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).

**It's a new build. The details of the planning permission will be available online. This will clearly show the different tenures of the different blocks.

Developers don't just agree a % of affordable tenures and then decide later which ones it will be. It has to be factored in to the design as they will be managed by a different company (clue is in the title.. Housing Association, or other Registered Provider of social housing**

@LilMidge01

Ah right I see. I wouldn’t have thought that type of info would be in the public domain, for the precise reason this thread is about.

I assumed (wrongly) that they would keep it quiet as to who owns/rents etc...

Clearly the op isn't the only person to be concerned about this, given the difference in house prices between ex council and private estates. Often there's a 50% or greater price difference, and that's despite the ex council houses having much bigger gardens and bigger bedrooms.
I think it depends on the situation in the area and that estate as clearly it varies hugely between HA housing in a nice village and a soulless tower block in wythenshawe. Perhaps it also depends a bit on how comfortable you would be dealing with a bit of aggro from rude teens etc. Personally I find all that very stressful but if you've grown up with it you are probably able to hold your own and it's much less of a problem.

One way to judge a neighborhood is to look at the school ratings for the schools that serve your catchment area. Are they rated "excellent" or "good"? If they are "Needs improvement" that tells you something about the children in the school and indirectly about their parents.

Needs improvement could be a reflection of the staff and their policies. I worked in an early years setting that had needs improvement before I started and it was nothing to do with the parents. Lack of diversity in toys, everything was white baby dolls etc, owner sometimes didn't staff properly and used student to make up ratios. Staff training didn't happen. None of that is a reflection on the parents from that area at all.

I probably wouldn’t tbh.

@Daphnise

Why are there such unpleasant- even nasty comments?

I would not want to live near an HMO or accommodation for sex offenders- and a HA may have such tenants in its accommodation.

I would look for something else.

I'd forgot that all sex offenders live in HA properties.

They discovered a neighbour in my sister's street was a child sex offender after he abused a small child in the neighbourhood and it came out he had committed other sex offences before.

He had a lovely well maintained garden in the house he owned. There was not enough evidence to prosecute him and the family of the abused child moved away as there was no eviction process to get this man out of the house he owned.

I think it sounds OK, op and the house ideal. Drive round there a few times during the day and evening to get the feel of the area first and there are places online where you just have to enter a postcode and can find information about what it is like to live there, the people, types of housing, crime figures, etc (Streetcheck?).

For the record, I haven't seen any indication of snobbery in your posts. Your concerns are reasonable, it's not just about you but your children, however you know there are never any guarantees in life.

I hope all goes well.

Definitely don't buy it. The housing association residents deserve better neighbours than you.

Yes, they are much better off with neighbours who don’t put any thought or consideration into where they live or who might be their neighbours.

@MrsKingfisher

Op asked a question because of some biased opinions around her. She's concerned, isn't that ok? Why must some on here be such nasty vitriolic people.

I don't have any opinion or comment on the original post. But unfortunately you are right, MrsKingfisher - disagreeing with a post is one thing, being downright abusive, sweary, and obnoxious is another. I was gobsmacked when I first came on to MN, which I thought would be a platform of women supporting women, as to how nasty, bitchy and abhorrent some posters could be!

Here is Streetcheck for you, op:

www.streetcheck.co.uk/

My sister did similar and moved on quickly, in part due to the noise, late night police visits, burnt out cars (I kid you not) and that in peak summer they took over the visitor parking area for their inflatable hot tubs and had street parties (no social distancing!)
All that said, I live in a naice area in the sticks, our neighbours are fucking awful and I want to move (they smoke weed in the garden when my sons out playing and play loud rock music late into the night)
You can’t buy class. Or good neighbours.

OP, be very careful. I grew up on a council estate and have also lived in 2 further mixed HA/private estates. Lots of the people commenting clearly have never lived near HA tenants.

Yes, you can get bad neighbours everywhere, I don't deny that. However a lot of people living in HAs are there because they won't be accepted anywhere else. In a mixed estate where I was a HA tenant, I lived next door to an alcoholic, drug-taking paranoid schizophrenic who would scream the house down at all hours of the night, bang on the walls, attack people in the street, follow women around the estate, steal items from people's gardens, trespass in people's gardens during social gatherings etc. As he was classed as a vulnerable person, complaints to the HA did nothing. I think even the local police force had given up on him. He obviously didn't work and his rent was funded by benefits... for people like this there is no incentive to behave decently (as with private renting where there would be the threat of eviction) and people like that obviously cannot support themselves with a mortgage.

Not to mention other issues I have faced living in HA areas such as armed burglary, arson, being randomly assaulted and more.

Over the past 4 years I have lived in private estates and not had any issues of this calibre.

Detached, 3 bed, garage, 2 parking spaces

Cant you find somewhere else? You dont seem to be scrimping?

Absolutely not, you might be lucky and have decent neighbours but your chances of having bad neighbours are higher than if you bought on a private estate. In the town I live they built some really lovely housing association properties in a really cool modern design, they looked fabulous, until the tenants moved in, I feel really sorry for the decent tenants in this particular road who clearly take a lot of pride in their lovely houses but several have turned the street into the HA cliche, old sofas on the front lawn, unkempt gardens, piles of rubbish. It’s such a shame. Unless you have no other option I would avoid.

You will find that any new development over 10 houses I think has to have min 30% affordable housing, ie HA rent or shared ownership through the HA.

It’s like anything else HA residents get stick because Of the behaviour of a very small minority beefed up on TV shows.

You could have issues with neighbours anywhere. Just look at the posts on here

If you like the house and the area suits you go for it

I wouldn't buy it if I could find an alternative, I'd sacrifice a parking space and accept smaller rooms if necessary. I lived in a council house for 4 years, I was a single parent with one child, I was one of the few that worked full-time, I really didn't like the 'feel' of the estate, there were some families working and keeping their houses/gardens nicely but plenty who didn't work and their houses/gardens were scruffy and not maintained, this was not down to inability but to disinterest. There was drug dealing but that can happen anywhere. I moved out when I bought a house back in the countryside near where I was from but I've driven past the estate in the years since and its dreadful, it has become dirty and almost abandoned looking, scrap cars and rubbish on the green area. I know you're not looking at a full estate like this but I'd still be looking elsewhere.

I live in a small detached on a private estate and my neighbours and I objected when the owner of the HMO nearby applied for planning permission to extend. Firstly we objected on planning grounds as there is already pressure on parking spaces in the street. If each of these new tenants has a car there will be even more all close to one property. We have also experienced problems with late night and noisy parking at the property - alarms going off in the early hours. We also feel that someone living in one room has no real connection with the area. They dont own their property, have children at the local school, or even own their own furniture. They are essentially transients.

Acting together we have 3 times blocked the owner from extending what is essentially a family home to cram in more people.

@FoxyTheFox

Oh I can see this going well.

What are you worried about, OP?

Neighbours without a vested interest in the area?

Why would ha tenants not have a vested interest?

I’m in a council house. I work full time and pay the full rent all by myself I don’t get any benefits. I am very invested in my area. It’s my home.

I wouldn't.

I moved to a new build, I was a bit worried as there were a couple houses in the same street (one house down from mine) which were called affordable housing...looked into it and it meant shared ownership-not the same as council!

I grew up in housing association and each area we moved too was rough. Our neighbours always thoguth our family were snobs as my parents worked. A lot of HA people do not.work so they've always in their house or talking outside...wouldn't do it.

If its shared ownership then it shouldn't be an issue. Have you asked the estate agent? If its rent or shared ownership HA

I work. I’m always in my house coz I work from home.

Don’t smoke though so I suppose that’s ok.