To sell our house because of new developments

[Yorkie88]

We love our house and have only been here a few years. It's a great location for school, work and I think we got a bargain.

However we are in the countryside and there are plans to build 400 houses behind us and 300 houses in front of us. Planning permission not applied for yet but it feels inevitable. Big companies. Rubbish council.

Is it unreasonable to sell quickly? I feel bad selling a house that us surrounded by countryside with the knowledge that it will become surrounded by houses in years

Also is it even OK to be upset about housing developments? People need homes. But the thought of living in the middle of two huge building sites isn't great

With the current inflation/COL issue...is it a stupid idea to move? I don't really understand the implications but houses seem v expensive

Some people don't care. I don't care if they build new homes near me. What I do care about is them not building the infrastructure around it first or at the same time. Expecting us to cope on crap with rising taxes is shitty behaviour most councils are doing.

Bit off topic but how / who is going to be able to buy all these new build houses . The costs of materials is spiralling so therefore the cost of housing because developers won't build at a loss . The number of affordable homes section in a 6000 new housing town near me is minimal and reducing all the time .
Genuine question . Councils can't afford to buy them either so who ...

Their solicitor will inform them if they're any good.

Sit tight for now op no point making a knee jerk reaction and regretting it.

300 new houses next to an already oversubscribed primary school in an urban area with no good doctors provision, a serious shortage of dentists, also is a rubbish idea.

Glad you find it amusing, Bumtum126 - I doubt the chair of our planning committee does any more, since he's now being prosecuted

In this particular case it was £90k from two different developers, but investigations are continuing into other payemts (and other staff) so who knows what else may come out?

The idea of living on a building site seems to be a big driver for you.

I think you don’t actually have any experience of these new build sites, though?

They build in phases, so some new homebuyers are literally living on the building site.

You won’t be.

Honestly, find your nearest large scale development that’s still got building phases and go drive around it, on a work day. Park up. Walk around.

Base your decisions on reality!

I think you’d be mad to sell.

You say you got it for a bargain - so, sounds like you got it for what it was worth - just everyone else either knew about the potential building work, or sensibly assumed. So more houses going up won’t change that.

Moving would:

• cost you money. EA fees, search fees, stamp duty, removal costs, legal costs, furniture / decoration / repair - there’s always something in a new house


• put you in a smaller house!


• will presumably not deliver you a rural location if this house was more than you could buy if you move

The current economic situation? Largely irrelevant I think, if you’re swapping one house for another at same price. Same mortgage then.

But if cost of living gets harder, (if 🤣) then you would struggle to get a bigger house again and kick yourself.

Honestly, it sounds like you didn’t think the purchase through, and not are similarly not thinking this through.

Keep the bigger house, get planting good screening shrubs on your border now, remember that you’re years away from the full build being approved and actually built, and that building work isn’t the nightmare you think it is.

Reassess once the new development is complete. My guess is you won’t want to leave.

300 new houses next to an already oversubscribed primary school in an urban area with no good doctors provision, a serious shortage of dentists, also is a rubbish idea

You're right, it is, but try that with over 3200 homes built and no primary school at all, which is what happened on the estate I used to live on

In fairness three schools were slated in the original plan, but the requirement for them actually to be built waxed and waned according to who was in power, the political complexities involved and what money was being made and by who

Just one school was eventually built 7 years after the homes were completed, but its intake represents just 12% of the local children, so most have to go elsewhere - and often quite far to avoid the large but appalling schools in the surrounding area

Nice, huh?

Here's my experience of living right next to a building site.

Constant noise. Lorries coming and going. Building noise. There was a particularly wonderful couple of weeks while they were pile driving in which my house literally shook for hours on end. Dust and filth everywhere, to the point I couldn't use the garden at all. Trying to squeeze down the narrow road to my house with huge lorries coming the other way. Constant power cuts, because they hooked the new houses into the old grid and it can't cope. Not to mention the mature trees and hedges that they ripped out. It's been hell. Started in 2019 and still going on now!

