lovely amazing house with narrow shared drive?

[thebig4]

we've sold our house and need to find a new house without any delays.
amazing house has been on market for a few months, we went to look at it and loved it but i'm out off by the narrow shared drive. DH doesnt think its a problem and thinks everyone would co-operate.
dont want to draw a plan in case the owner is a mumsnetter.

basically, its at the head of a single car width shared drive. there are three other houses and those houses have two car driveways but one car must go behind the other. the house we like has 2 car drive plus a turning point/ 3rd parking space belonging to the house we'd like to buy.

im sure the neighbours will co-operate but if they had a visitor who parked outside their house, we'd be blocked in at the bottom of the drive. its a busy new build with limited and tight parking everywhere.
I hope my description kind of makes sense.

we're running out of options but dont want to be have any stress as this is a big jump up mortgage-wise for us and stamp duty wise, so we'd need to be here 5 years at least.

owner naturally has said never any issues and no idea where their neighbours friends would park.

does anyone else have a similar set up or did you discount an amazing house on the basis of a shared drive?

thanks.

I think it also depends on where the house is. In our village there are a lot of higgilty pigilty houses built over 100s of years. Many of them have shared drives and strange accesses, but they all seem to remain highly desirable.

We briefly owned a house with a shared driveway. Never again.

We have shared drive, next door neighbour lovely, its someone on the other side, who doesnt share or have any rights over our drive who has been a nightmare LOL !!
Sister has a shared single car driveway between houses a few hundred years old...its been ok, although someone did reverse into her gates which annoyed her..

As it's a new build, I would hope that who is responsible for maintenance and repair of the drive is clearly defined in the deeds - if not, that could be a whole can of worms.

I think if it's already giving you stress and you've not even moved in, there's your answer!

My DSis has a house with a shared drive. Original next door neighbours were fine and it worked well for several years. Their successors have been totally selfish, aggressive shits whose behaviour in respect of the drive has been appalling - and they aren't Jeremy Kyle types, they are both senior people in the medical profession.

My DSis and BIL have now decided to sell, such as been the impact on their everyday life and that of their two teenage DC. They know that they may face problems doing so as they will have to declare that there has been an issue with their neighbours. I know this is an extreme example but having seen the stress it has caused DSis and her family, there is no way I would ever contemplate buying a house with a shared drive.

thanks for all the posts, been really helpful for me. dh still thinks i'm being over the top with my concerns and that it probably would be fine.

can i also ask another question. anyone rent after selling their house? did it work out?

Yes and yes - done it a few times. Means that you're not part of a chain and it's a handy negotiating tactic. We've generally bought from people not in a chain that wanted a quick sale too.

So the 2 neighbours only have 2 parking spaces each.

Do your neighbours need to use the turning circle to get out of their drives?

If a delivery van comes up the road, is there enough room for him to turn around without using your turning circle?

Are you sure that the turning circle/parking space belongs exclusively to the house? If anyone other than you needs to use the turning circle then surely it isn't a 3rd parking space? The whole turning circle/third parking space thing sounds problematic.

Neighbours only having two spaces means that any visitors that the neighbours have might be likely to use your third space/turning circle. Or even just use your own driveway if you are not there. Or just block your own driveway because they will only be 10 minutes. Or just park in front of the neighbours and block you in. And that could potentially be a lot of people. The neighbours might be lovely considerate people; their visitors may not be.

And you also mentioned that parking is tight on the streets around.

So a no from me.

Pretty much my whole life I've lived in houses with shared driveways. Never had a problem in any of the places. Half the houses on the new builds I've seen have shared driveways.

In fact a new build with more than one parking space at all is not the norm these days. Planners are trying to reduce spaces in urban areas to discourage car ownership. At least round here.

Yes, rented after selling and it paid off well when buying without a chain. Steer very clear of any shared drives though.

there is no turning circle.
the turning car park space belongs to the house we like, its just one car width in front of the house. other cars would reverse in front of their own houses to get in and out. imagine a straight line of houses with a single parking space at the end.
if a delivery van drove down the drive and owners two cars were parked one in front of the other, that van would have to reverse down the drive again and people at the last two houses would have to wait until the van did that.

if the van didnt park on the drive but parked on the cul de sac before the private driveway bit, its driver would have to walk about 20 metres to deliver the items.

basically, its a private drive off a small cul de sac. cul de sac and no turing circle, its has a 3 point turn circle!

informal and claudia, did the house prices rise much while you were renting?

what happens if you do rent and mid conveyancing where the chain ends with you, something does come up and you want to buy?

We only did it once and found a house very quickly.

It's a complete gamble. We have a shared drive and had never had the slightest problem, as we have lovely neighbours.

Friends on another village have a total nightmare with the neighbours from hell and ended having to take legal action.

Is the shared drive reflected in a lower asking price? Ie if you can get your dream house which would normally be way out of budget then I would consider it. Is there on street parking anywhere nearby that you could use if it did turn out to be a nightmare?

thebig4 It's usually been because we've moved to a new area and have rented whilst deciding exactly where / what to buy rather than diving straight in and possibly making an expensive mistake.

Currently renting because we have to have 8 to 10 months sitting it out here for various reasons - sold last summer and house prices have dropped sufficiently to more than cover the rental costs (our house would currently sell for around £20k less now). With previous house purchases we have been able to negotiate a good discount off asking prices for being able to accommodate the vendor's timescales, which has pretty much negated any price rises. You do need to factor in things such as additional removal costs and possibly writing down the last few weeks of a rental agreement though.

With your second question - I'm assuming you're asking what do you do if you have just signed a rental agreement and a house you want to buy comes up? You can still buy it and rent it out until you are ready to move into it if need be - haven't had to do that yet, but it's a fall back position.

I suppose where we live is not totally dissimilar. We have access down a single track drive and it is quite frequently blocked by post van, deliveries, refuse/recycling collection etc. Most neighbours however have enough parking that their visitors aren't a nuisance - if they haven't got space on their drive, the visitors just have to park off-site.

We live right at the end of the single track access and also have turning space on our land so deliverers etc frequently use our drive to turn round in. We personally couldn't care less about this, but I know some people wouldn't like it.

We've had a shared drive before and now I wouldn't even go and view a house with the same arrangement. Once bitten.

I don't think I'd touch it either. You only have to look at the many parking/neighbour dispute threats on here to put you off.

Obviously the owner is going to tell you there aren't any problems but you have to take that with a pinch of salt. Also, it may work fine now but all it takes is for one set of those three neighbours to move and be replaced by someone who is not as accommodating for the whole thing to fall apart. I wouldn't.

Well, I agree with your DH that they will probably all be reasonable people. The risk you are running, is what to do if they don't act reasonably? You won't have many options, will you?

I have the same lay out and I absolutely would never buy a house with another shared anything.

Our neighbours at the moment are fantastic but it really hit home how hard it will be if they move and we have arses as neighbours.

When it needs replacing what happens if neighbours can't afford their share?