as others have said , they are all different and it will give you a better feel of the area and families living there.

I grew up in a middle class household, parents owned the house, it had five bedrooms and was on a leafy suburban street. I don't know why our neighbours were so nice because we had constant foul-mouthed screaming matches that I'm sure you could hear across the street, doors slamming and completely neglected and ugly gardens front and back. It have been almost as horrible to live next to us as it was to live as one of us. Oh, but we were so middle class.

Just saying.

@Mally2020

People on here a massively over reacting. OP has just pointed out the obvious , that there CAN be trouble and asked for views, those that have come back defensively, OP hasn't done anything wrong just asked for opinions. They clearly don't want difficulties potentially selling in the future etc and have children to think about. I think Op needs to just research that specific HA as others have said , they are all different and it will give you a better feel of the area and families living there.

'I'm thinking of moving into an area where there are lots of blacks. Should I be worried'

'There's some gays over the road from the house I'm trying to buy. Will they infect my kids'

Do you see the problem @Mally2020? No, I don't imagine you do.

@Brightskiesahead - if you are honestly concerned about this, you basically need to stop looking at new build developments - all new build developments (unless really small) will have affordable housing.

You are coming across as snobby, if you are of the mindset that you are somehow better or above people who live in affordable housing, seriously don't buy the house near them. It won't end well.

You seem to be forgetting that anyone can be a nightmare neighbour, just because someone owns a house doesn't mean anything in terms of antisocial behaviour!

We live in what is/was affordable housing as we purchased via shared ownership. We know own our house "normally" as we purchased the remaining shares, but if anyone looked at the plans for the development - they wouldn't know this.

When we first moved here, we overheard the owners of one of the bigger houses on the development (and who our garden adjoins) complaining about being near the "social housing" and that they didn't want us looking at them in the garden from our windows - I have no idea why they chose that house if they had an issue with it but whatever.

Pot luck like anywhere , private owners can be horrible as well.
I live in ha property and most of street is apart from some bought and some shared ownership.
My road is lovely but there are other roads I wouldn't want to live on.
But we have rented private and had awful neighbours as well.
There is no way to tell and as its a big estate there will be a huge mix , say house is detached which is a bonus for any property as our terrace does mean we have to be more mindful of neighbours .

@PinkSpring a lot round here just seem to have shared ownership as there affordable option

I'm a single mother that rents a HA property. I'm presently studying medicine and will be a qualified doctor in three years. Would I be ok to treat you but not to say hello to over the garden fence?

@joell75

I'm a single mother that rents a HA property. I'm presently studying medicine and will be a qualified doctor in three years. Would I be ok to treat you but not to say hello to over the garden fence?

Sorry love, you don't count as a worthwhile human being.

Speaking as someone who did very well from a 'difficult' background, I'm fucking aghast at some of the attitudes coming through here.