Moving from a quiet London street to a house on a very busy A road in the country ...... advice please am in a dilemna!

[2Earlgreysplease]

Would you do it? We have seen a fabulous family house but it is situated on a long stretch of fast and straight A road. I am having serious doubts about whether I (who will be the one there most of the time - children at school and husband away a lot) will be able to cope with the constant woosh of cash and thundering trucks etc going past the house. My gut says no. However, this is an amazing house which otherwise woudn't be affordable to us. It has been on the market for a year for obvious reasons and I am also worried about resale value.
This is going to be our 'forever home' and I do not want to buy in haste and repent at leisure.
Any thoughts would be so welcome. I am the bad guy in all of this as my husband has fallen for the house and the whole set up and my children are desperate for the lovely big garden.....

No I wouldn't do it and can't understand why people do tbh. We dismissed a couple of houses located like that previously. Noise, pollution, half the narrow pavement missing.
In the country I like to be able to walk to the shop, cafe, pub, local community and dog walk in peace without fearing getting run over just to reach a public footpath.
If you're selling in London you probably have a decent budget for a lot of nicer rural areas?

I think you would need to get it at a price that you would not lose money, if you needed to sell it on. It is clearly not being marketed at a saleable price at the moment, and you would make a loss if you needed or wanted to sell again, so I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole, it is was me.

Peace and quiet is best .

I have viewed houses that have road noise. It is hilarious listening to the twaddle that comes out of the sellers or estate agents mouths eg "We like the activity in the road" or "This is about a quiet as it gets in county x".

I would keeep looking you will probably get somewhere fairly quiet in the countryside eventually . You can walk safely on quiet countryroads facing on coming traffic.

God no, nothing would persuade me to buy a house on an A road. There are a couple of posters who have been trying to sell similar houses for a long time - nobody wants them.

No way Jose

No, our house in the country is on a B road that is meant to be a 30 and that is annoying enough.

I wouldn't do it. Noise, traffic, danger for children and pets, pollution. We have friend live on a B road and it is awful. Also, when we have bought property, we would not even look at houses on busy roads no matter how much cheaper they were than similar houses in a peaceful location.

My folks live in a house on a country village road.
It’s meant to be 30 mph.
People come tearing through way over the limit.
Unlike a town this is a noise in all the quiet and it wakes me up.

I live in the middle of a town but on a quiet estate. My folks comment every time about how quiet it is here.

I would visit in morning and evening rush hour. Can you get your car out for the school run/work, and safely turn back into it in the evening.

Do you mind the noise?

No, gut feeling wins every time.

Heck no. Constant noise? No thanks.

Nope, I live on quite a busy road in London but it's nothing up to those crazy A roads. Whenever we drive on one, I wonder who would want to buy those houses by the side. I don't mind the traffic noise but the air and the danger and the hell of getting in and out of the driveway... madness. As others said, there's a reason why it costs so much less.

Unfortunately, with the huge increase in cars on the roads, increases in new development next to busy roads, and new roads being built or upgraded, this problem will affect more and more houses in the future. It is one of the adverse consequences of population growth. Many more people will have to put up with noise pollution and air pollution in future.

Not read the whole thread but another No here. My sister did similar and ended up selling about a year later and lost money. It was a nightmare.
Think deliveries, visitors, constant noise and accidents too.

*03/07/2018 08:49 MyWaterButtIsEmpty

You would lose everything that is good about living in London and gain almost nothing that is good about living rurally. This isn't your house*

A perfect way to put it.

My gut instinct was no, but then I thought of some of the very expensive and sizeable properties set back from the A591 in the Lakes.

So I echo a PPs request for a link - if it's 100 odd yards back from the road, with a buffer of trees/hedging, and sensible pathways around it then it could begin to be a maybe for me.

We lived in a lovely Cotswold village, very picturesque etc. We were on main road through the village.

This was a B road, only feeding other villages, not an A road. But cars raced through well beyond the speed limit.

Th net result though was that my kids were not safe to go out through the front gate, as cars passed so quickly. Out the back, over the fields and paths, lovely, but walk through the village to the shop and playground? Not without an adult. That meant that they had to be quite old before walking to school etc on their own, despite living 100 yards from school in a safe village.

We moved. To a town, busy and industrial. We live on a cul de sac and my kids play out in the street all the time.
we are quieter, safer and closer to everything.

No

We rented a beautiful cottage just off an A road. I was terrified being a driver there as there were so many lunatics speeding on that small country road. We left and moved in to the city.

There's usually a reason those "dream" country houses are such a good deal. I remember a poster trying to sell a house for several years too. We lived on B Road until last year, it was a nice village but we lost two cats and nearly the dog to RTAs.

This is an example of a house on a busy road that has been on the market for 3+ years with a variety of agents.
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-67734677.html
It is lovely - spacious, well looked after, you could style it as you wished, original features, looks pretty, fantastic west-facing garden, surrounded by very smart streets. But it is on a really busy road- right on it. Houses round there are really popular and sell well but this one and the one next door are the only two on the road.
We know a few people who have looked at it online - we did too- been interested and then realised where it is. It's a real pity because a street away it would have sold very quickly and it is a lovely house.

Lovely house LuLu but that’s a high price for that area.

You can get similar sized/style houses in that area on quiet roads for less.

It or next door sold for 88k in 1998 which would mean it would be 250/300k now. Where has the the extra 250k /300k been added?

On some of the side streets you can get a similar sized house in just as nice condition for 350k. Yes they will be terraced and they won’t have a big garden, but they are on a quiet road. With this in mind I would say this house is worth a similar price to those properties maybe a touch more. You trade the pros of a big garden and semi detached for the negative of a busy road. They say a busy road knocks 30% off the value probably the same amount a good garden and being semi adds.

That’s the advantage of buying on a busy road you get a lot more for your cash.

www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=32265204&sale=58254798&country=england

www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=59975459&sale=89865021&country=england

This house really sums it up. Just as nice just as big. Just as nice garden but no parking it will be roughly 500k now and on a quiet road.

www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=48969418&sale=58256730&country=england

Just seen that last house back garden is it’s front garden. Very odd but still I can find many examples that show the orginal house even though very very nice is over priced.

But to answer orginal posters question. It depends on the road, area and house.

Personally I wouldn’t look at country houses on busy roads. If I moved to the country i would be looking for peace and quiet so I think this would defeat the purpose to me.