How important is parking?

[Eternalrealist]

Just trying to gauge people's reactions/opinions to purchasing a house without any parking as I am currently agonising over this and can't decide!

We have a buyer for our house but there's a total lack of suitable homes to go to.

We need to stay local due to mine and DP's work, also to ensure our youngest DC get into the same outstanding school as eldest DC.

The house we have seen that's a possible is a lovely period 4 bed, 2.5 bath study/large sitting room/large lounge plus good sized garden which is very unusual around these parts for older houses.

It's on a high street (lovely market town type scene) but not noisy due to secondary glazing and lovely shutters for night time.

BUT..... Due to its position there is no parking , there are short stay spaces opposite the house but no good for weekdays or Saturday's, equally theis a car park a few seconds away where you can leave car for free overnight and Sunday's. Other parking short and long stay maybe 4/5 mins walk away. The is also a private car park (waiting list of maybe 3 to six months) about 3 mins away.

Our current house has no parking either but we are lucky that DP has work parking one minute away so has never been a big issue.

Please give me your thoughts!!!

Is there no on street permit parking?! if not then I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole? We have on street permit parking because we're very central and that's a pain as it is!

Weeell, normally I'd say not on your nelly but as you don't currently have parking and its not a problem, then it's not an issue is it?

Or do you mean its one minute away from your current house, so you won't have it at the new one?

Have you considered looking into if there's anywhere else you can rent a space?

Very.

Can you create a drive using the front garden and have the council drop the kerb?

Our last house had no parking. Massive pain in the arse. I would not compromise on it - and you need to think if it will impact when you want to sell it on.

Honestly? I think you're lucky to have got a buyer for your current house if it didn't have parking.

My mym has been looking for a house in the past 18 months and has discounted loads solely on the grounds that there's no parking. I know that your chosen property is very central but for a family house, where you pack a car and go on holiday etc, not having adjacent would be a huge barrier to re-sale down the line.

When we first moved here we could access loads of free parking within a minute's walk, but gradually it's all been built on, and not only that, the new flats haven't had enough parking allocated, so now there's tremendous pressure on the remaining unrestricted street spaces. Unless you're certain you'll get a space in the private car park, and have checked it's not going to be unaffordable, I'd think carefully.

Eek no resident permit parking ?

It would be a compromise too far for me.

Unless I was elderly and housebound.

Also surely a complete pain for visitors?

Hi thanks for all your responses!

Resale won't be an issue as there is always more demand for houses than stock with or without parking so I'm not too worried about that.

You are allowed to stop outside to load and unload as well so as far as shopping and holidays go that's ok too, it's more the day to day convenience of it all.

It's all a bit depressing as unless you have half a million around here you cannot get 'everything' and even if you have that sort of cash you might have to wait two years for a house like thatbt come on, oh it's all so frustrating!

Tinkling will scope out the private car park and look into prices etc as well........

I could live somewhere with no where to park. It will constantly affect your very day life and drive you insane

I was about to say that I think people get het up about parking, but assumed you would have some form of on-street/resident's parking somewhere nearby.

Personally, unless you don't have a car at all, I would be nervous about having a house where you couldn't park anywhere near the house.

How old are your children? DD1 is four and, if we had a five minute walk every time we wanted to go out in the car it would drive me round the bend.

We can stop for up to two hours outside - if we can get a space, which is sometimes difficult on market days, school pick-up time, and evenings when the world and his wife are duoble parked - there are three restaurants, two pubs and three take-aways. So loading for trips etc isn't too much of a problem, you do need to plan ahead at busy times. We've got a pair of chairs by the front door whose sole purpose is to be run out with and plonked in the space outside the door when it becomes available. It's the day to day hassle of playing 'hunt the space', and remembering to move her to another street after two hours, that steadily gets on my wick.

What about when you get home late at night?

We had toddlers/babies so it was a bloody nightmare.

Oooo no.

And we don't have resident's parking at all. See other threads for my blood-boiling fury about this. Apparently 143 households wanting it isn't enough grrrr.

I think you'd have to budget in an annual pass in the nearest car park to make it work.

Also, what about visitors? Does parking in the area get worse at weekends? My road gets very full of visitors cars at a weekend and that's in spite of everyone having double drives.

So many factors to consider - do you/DH use the car daily to get to work/school? Do you have more than one car?

We lived somewhere with no parking for years, but there was free overnight parking, just had to remember to move the car before 9am each morning, and in those days we didn't have children.

yy ohforfoxsake Coming home in heavy rain with sleepy small children and not being able to find any where even on the double yellow lines.

Wouldn't be an issue for us.