Dodgy estate?

[mumzy]

Have just viewed a great house on a lovely quiet road but the garden(approx 200ft in length) backs onto the garden of another house in a large dodgy estate. My feeling is to say no due to the proximity of this other estate but dh loves the house , the question is should I give in?

Wouldn't bother me but I live in central London where (a) there's a lot of social housing (b) 200ft garden would definitely soften the blow. A tower block might bother me but if the house backs onto another garden it realy really wouldn't bother me and you can always plant up/adapt that end of the garden to screen it/make it more secure.

I lived in central London too, close to a big estate (at the end of the road) and it was fine except a bit noisy in the height of summer when people tended to hang around at night outside. The best thing to do is go past the house lots of times to get an idea, ie day or night, weekend etc to see what it's like. Places can seem quiet during the week when everyone's at work but v.noisy at weekends when they are all at home, fixing cars in the front garden, playing music or whatever!

Also, depending on the area, the "dodgy" estate might actually have a high number of private owners these days, did the house that backed onto the one you like look ok? If it's well kept and looks nice then I wouldn't be so worried. I once viewed a lovely flat but the one upstairs had raggedy curtains, carboard at the windows etc and it put me right off

House is in suburbs and the town has a dodgy part which is well known and the house we viewed appears to be on the road which separates the nice part of town from the dodgy end

There's a new website put up today, police.co.uk I think it is where you can check crime figures right down to the actual street.

The other thing you have to think of is how easy it will be to sell in the future if the dodgy area has a bad reputation. You can get dodgy neighbours anywhere though!

Looked up the crime figures and nothing on the nice road and the next one up but quite a few on the estate. Also spoken to a passerby who lived on estate and he was quite cagey about it saying there were worst places to live so didn't make me especially confident there is a low turnover of houses on the road we're looking at so a good sign still mulling it over