To ask you to tell me about house-hunting deal-breakers on an otherwise nice house?

[CulturePigeon]

Bit of a silly hot-weather post but...

I was thinking about my experience of house-hunting and the times we found somewhere which was perfect BUT...

When the children were small, we found this lovely, large terraced house over 3 floors with big rooms, a nice kitchen and more bedrooms than we thought we could afford. It was on a pleasant road but there was a massive drawback. Each house looked out on to someone else's back garden. The back gardens were long and narrow, and mostly divided by fairly flimsy fences - so no privacy really. How this had happened historically, I've no idea, but basically you looked out of your window at your neighbour's (potentially) scruffy, unkempt patch, and of course their use of the garden (maybe even including a hot tub!!!). Meanwhile, however beautifully-kept your own garden was, it would be someone else's view from their living room and while using your garden, you would fear you were being closely observed. Ridiculous - and a huge obstacle to selling.

How this could have been allowed to occur, I cannot imagine.

Any similar experiences, and what did you decide to do?

I think you’re describing a burgage plot? It’s very much a historic thing, it’s very interesting if you want to look it up

That sounds like a very normal terraced house! Even semi detached you'd expect to be overlooked, let alone a row of houses. The solution would be fences the height of the houses surely?

We turned down a very rural house because the neighbour backed onto 'our' property. Such a weird layout. Their house faced the back of the house we were looking at, with a couple of metres between. Then hundreds of acres of empty land all around

We saw a house that was a decent size, nice layout with a garage attached that wasn’t in the description.

Oh, a garage as well, that’s good I said

The agent said no, they sold the garage to their neighbour so it’s not included but don’t worry, they just store their bikes there- they’re lovely people, no trouble- oh but you have to allow access across the driveway at all times

We did not buy it 🙄

Carrieonmywaywardsun · Today 11:22
That sounds like a very normal terraced house! Even semi detached you'd expect to be overlooked, let alone a row of houses. The solution would be fences the height of the houses surely?
We turned down a very rural house because the neighbour backed onto 'our' property. Such a weird layout. Their house faced the back of the house we were looking at, with a couple of metres between. Then hundreds of acres of empty land all around

I don't think I explained very well! Yes, I know that often terraced houses will have a view of other gardens (like semis and even detached), but in this crazy case, it was as if someone had shunted all the gardens along - nearly everyone looked out on to a garden, but not theirs. And the gardens were about 20 feet wide, so very narrow. I just wanted to charge in and re-arrange it all. I guess the legal issues would have been prohibitive to put things right. You'd need to secure the co-operation (and financing!) of everyone in the row.