It's really difficult.

Our local Labour Council has had their housing quota quadrupled, the 3 nearby Conservative councils have not. This means developers have been granted permission by the Government to build on green belt land and no one can do anything about it.

This is why I bought a house down a quiet street in a village but surrounded by other (in keeping) houses. There is a quiet lane off my road and so many have sold down there due to a small development on the end. It's an eyesore and I would have hated it too. Unless I owned all the land around it I wouldn't buy anywhere with countryside views on my doorstep

So Labour would make it incredibly difficult to build at a time when house prices are rocketing due to increasing demand and a lack of supply?

You either want houses or you don't.

In the politely way possible you are being ridiculous. I wouldn't make all those sacrifices for a view, I find it baffling anyone would!

Having lived with young children in too small a home I'd much rather take the bigger, nicer home in the middle of some developments than what you've just stated. I think you've lost sight of what actually matters.

That’s a massively offensive allegation to make against a lot of officers who work incredibly hard and are constantly having to deal with balancing the views of people complaining against the actual legislation they have to work with.

If their councillors haven’t agreed a 5 year land supply in a valid local plan, then they just have to comply with the legislation and the National Planning Policy Framework, and developers know what the requirements are for these.

Large schemes are inevitably decided by councillors at planning committee though, so the people who make the final decision are your elected representatives.Change them if you don’t like what they do.

The development in my village is literally underway, and the houses that directly back onto it are selling within days of going on the market. I wouldn’t worry that it makes it unsaleable unless the main feature of your property is the views your about to lose.

You're going to move to a smaller house, have a lot less space, probably higher mortgage and have to pay the agent fees etc just because you don't want to look at other houses? You do realise it could happen elsewhere too right, and anywhere that won't you probably can't afford? Sounds highly stupid. It sucks, but you either put up with or spend the next 10ish years listening to your kids complaining. You can't complain about your house being small either, it's your choice to move there. You'll have to be positive about it.

Make another bad decision if you want, but don't complain about it. It's your own fault.

Awwww...the kindness of strangers @PurassicJark

It's not about not wanting to look at other houses at all. I'm not moving because of a view. I'm considering moving because 1000 houses being built in a tiny village with no infrastructure and 600 of those backing onto your house from both directions is fairly major.

I agree it could happen anywhere and would move to a more built up street I think to avoid it changing.

Some people have said how hellish it is living next to a building site.

It’s sad, I think it s ok to say that countryside falling to development is a sad thing. My mother and both my brothers have housing developments happening in fields near their houses - 3 different parts of the country - bought either 40 or 20 years ago. They enjoyed it while it lasted.

I guess the trick is if one can afford it, to try and buy land to protect the house from developments.

anyway, I’m very sorry for you and I think it’s ok to find it a bit heart breaking. The loss of trees and wildlife habitat is genuinely sad. And I can’t help feeling they are building in the wrong places.

But you are assuming there would be no infrastructure as part of any development. Developers building dwellings above a certain number have to pay Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) specifically to contribute towards providing additional capacity at gp, school, parking etc and in the case of larger developments schools, health centre, play areas, shops, community centre et al may be included in the plans.

Thank you for all your comments . Sorry haven’t been back earlier - been busy all day building flat pack furniture 🤣

sell it now. You only need to inform them of anything your are aware of if they ask and at the moment you aren’t aware because no permission has been granted.
good luck finding something in an area unlikely to be blighted by over development

I think you should think about staying put. The cost of moving, if it meant a smaller place, building work is only daytime usually.

Oh no OP I would hate this too mainly because I hate living in overly built up areas it really stressed me out when I did. It is sad they are building all over green sites and i honestly think every empty property and second home should be put to use before automatically building new.

thankfully I live in Scotland and the most recent housing developments for rural areas do not include mine as it is a tiny village on a main road with no infrastructure to support any more houses (not saying this won’t change but it won’t change any time soon) and any developments that are going in villages are of small numbers and have to meet very strict criteria e.g. in keeping with homes already here etc