How important is a lawn for family house buyers?

[SkodaLabia]

I'm doing a garden from scratch. We are by the sea and I love coastal/prairie style gardens. My taste leans towards loads of plants, some lovely festoon lights, grasses, wooden garden furniture etc.

The house is a 4 bed in a newish build estate, and we don't know how long we're going to stay here. Would a lack of lawn put buyers off? My neighbours' gardens seems to be the typical new build garden with a rectangle of lawn and a deck.

I'm not planning on doing anything irreversible, so there won't be flagging or tarmac.

It might be worth saying that the kids seem to play more in the street than in their respective gardens round here!

Yes lawn is very appealing I think. Also, we bought a house with big pebbles instead of a lawn and even though it was nicely done, it did look very grey in the photos. It wasn't difficult or expensive to replace with lawn, but I do think it was why the house sat on the market for a while. We did practically nothing to the decor in 5 years, just changed the lawn, and then we sold it in 2 weeks.

Lawn it is. I'm afraid we do have steps, but there's nothing I can do about that as the garden is lower than the house.

I think daughter and s in law only managed to buy a family house in the very popular area they liked, because the garden (long and very elaborately laid out with no lawn at all, had put so many other buyers off - so much work to maintain or else vast expense to have re-done. Luckily s in law was not afraid to get stuck in.

If you are not planning to sell for the foreseeable, I would do what you want. But maybe keep it relatively easy/not too expensive to alter later.

Which way does the garden face and how much sun does it get? I see it is overlooked on all 3 sides, with the 4th being your house.

I agree with others that a lawn is important. In my previous garden I had no lawn and missed it. In my current garden I have about 3m x 3m lawn (the garden is small) but it is instantly so much nicer. It is pleasant to eye, somewhere to put a paddling pool down, a blanket to relax and so on. A lawn is a big advantage when looking for a house to buy.

I'm in the minority I think that I would like a garden without a lawn - I bloody hate mine as it always looks shit and the kids never play on it anyway. I might be biased as we have clay soil and its a nightmare. The dog pee and poo would be easier to deal with off lawn (poo smears in and wee burns the grass). But I guess the majority want one so if you are planning on selling in next couple of years it might be better to put one in.

The garden faces due West and apart from the gloomy corner it does well for sun. The boundary on the left of the picture is a fence by a busy road, but we're not overlooked on that side, the fence is 8 feet high and there are no houses on that stretch, it's just noisy with cars.

The other three sides boundary other houses.

We have just put in a lawn, removing a load of high maintenance child unfriendly beds! Would be important to us but would not stop me buying the house, just when we did i budgeted for some garden work when negotiated the purchase. Garden work is surprisingly expensive. HOWEVER if you don't plan to move then do what you want!

Ooh, a couple of lawn haters have emerged.

Interesting what you say about it being muddy and having clay soil. Our soil is heavy and also the lawn will have a slope as I definitely don't want to spend money on levelling the ground.

People will want a lawn if they have kids. Its like a bathroom with a bath.

Most people think they need a lawn and a bath but in fact rarely use it.

I am renovating a large house without a lawn (it has a car park as it was an institution) and I will be putting garden where the car park was. It will have a lawn. I am also putting in a bathroom - traditional with a bath.

People just expect one to be there.

By the way, get a company to lay you a turf lawn. Its perfect, its instant and you just need to water well every day and mow very lightly on a long setting through the summer.

I laid a new lawn last year and did it this way. We have the best lawn in the street.

Yes, I know what you mean about expectations.

Because we're on a tight budget I was thinking of getting a company in to rotavate and sow a seed lawn, do you think that would work?

I'm with you on getting a company to do it, the ground has never been planted and it's full of rubble, so whilst I think we could make grass grow it will be a nightmare to mow unless we get the lumps out.

It might be a lot cheaper if you can remove as much rubble as possible before you get anyone in to do work. The more you can manage yourself the cheaper it will be - and you will know that the company hasn't just levelled off & hidden the stuff just below the surface (this can be a real pain with lawns as you will end up with uneven patches and places where the grass doesn't grow properly).

I think half the appeal is the green in the photos looks so much nicer than grey slabs, not matter how practical the slabs. But if you don't fancy lawn, there's nothing to stop you leaving a lawn space and filling it with a membrane and some shingle for now. I would change it before you sell though.

We were put off by the prices of getting people in so we did ours ourselves. Topsoil and decent turf - cut fresh to order and laid soon after, not stacked outside B&Q for a week - is surprisingly cost-effective. Depends on lawn size of course, but ours was hard work for a day, followed by watering. We didn't have to pick out rubble but we did have a whole gardenful of stones to shift first. I agree with dodo, if you can bring yourself to tackle the rubble and maybe wheelbarrow some topsoil around, you'll save a lot of money and you'll KNOW there aren't hidden breeze blocks lurking just where you want to install the washing line, or where a future child will land on its head.