Lovely house -crap area ( and possibly crapper)

[TheRemotePart]

I just need to confirm that this is a daft purchase

We don’t have a huge mortgage available to us and a small deposit, but we’re hoping to get on the property ladder for our forever home( or at least 10 years!)

We can afford a small flat in the nicer part of the city, but want a home with a garden/ space for our family - so we’ve been looking at areas close to us, but a bit “rougher” than we’re used to.

We found a lovely big home ,in its own new estate( a few streets really) , a little away from the direct rough part and DH in particular ,loves it. No work needed. Perfect.

BUT

Theres 2 large blocks of flats going up, practically on top of the street and it’s social housing

Now, the hippy leftist knows how important social housing is BUT in my city, a lot of these estates and blocks are like the Wild West

Should we risk it ? See if any half decent people move in?
Or no chance: if it becomes rough you’ll sell at a loss

Anyone done similar?

There's no need to be so disingenuous about social housing.

Yes there are lovely people that live in social/Council housing.

But it's also where the Council at times have to place the dregs of society - because its the only option and because they can't leave people homeless. The ASBO families, the drug dealers, the junkies. I feel extremely sorry for many of their circumstances, especially those with drug issues - but not to the extent that I'd want them on my doorstep. Yes I'm an awful NIMBY but so are most people if they're honest about it.

Even if you don't personally mind risking this, plenty will whether rightly or wrongly - so two blocks of new social housing flats in the doorstep is likely to make reselling more difficult or possibly affect the value of the house.

I wouldn't personally.

@pastypirate it’s housing assos. They’ve remodelled a few estates, but still full of the same crowd it was before …
They are quite large. About 10 stories under construction and two blocks. The images on the plans look nice enough but…..?

@caringcarer true enough.. sorry you’re neighbours a dick

@ChristmasRobins I’m not asking for your character assassination, I’m asking whether anyone’s been in a similar situation
Personally, I’d be quite happy never paying a mortgage and living in a nice little council house liek the one I grew up in. It’s just that they don’t exist in this city. They are full of undesirables they can’t put anywhere else.

• does doing this exacerbate the anti social issue? That’s a topic for another thread.

@Hoppinggreen

Nope And don’t listen to any virtue signallers who criticise you not wanting to live near a load of social housing and accuse you of snobbery. We naively did it , thinking any reservations were just Mc angst and that it would be fine. Yes the majority of people just wanted to get on with their lives but it only takes a few problem residents (or the council using some of the houses as temporary accommodation for families evicted from elsewhere for anti social behaviour in our case) and it can be a bloody nightmare.

Totally agree, unfortunately any social housing will inevitably have a percentage of difficult tenants which can make life really difficult and unpleasant for the other residents, personally I would never buy a house close to social housing.

@crazycrofter oh I’m sorry to hear that. This is what I’m afraid of

If you are buying for a family then what are the:

1. local childcare provision like?
2. local schools e.g. the ones you are in the catchment area for, like?

I mean both reputation and OFSTED.

I'm in London and some areas lack a choice of childcare provision for under 5s.

Then with schools some state schools right next to social housing are better than that next to wealthier housing as rich people tend to go private and the schools spaces have to be filled with someone's children.

@TheRemotePart Sure. I’m not saying you should live somewhere you don’t want to live. My objection is to your horrible characterisation of council tenants at the start of this thread, which was rather different to what you said in your last post. You don’t need to misrepresent them so grossly to justify your decision to live elsewhere.

Our first house purchase was in an established social housing area with a couple of new blocks of flats being built on some adjacent land. We had loads of issues. Drug dealing, blacked out SUVs turning up at all hours, one of the neighbours barricading himself in at one point, as afraid of the dealers, with nailed planks of wood over the doors and windows. Of course at 5am he used to come out for his next fix and we'd be woken up by all the wood being hammered off. Then we had the mattresses and like dumped outside our garage. Plus the grafitti of giant cocks we had to scrub off and the human poo. Not to mention the drunks having a domestic outside your bedroom window at 2am. We somehow managed to sell it and moved to the cheapest house in an upmarket area. I actually found this worse, due to several neighbours thinking they owned the road and despite us all having drives, complaining if your visitor happened to park in the street, or if a weed grew in your front garden, they'd have to say lest it undermined their foundations. They also expected dh to dig their cars out of the snow when he was wfh. Then we moved on the outskirts of a 1950s ex council estate. No problems at all, lovely people, all getting on with their own lives. Couldn't be happier. So it depends imv.

