How important are neighbours when buying/selling?

[marykat2004]

I hope I am putting this in the correct topic...

We have put our flat on the market and are looking for a house in another town.

One of the houses we looked at had what appeared to be a very run down house next door. Now I know I should not be snobby but they had a broken window and a lot of rubbish piled out the back of their garden, that we could see from the back of our potential garden. It kind of put me off.

Similarly, we have a bit of a hoarder next door, he looks quite rough, and has some junk piled outside his door. It's a block of flats and he is right next to us. He's not dangerous though.

I just wonder if it puts people off buying a place if the next door neighbours look scruffy?

It would put me (and a lot of other people off). I might be able to overlook a little bit of mess but alarm bells would ring about noise etc as well.

Generally, we all want really nice boring neighbours who are completely unspectacular in every way and who will feed the cat when you go on holiday .

Yes, it's off-putting. I wouldn't buy that property and if it's on at a good price, that might be why. On the other hand if the houses are this way because the neighbours are old it's much more positive because you can help tidy things up and they might not mind.

When we looked to buy our house the next door neighbour had a lovely house-clean windows, well kept, nice car, tidy garden. We bought.......turns out he was a pedophile-just saying!

I saw teenagers in hooded tops coming out of the house next door to the one we looked at. I know that sounds very un-politically correct to say that that is a bad sign but still...not old people as one person said. There are a good number of lovely elderly people in our block who all keep their places immaculate, more so than families who are too busy working and running around and taking kids to school etc. For the most part where we live in very nice it's that directly next door is a dodgy looking guy.

Knock on the door and have a chat. Introduce yourself as a possible new neighbour and ask about the house/area.

That is what we did. We also asked other neighbours about the problem house. We were told that they were "ok" and we knew it might be tricky.

They were not ok. Noise, dogs, swearing at their kids, mess, their scary visitors..... We hadnt asked immediate neighbours so they were not fully aware. Luckily they moved otherwise we might have gone before the kids arrived. I couldnt have coped living next to them on maternity leave in the house on my own.

I would be very wary about a house with a broken window. It reflects a certain degree of chaos which is nothing to do with snobbery.

Thank you for your advice. I asked the estate agent about the house with the broken window and have not heard anything since.

Another house we looked at was on the same street as a day centre for junkies or ex-junkies. It was otherwise a quiet street (no traffic). The current owner was up front about the junkie house and it was not directly next door. She said they sometimes are in the street but they had not had any problems with the youths. So, 1. they are not directly next door and 2. they are not there at night and 3. we would not be hanging out outside our front door, so all it would mean is walking past them from time to time. I will have a more thorough look around that street before deciding.

Thanks for your feedback.

Not a consideration for me...at the end of the day all the nice neighbours can move too...and you never know who might mive in their place. House next door to us has had a succession of renters, never had any issues at all. 4 weeks ago the owner moved in, and has been a total pain ever since! You just never know ...

It's really about the tone of the whole area and the type of people that are attracted to live there. In our road almost everyone is older/old so generally quiet, keen on gardens and only one car on the drive - perfect! Next door neighbours can move on - 3 in 4 houses in our road have only been here for a max of 6 months but if they aren't good to start with and they don't move you are stuck. As lalalonglegs says we all want boring neighbours - hope I fit that category too

It depends. If it were a terrace or attached (or your flat, sorry) I might consider it, depending on how bad the situation was. I remember tales from a friend's family in an end of terrace house, and how they were having a man out to spray for roaches every month. He did finally suggest tapping on the neighbours' door to see if they wouldn't mind him spraying their side (at the expense of my friend's family, ofc). He said the place was horrific, and behind their wall (the shared wall between the properties) it was just covered in roaches, eggs etc. :( :(

Our last house, we had an odd neighbour but he was friendly enough in his gruff way. He enjoyed a good gossip over the back fence. They're my favourite sort, actually. :)

On the other end of the spectrum Bumblequeen made me smile. My family were unpopular on the street because our lawn wasn't perfect. We had no broken windows or pimped up cars but everyone elsa had their lawns so perfect they looked fake. It was the 70s so maybe some of them even were fake. Ours had some bigger, wilder trees and we didn't use pesticides so we sometimes had dandilions.

I would feel uncomfortable living on a street that was too perfect, but there are plenty of just decent streets around, where people look after their property.

Really glad I posted this, the roach story has made me decide definitely not to go for that house with the broken window next door. If someone can't fix a broken window, just put cardboard over it (like they had) then I don't really want to know what they are like inside.

As for our neighbour, it's a one room flat that has changed hands 4 times since we moved in. That is what I'm telling the viewers because that's how it is. You can never tell really.

I think neighbours are important! But you can never tell whether they are good or bad. even in a lovely area at our last house our neighbours weren't great!

Exactly. It might be obvious that someone who can't or won't fix a broken window might be trouble but you can never tell when things look nice on the surface.