To be worried about buying a semi attached to a council owned house?

[mumyes]

I'm about to spend nearly £500k on a semi that is attached to a 4-bed house owned by a housing-association...the one I'm buying used to be a council house.

I'm nervous. The little estate it's on is still partly (maybe 50/50) 'council' owned.

Should I be worried?

The house I'm buying is lovely, and well kept. Next door less so...but not as bad as some.

I did and regret it.

Haha, our friends are a psychiatrist and a surgeon, they've just bought a house adjacent to a council estate so that their kids can have "normal" friends. Both parents grew up in council houses.

Snobbery of the most disgusting kind.

I owned an ex-council flat in London for nine years. The downstairs neighbours were council tenants, and lovely people. Bus driver and nurse. The whole estate had a great community feel and anti-social behaviour was pretty much zero.

I got sneered at by a lot of people when I told them where we lived, as they thought it was some sort of ghetto. Idiots, the lot of them.

I still miss living there. I only moved because we needed somewhere bigger.

The only problem neighbours I've ever had were in private rented accommodation.

I wouldn't. Councils aren't known for keeping their buildings in good condition and if you share a party wall and something goes wrong, they may not be quick to fix it.

Cannot stop laughing at this.

I wouldn't buy it op.

Do what? Utter madness. What skewed thinking.

So we bought a flat as leaseholders in a council owned block. I judged anyone who said that we’d regret it.

We have had communal front door bust open in a drugs raid, constant smell of Canabis, neighbour below regularly knocking on our door begging for money for her electricity, Rottweiler left unattended in the corridor (and accompanying poo), wild parties in the corridors, loud music, thefts of things we left outside our front door including guests’ shoes and batteries from a defuser, rubbish heaped in our garden…I could go on.

I’ve learned my lesson.

Som of the biggest scum bags I know are MC to UC. abusive, manipulative and bullying of others. Neglectful of their children, reliant on family money, snobbish and uneducated and uncultured. All MC to UC.

Housing association doesn’t equal scum. Judge by peoples character and actions not by their living circumstances. People are people.

Me too

Crikeyalmighty - I definitely agree with you. Lovely garden! 😊

I've lived in a council housing area for years Op and just like most places it's a mix of the bad and the good. Yes, you might end up next to a drug dealer or you may be lucky and have lovely neighbours, most of mine are really nice people who are decent and friendly. Please don't run away with the idea that just because you can't afford to buy a house you must be antisocial and nasty

I recently lived in an estate where everyone owned their own homes. It was noisy. A family from hell moved in next to me. They had 8 kids that made lots of noise and had lots of friends. Was never quiet. I moved.

now in a new build estate next to and across road from HA houses. People are quiet, hard working and houses always look tidy.

I wouldn't buy a semi again. We've only ever had owner-occupiers next door (as far as I know!). Some have been great, some have been terrible. They were ALL noisy though, because walls between semis are often very thin.

This did happen to me when I attempted to buy a flat. The neighbour was a long term council tenant and very difficult, so it was a no. A really beautiful property but it had to be no.

The giveaway maybe how long the property has been on for.

I'll probably get flamed for this but we used to live in an old council property which we privately rented. Houses around us were mostly council owned and we had some lovely neighbours.

But, the lady next door to us passed away- we were semi detached. They had someone in within a week. She happened to be a s*x worker, and a very noisy one to boot. She was also mercilessly abusing her daughter. I won't go into specifics but it was a nightmare and horrendous to listen to. The council were well aware of her but refused to move her because she was adequately housed.

We've since moved but I still think about that poor little girl, completely let down by the system at every turn.

If council/HA are the ones providing any maintenance to the communal areas/land/plot yeah id be worried, after my experience of being a private owner with HA as a freeholder, they are terrible in quality of service they provide!

Hard no

Because those authorities can be notoriously slow with needed repairs!
YANBU at all OP. Not sure how this thread has descended into a social fight but I'd be worried about repairs etc getting done.

The biggest HA in our area have a bad rep, every few weeks or so there are FB posts about mould, damp, downright dangerous things and I've spoken to a few of the tenants personally as well.

Too big a risk

There are pros and cons. I moved onto an estate and my council neighbour is a nuisance. She is constantly doing drugs, even in front of her children, and keeps destroying the boundary wall and the council are not helpful. My other neighbours are lovely and I'd say it's no different to living any where else. Plus, the benefit for me was the size of the house against the cost, especially for the location.

You can never guarantee what kind of neighbours you will have, regardless of social housing, we moved to a 'nicer area' as we needed a bigger house, our old neighbours were lovely, the house we moved to was a semidetached 30s house, next door lived the elderly retired son of the original housebuilder, who had an adult daughter living at home, tv was LOUD and on till 1am most nights, then daughters violent boyfriend moved in......
eventually daughter moved out, elderly neighbours died and house is now owned by very nice people keen on gardening. However 45 later years I am old, and my front garden is overgrown as I can not garden as I used to. House is slightly scruffy, so people who can afford a house near me might be too particular and cultured to live next to me!

So much pearl clutching at people being honest about the higher risk of antisocial behaviour from council tenants.

Yes, some tenants will be perfectly lovely. But others will be absolutely awful because they may have grown up on rough estates where antisocial behaviour was common and there was nobody around to show them how to behave as children, and they still hang around with dreadful people.

Note that I say they MAY have grown up on estates - I acknowledge that plenty of council tenants work and may have had middle class upbringings etc etc, but many people are trapped in a cycle of poverty and end up out of work and in council accommodation forever.

And many people in council housing are not inclined to keep their properties in presentable condition because they can’t afford to, don’t want to because it’s ‘not theirs’ or both.

Out and out snobbery here, and throughout.

I grew up in a council house (as did both of my parents). My folks bought their council house when we were teenagers. I, and one of my siblings, live in ex-council properties, and have council tenants as neighbours. Two of us have properties worth more than £500k. These have all been bought with hard work, largely through having good jobs; not a bit of lottery winning, or inherited wealth.

Want to park your prejudices somewhere else?

If you look at the facts, you'd see that the incidence of anti-social behaviour is higher in these properties. It's not about being near poorer people! Ridiculous!

I've just read half of this thread and I don't think people even know the difference between council houses and HA houses.
Or even that different areas have different criteria.

Council houses were never supposed to be for 'the poor' they were supposed to be for everyone but that's not what's happening due to low stock.