I don’t want to buy a house directly opposite affordable housing

[SpainToday]

I have name changed for this because I expect to get annihilated.

DH and I are considering reserving a plot on a new development. I think all developments now need to have a certain amount of affordable housing. Our first choice of house would be directly opposite three affordable plots and this is a real sticking point. DH is also wary. There were originally 8 plots with our preferred design of house, they have all sold except this one and I suspect that’s the reason.

Of course we could always go with our Plan B type of house round the corner, but that seems such a shame. When we bought our current home, 12 years ago. One of the mortgage questions was proximity to any affordable housing, so its clearly an issue.

Am I worrying unnecessarily?

Affordable housing is the least of your worries. It's the property management company who will charge you hand over fist each year but you'll likely see very little for it. I would never live on a new build estate again purely because of a management company who are unregulated and charge as they see fit.

While I wouldn’t turn my nose up at the plot specifically I would expect it to be reduced in price. Affordable housing doesn’t necessarily mean rif raf, but it is specifically designed with low income families in mind. For me, that means less maintained properties around about. No harm in wanting to avoid it.

We used to live in the affordable housing part of a new development. Our house was shared ownership ie we had a mortgage for 250k and payed rent on the other 250k. We were young professionals with small children as were all of our neighbours. Our neighbours, in the shared ownership section, were nurses, teachers, accountants, architects etc.

OP is it Affordable housing or social housing?
If the latter yes you are likely to have problems. We have social housing in our "mixed" block of flats (3 out of 25 flats) and all was fine for the first 10 years, until the original tenant of one of the flats moved out and the HA moved in a drug addict and her loser boyfriend. After 8 months we are fed up with the ASB and are having to collect eidence so we can go to court to get them removed. The HA told us that usually only people with significant problems apply for this type of housing.

You do realise people who live in affordable housing have a mortgage and own a percentage of their property?

Social housing is different. However, even if it was social housing, I live opposite many social housing tenants and tbh have had more problems with the ones who one their own homes.

On my road out of 6 properties 3 are social housing, the rest of us privately own. Never a problem from anyone. I'd be more worried about private rentals and the turnover of tenants you can get, as well as homeowners, who like anyone, can be complete arses and you in know you'll likely be stuck with them longer.

Social housing no I wouldn't buy a new build affordable housing yes I would as they are mortgaged

I wouldn't want to live opposite the affordable options either, I'd want to live in them. Enjoy your new home.

Oh FFS. Wankers live everywhere.

I live in an expensive privately owned development in central London. 50:50 owner-occupiers, buy to let. Most people here are high earners and work in the city. There are recurrent issues with noise, stealing parking spaces and dumping tonnes of old furniture in the bin store.

My sister lives locally in a council block in the middle of an estate with a high proportion of residual council properties. She has far fewer issues with crap than I do and has trained the teenagers who socialise in her stairwell to pick their rubbish up. They now offer to help residents struggling with shopping/ buggies etc up the stairs (the building doesn't have a lift)

Meanwhile in affluent-ville I've just had to mop the tiled foyer as someone smashed a bottle of red wine and thought it was OK to just leave the mess (we have carpeted stairwells further into the building) for the porter on Monday.

Quite.

It's amazing how many people equate money, or lack of, and vice versa, with class and behaviour.

Very lower middle class aspirational thinking <tongue in cheek>

I live in a new build affordable housing property and my home is very well looked after, we keep ourselves to ourselves, rarely have visitors and the gardens are immaculate. All the other AH properties on my development are exactly the same.

My next door neighbours paid £600k for their home and we get along great!

Don't be such a snob!

Just buy the house round the corner and leave the poor people alone @SpainToday.🙄

Nobody is judging you. Its common knowledge where we live of daily problems with some of the social housing tenants on a local new estate. Police up there on a daily basis. Its those tenants who should be blamed for people having to ask the questions like the OP has.

@bellac11 No it's also housing associations. I live in one

@EllieQ Incorrect. 80% of the AH on my development is housing association rentals. I live in one!

When I could finally afford to buy somewhere I first looked at Shared Ownership but the very few available were hugely overpriced, with high monthly fees/groundrents with 100% of maintenance/upkeep costs down to me, etc - a very bad deal. Luckily I could stretch a bit more and bought in the cheapest part of the district instead, not my ideal home but it put a roof that is mine over mine and ds's heads.

And when I've been up there repairing my roof I feel lucky that that my efforts all belong to me.

People with money want to be around similar and those without affordable housing.

That's just the way it is in this Country. Not sure why it's a the fault of a handful of people when we've had over a decade of a Govt that want things this way.

I’m a housing officer for a large housing association. I currently have 3 x new build schemes on my patch. Not a single issue on my rented ones- shared ownership and outright owners a completely different story! I do have some asb but it’s mostly on my older properties tbh.

It's not the end of the world OP 😅. Also Affordable housing on our development meant part buy part rent.

I think this would worry me too as my only experience of housing association houses when i lived on a development was negative. Lots of rubbish dumped outside the houses. Shouting, swearing, knackered cars and the front gardens were basically weeds. This was twenty years ago so things might have changed since then.

Yes it is. I live in one! I pay rent to my housing association. My property is marked as 'Affordable Housing' on the Developer's site plan!

I remember one land agent explaining to me that “affordable housing” was essentially halfway houses for drug addicts and alcoholics, and that’s why the developer was aiming to not include any but give a slug of money to the Council to spend elsewhere.

I took great delight in making sure that the Council applied the full amount of affordable housing to the development.

As most on here know, plenty of things could affect your "quiet life", a neighbour with a performance car, a neighbour with an early start, a neighbour who hosts regularly, a neighbour who needs some kind of support, a neighbour on the lookout for free childcare, a neighbour with multiple cars and parking issues...

This. That’s exactly how it goes where we live.

It has changed, well where I live.