English houses

[comfortandjoy]

I’m hoping to persuade DP to consider moving back to England ( where I’m from) but know houses are going to be a problem.
Where we live now, in NZ, a basic home is a 3 bed single story home in the middle of a plot of land. They’re not usually full of luxury but are usually open plan living with good indoor, outdoor flow onto a decking area. You don’t really see joined up houses. Where we live now we get on with our neighbours and have occasional chats but can’t see or hear them when we’re sitting on our decks.

So, looking on rightmove at in our price range detached houses are very different to here. They all seem to be so close to the next door houses , I think you might as well be joined together as that tiny gap isn’t going to give much further privacy.
I remember living in a big old terrace as a student and never hearing my neighbours.
I like the idea of a terrace but looking through the eyes of DP I know he’d not like the idea of having ‘ land ‘ and not being able to walk around your house.

Have you gone from detached to joined up house ? How was it? Did you feel more conscious of neighbours living in such close proximity?

@lemonysSnicket
Really? I can’t believe you did that. So funny 😊

Is there a particular style or age of property that you like comfort and are you tied to a particular area of the UK? Towns and cities often have a particular style, if you find the area with the architecture you like maybe will make your move more successful? But as Bubble says if you want detached with land in this country, compared to New Zealand you will have to have quite deep pockets or you could move to a very remote, rural area where property is cheaper.

@BettyBooDoinTheDo
No, I don’t want to be rural as I like to be part of the community. I would be fine with terrace / semi so long as it was pretty open inside . I just need DP to understand that a detached in England doesn’t always mean more space. If we’re honest, our land is too much for us as we don’t have time to maintain it and it is overgrown with dead trees falling all over the place.

DH and I are from NZ. The change is huge and he will have to accept it. We are in a detached but it is very close to neighbours compared to back home. We don’t have a front lawn at all here. Outside our house is a little patch the length of the car and space for 2 cars. Very generous in the UK but the street is so close. We aren’t used to anyone on the street can see clearly into our house. It feels we have no privacy. Because the houses are so dense, there are always a lot of cars parked on the streets. Garages aren’t for parking while in NZ we would be looking at double garages with internal access as standard for newish family home. And ofc a beer fridge in the garage. Also we would never have thought it is possible to not own both side returns of a detached property. But we don’t here and one side of our house is via neighbours garden only. The back garden is completely surrounded by other 2 storey houses, which is never like this back home.

We will never get used to this lack of privacy. But it’s other things we like living in England.

What's your budget and which part of England do you want to be in?

@AutoFilled
What you describe is how I imagine it would feel. We have neighbours but they can’t see us here. It has taken us so long to build a life here , first renting flats then finally getting a house in a beautiful place. So you haven’t got used to the lack of privacy but other things make up for it. Do you mean more culture etc?

@monty27
I have family in the middle of England. Max a couple of hours drive from there I suppose.
Budget , We wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage as we would be non residents so would have to just use equity from house here to buy with cash. Should be about 300k

It’s the career opportunities for us. There just aren’t that many opportunities even in Auckland. Most of our friends from university have left. Most went to the US. I can’t imagine we will have the careers if we had stayed in Auckland.

Another big plus for me is shopping. (DH doesn’t care). The variety available here is amazing. Amazon prime delivery. Groceries ordered online. Trees and plants bought online and delivered to our door. I can go on and on about the convenience of this.

Do you have kids @autofilled? I know a lot of kiwis who have come back here late 30’s after having a couple . I’m surrounded by ex Londoners😊
I know what you mean about the choice and shopping . We get culture shock over there with all these deliveries arriving at my mums house from amazon. I’ve weened myself off shopping now after 17 years here and it’s like an addiction I won’t go back to. My Kiwi DP though .... he loves buying clothes, shoes, books... ( we do have online shopping for groceries by the way, in Auckland at least)

We have kids and one of them at school. We have built our lives here and won’t be going back. We see ourselves retiring here.

@Autofilled
I see so you are really settled like we are here. I thought we’d be retiring here too but lately have been feeling I should spend time near family. If we could afford to visit once a year I would stay in NZ. It seems so far when parents get sick and frail.

Where do you mean 'middle of England'? That could mean many different places.

You can buy a detached house with a large plot here on the Isle of Wight were I live £300/400k would do it but it wouldnt be huge. We have 3bed detatched with about an acre. The west side of the island is more rural.. and lovely

Strangely the people we bought it from were originally from NZ but they sold it because the garden was too big for them!

It's funny, my 10yr old dd asked me today when driving through town what two houses stuck together are called as she thought it was really funny when we drove past some new townhouses. I told her they would be semi-detached in England or terraced if more than one and she looked at me like I was mad! I suppose you get units here that are joined together, but I was thinking her normal is detached bungalows and it would be a massive culture shock if we ever went back.

Mind you, the amount of subdividing here is massive, so you are often pretty close to neighbours, and the new estates near us are detached but sections start at 300 or 400m2 so pretty squashed on. I'm not sure what the average is in UK? I agree it is a change, it just seems so much more open here, but it's not a cheap country to buy in anymore and the days of big sections are mainly gone.

@DragonNoodecake Sorry , by middle of England I mean right in the centre of the widest part .

I'm in Rossendale, north of Manchester, and there's plenty of detached houses for under £300k round here, eg Bonfire Hill Road, Crawshawbooth, Rossendale
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-64886971.html

It's a lovely area, with good transport links but also quite rural - you can walk for miles over the hills. The people are friendly too.

We are moving back to Aus soon and I can't wait for more house space! We live in London end of terrace and rarely hear our attached neighbour from inside but I want more space and buying a bigger house meant committing to 10+ more years here which dh and I just couldn't do.

You could definitely find a bit of country for your dh in the UK. What jobs do you do though? Dh is in banking so we always need to be near a big city unfortunately

Thanks for the link @minniemoll
So it is possible ! Looks like a decent size. I like that it has a workshop too .

@comfortandjoy
By 'middle of England' do you mean 'the midlands'? What areas are you looking at? It varies so much in each town/village. Mumsnet can help with area guidance

I think it very much depends on what your neighbours are like which is not something that is always easy to gauge when visiting a house. We had lovely neighbours in London, but the chap was a bit deaf so would have his tv turned up full volume. When houses are adjoining or just close together you are also more aware of noise from other people’s gardens - children playing outside, people listening to music, using machinery etc. I’m not particularly sensitive to noise and have learned to switch my ears off after years of living in cities, if you are sensitive to every noise that is not being made by you personally then it can be much more difficult to live in close proximity to others.

@Purplepumpkin. We would need to be able to commute to a city/ big town for jobs. Right now my commute to part time jobis 10 mins but DP has a 40 mins one.

Just to add it can be equally annoying if your neighbours are not noisy, but super-sensitive noise and constantly complaining about the slightest sound that you make.

@somethingfunnysomethingclever
Thanks , yes. I was going to start another thread soon to ask for ideas about area.
Family are in East Midlands but not in a nice area so would rather find an area more our style and still able to drive to attend family events and get together at Xmas etc. ( rather than missing out as we can’t afford to fly home)

So two hours’ driving time radius of Rugby/Coventry/Northampton kind of area?

You should be able to get a detached bungalow (less overlooked, good plots, reasonable value) for cash on that budget easily.