As for Shared ownerships, that’s what the houses opposite us were supposed to be. Our Solicitor flagged it before completion but we were assured that it just meant working people who couldn’t quite afford a house such as Nurses, Blue collar workers etc.
Well when they couldn’t all actually be sold they were leased to The Council for problem families.
The shared ownership residents were as upset about what went on as those of us who wholly owned.

Go for the better area every time!

No here, location trumps property everytime. We learnt the hard way, bought and moved in for 6 weeks, (area fine, just the location didn't work for us) then ending up renting it out and renting ourselves in the right location for our sanity! I was 3 months pregnant with dc1 so a crucial time. We sold nearly 2 years later and with a bit of equity bought in the right location, still here 13 years later.

@ChristmasRobins if you’d bothered to RTFT you’ll see that I LIVED in a council house.
Bugger off, off this thread if it’s annoying you.
Jeez …

I wouldn’t go for the house and I live in social housing. Location, location, location…

It's a City, so not outing yourself, which part of the large city is it?
People on here may know about it and can advise you.

It is a daft purchase.
They say buy the worst house on the best street. That wouldn’t be the best street to buy on.

DM lives in housing association.
First one was lovely, nice area, nice people. The nice people all moved and she was left with toe rags breaking her windows & scroungers on her doorstep begging for money ‘to feed the kids’.
She swapped area and it was out of the frying pan… graffiti on her car, litter, dogs free roaming & crapping everywhere. People parking in front of her drive, sofas dumped, parties etc.

She is now in a worse house but one of only a couple of houses in a close of mostly privately owned so it is a nice quiet and safe area.

@Mum090521 interesting …
@Hoppinggreen well about 15 years ago, in this same city , a huge beautiful block of apartments were built. Supposed to be something like 85% owned and the other 15% buy to let. Omg it was a disaster! Absolute wild, these gorgeous and expensive flats were rented out to all and sundry. Now they’re all half the price and pretty much unsellable.
So I don’t have much faith in a HA keeping the peace if that’s supposed to be the deal with the private news builds ..

21:16Mum090521

Were these old people making the snow digging demands?

Please say he told them to do one?!

@TheRemotePart I’ve read the thread. I’m objecting to your characterisation of council tenants as “200 potential junkies”. It’s a disgusting way to talk about people- that’s my only point. They’re your words- if you didn’t mean them, fine.

@TheRemotePart For me it depends how rough, we lived on a posh new build estate it was huge though a village so had housing association property's dotted throughout and a large block of flats.

Never had a problem with any of the tennants but the man that lived in the large house behind was an absolute creep, literally thought he owned the whole road and would put signs up in the middle of the night people weren't overly friendly either.

We moved to the outer part of a "rough" area about 10 min walk away from a rough estate everyone is so friendly and kind we have amazing neighbours and the kids have friends, plus no creepy stuck up neighbour behind us

Nope! All very well for people to say yabu but they don’t know the area and they don’t have to live there. Location more often than not- location!

@PGSTesting123
It’s an industrial city with one “direction “ so to speak , is really nice. Usually

I mean, I’m writing all this and worrying as my posh area /posh flat neighbours were growing a cannabis farm underneath me until about a month ago… so tbh, it can happen anywhere ! But I wouldn’t wish it again!

@BeLessMe this is so true

@PGSTesting123

21:16Mum090521

Were these old people making the snow digging demands?

Please say he told them to do one?!

I don't know what age you deem to be "old" but no, just entitled.

@Mum090521 needs to start a thread about this street lol.

Don't buy it. An estate agent told me years ago "if you have bad neighbours the thing to do is...move". And I know from personal experience that is right. You are lucky, you don't need to move.

I hate the way people jump on a person who dares to question social housing. 99% of them make decent neighbours. That 1% make life hell. I deal with it on a daily basis through my job. The 99% are equally as upset with the problem tenants