Stunning house but near junction on a busy road

[silversixpence]

We have found a beautiful house but are hesitating as it is just before a busy junction near a train station. There are often queues to turn right at peak times and as the house is so near the junction we could end up waiting to pull into the drive. Also when pulling out it is very difficult to see right as the neighbours fence is in the way, so the current owner usually turns left and then turns the car around further up the main road. The other niggle is that the garden is smaller than I wante (I love gardening and have an allotment and no real garden at the moment)..

The house is a Victorian double fronted semi with high ceilings, fireplaces in rooms, stained glass windows and a wooden veranda at the back. It is unlikely something like this will come up again as I haven't seen any other similar houses in the area and the price reflects the location so it is within our budget. Other properties are mostly 1930s semis but have much bigger gardens.

Would you buy the house? We have 3 dc aged 7 to 4 months and expect our next home to be our forever home.

We live on a pretty busy road and generally it's a compromise I'm happy with. In fact, if the council would just put in a speed camera as appropriate for a residential area I would be totally fine with it.

But, the traffic is usually moving. Just now we have roadworks and with cars stationary outside the house the noise seems more noticeable - especially loud music from cars.

I live on a main road not far from that house, and I would say it has two main things going for it - firstly the fact that it's set back quite far from the road, and secondly that it's on a junction so you're less likely to get police cars and ambulances flying past with their sirens on.

Having said that, it does depend how you're going to use the house and how noise tolerant you are. We're looking to move and one of my criteria is that it's NOT on a main road. We've lost two cats to the road, which was heartbreaking, at one point we had three car crashes almost outside in the space of 10 days and it becomes extremely tiresome having to have your TV turned up to blaring just so you can hear it over the traffic noise outside - and if those windows are original (as they look), single glazing won't help a great deal with that.

nancy most schools now devise their own admission policies - certainly in south London where few/no LA schools exist they do .
As a result we have a plethora of policies including and combining lotteries ,banding ,scholarships etc which can see secondary school kids travelling some distance to school .

Yep. I went to a independently funded state secondary school which had a catchment of three boroughs (Lewisham, Greenwich and Southwark) with an assessment and an interview for entry. In south east London. I got a 10 minute train there every day.

Most of the criteria for entry used to be in-borough and lottery based for the best schools. Or done on the London Reading Test, which I'm sure has been scrapped for something else now.

Anyway, Shortlands is in Kent which places you for grammar schools and the 11+.

Lovely house, I would always put quiet over size but that is my preference. I go past from Petts Wood to Beckenham quite regularly and seem to remember a lot of flooding in that area in the past so do bear that in mind and get a flood check. If it wasn't too far out for you I can highly recommend Petts Wood as a great place to bring up a family.

Gingerroots, I live 10 mins from the house and am applying for secondary schools at the moment. Almost all of the schools offer place by distance unless you are looking at church or by academic ability. Competition for the super electives is fierce and there is no guarantee all children would get in, it is good for the op to know what the options are if her children can't get in to St Olaves or Newstead

PS Shortlands is not 'technically' in Kent but in Bromley so mostly OOC for most Kent grammars so you have to get a specially high score. Where I am Wilmington comes out just about as far as Petts Wood, as do the Bexley grammars. Also the superselectives of Newstead and St Olaves which are the Bromley schools.