To want to move before a new build development starts next to us?

[Tired756]

I live on a quiet housing estate at the edge of my town, not a lot of traffic as it there's nowhere to go other than the houses, no reason to drive through. My house is on the end of a cul de sac, with a field and play park to the side of me, then the estate is surrounded on one side by farmers fields and nice walking routes through green space and woods until you get to smaller villages on the other side.

There's a big housing development being built for the last few years on the other side of a main road, it looks half done, hundreds of houses lived in, park, shops nearby open but still building site on the edges and more coming. From looking on the website I've found their next stages plans, and the stage 3 is actually wrapping around our little estate. (*terrible diagram attatched) It's not clear when it will start but I would guess a few years away still based on the existing developments timeliness.
From the map on the website it looks like it will continue our cul de sac and go straight into new housing, the park and fields will be housing, somewhere there will be shops and a primary school.

It's not a debate about new builds, I know we don't own the green space or the view, it makes sense for houses to extend out from town and won't always be convenient, I get it.
But the appeal of this house was the quiet estate, our kids being able to play out, seeing the park from our window, nice walks with the dog and kids etc. There are compromises we made with the house because it was worth it for these things, the main one being that it is quite far from the middle of town so it's a long walk everywhere I go.
I want us to move at some point before this all starts, we've got a few years so no rush, we are going to have a building site literally next door to us which seems like a nightmare. We'll lose the space for our kids to play, green areas, the safety of quiet roads. Once it's built we will be in the middle of a much bigger estate, a lot more traffic, especially with a primary school very close on the map. I just feel like it's not where I want to live and the downsides to our house will no longer be worth it.
However my husband isn't really as fussed, he points out that the existing estate is really lovely, its got a great park, nice walking areas and we would quite happily live there, so if the plans are similar we would benefit from better roads to the rest of town, shops, and the community they build.
I also don't know what would happen to housing prices if we wanted to move down the line?

I'm interested in what everyone thinks? It would be easier to stay put and see how it plays out but I can't get the downsides out of my head and worry we might end up stuck not being able to sell next to a building site.

• yellow is existing housing, blue is the new estate and purple is the planned area surrounding us.

Opposition very rarely stops the build. But what it can and often does do is mitigate the effects. Maybe fewer houses, materials more compatible with the rest of local architecture, tree screens at the edge of the estate, and so on. You can see why developers are lobbying the government to hobble the planning process!

So does government policy about relaxing planning regulations to enable more house building.

But what about the age ratio? Used to be 4 adults to support each elderly person, now it's 3, and on current birthrate trends it's predicted to become 2. We either have more children or more immigration from countries with a high birth rate..

I read that a big contributor to the need for houses was the number of households splitting and therefore needing two houses not one.

Which is driven by lobbying of big housebuilders claiming the reason for new houses not being built is the expense of the planning system. So many things come back to money, and we have more money concentrated in fewer hands than at any time since the war.

You're right I would hate to do that, there was a lot wrong with our house when we moved in the buyers were obviously aware of and I was annoyed about that, let alone a whole building site. At the moment there's a few houses on this estate on rightmove and they all mention the quiet estate, spacious green area etc, it's definitely part of the selling point, so potentially some very disappointed people in a few years time.

You are allowed to do it. I know someone who bought a rural house to find out a few months later that a bypass was being built round the nearby town and it will be like 80 ft from his property. The sellers knew, the whole town knew.....they've been talking about it for years. But these new buyers were from out of town, they used non local solicitors to do the searches and because planning permission hadn;t been applied for nothing came up in the searches.

They have tried suing but have been unsuccessful.