Would buying a townhouse with a small overlooked garden be a mistake?

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We have found the perfect 4 bed townhouse in our current village, offers the extra space we need (have two young children) and at a price that is affordable. The house is in a smallish 'luxury' development and has two play areas so has been designed for families. However the garden is small and overlooked with the gardens opposite backing onto our garden. All the houses overlooking including ours have terraces and balconies. A compromise worth making? We love the house and location. Picture attached of development layout, the house we are considering is the end of terrace in the row to the left of the picture. Opinions, anyone loved in similar property or scenario? Thanks

What worries me about townhouses is the stairs. They always seem so tight.

Tbh with small children you end up living on one floor, so horizontal space is really important.
Disclaimer, I grew up in tall thin house with small garden. I much prefer my smaller present-day house where all the living space is on one floor and kitchen opens onto garden, which (garden)is bigger by far than my parents grander townhouse.
Also don't underestimate how depressing it is to be overlooked, shady garden etc.

We live in a similar set up, and to be honest we rarely use the garden (though do more in the summer). The playgrounds on new estates are fab. With a townhouse we also have a relatively small footprint but lots of space because of the extra floor.

Once viewed a new one and EA warned me we wouldn't get a double bed or a wardrobe to the top floor!
Our current house resulted in selling 2 gorgeous sofas not even fully paid for as the stairs were too narrow to get them upstairs!

I wouldn't. "Townhouses" are just a way of marketing what's essentially a detached tenement on a small footprint. If you're having doubts now you'll be super sensitive if you move in and come to dread going out in the garden. A traditional semi or even a terrace would be preferable IMO.

I had one of these, almost exactly the same, please listen very carefully, DO NOT BUY IT.

You might as well have all of your neighbours in your garden, and the noise from their gardens will be unbearable and make yours unusable. In addition the noise between the houses will travel to a ridiculous level.

Unless you fancy creeping round your own house and whispering in/avoiding your own garden DO NOT BUY.

Thinking about it, if the "townhouses" on the estate close to me are anything to go by, they're not even detached but terraced and look like tenements to me. So many have bunk beds right up against the window, so how small are the bedrooms? The gardens are also tiny to non-existent.

My sister lives in a town house and its really nice and spacious.The garden isnt any more overlooked thsn any other terrace. The parking is a nightmare though. I think it deoends in the room sizes of your house

We are a similar garden layout but 3 bed semis so buildings are not as high, and it can be quite claustrophobic.

Oh, and with it being aimed at families, they should probably add a trampoline to most of those gardens in the picture.....so factor in a lot of squealing and little eyes peering over the fence

Townhouse is just developer-speak for a terrace, right? We live very happily in one in London, because that is what almost all houses are in this area (a few semis at the more expensive end; lots of flats and houses that have been divided into maisonettes at the cheaper end).

We like it. Of course the garden is overlooked, that’s the nature of a terrace. Of course you can hear the neighbours, so everyone just tries to be tolerant. I’d ideally not have our NDNs’ thumping bassline and I’m sure they’d gladly pass on our toddler, but we get on well, accept the noise as part of town life, borrow gardening tools from each other, and try to keep it down. We know a lot of our neighbours’ names and had street aerobics during lockdown.

I think the real question here might not be whether living in a terrace is ok - millions of people in the U.K. do it perfectly happily - but whether a terrace is easily resellable in your area. And that depends on the cost/size/condition of the rest of the housing stock in your area, ie what other choices buyers have for the same price.

I've lived in a couple of townhouses. Our current one is spacious, soundproof and has all the living space on the ground floor, with bedrooms on the first and second floor - no different than a house with a loft conversion, except it was purpose-built that way!

The latest changes to planning permission permitted development are to encourage people to build "up" (i.e. extra storeys), so I think 3 storey houses are going to become a lot more common over the next few decades.

@BlenheimOrange I think a townhouse is a house that is arranged over three floors. Think tall and narrow. They often are in terraces, but usually in the uk terraced houses have ground floor and then just one floor above

Is this in the uk, op? They are a very strange style of house, with their flat roofs, and what looks like a hospital surrounded by blocks of flats adjacent to the houses. I can't think of a British village that would have a massive development like this. Anyway, I would say no because town houses and small children often are not a good mix, and also, there are so many houses crammed in there it will be constant noise (and little privacy) from all those people living there. Is there sufficient parking? There will be a heck of a lot of vehicles.

@BlenheimOrange As a pp says, a townhouse is usually 3 floors - so usually (although can vary) it's essentially the footprint of a 2 bed house in terms of downstairs space, with 2 bedrooms on the first floor and 2 bedrooms on the second floor. That way developers can fit more "4 bedroomed" properties onto a site.

They're obviously different for your usual terrace because they're on 3 floors and because they're 4 bed, certainly locally they cater for / attract families in the main, rather than the more diverse demographic you'd normally get for terraced houses (families/young couples/professionals/retired people). Family noise is therefore more of a consideration.

Thanks for all the replies everyone, lots to think about. To try and answer the questions...we currently live in a 1950s semi, we renovated it, we hated every minute and that's why we are only looking at new build or renovated properties. In our village, mostly old housing stock of detached houses which we can afford but would have to renovate which we do not want to do. This is one of only two new developments within our current village, we cannot afford houses in the other development which are £1,000,000 +. We would probably have to move to one of the surrounding villages or towns for a new build if we don't buy this one. We would rather stay in our current village, great links to London (I work in city), close to family, country park, friendly community etc

The house is over 4 floors and very spacious (2 floors of living space and 2 floors of bedrooms and ensuites and a garage ) with extra sound proofing but have never lived on any kind of development before so am a little nervous about the overlooking and noise. We thought a development would be nice for the children (primary school age) to have local friends etc. It is a nice village, and have heard positive things about the community on the development.

We have viewed it and really liked it. In an ideal world a bigger private garden would be great but probably also out of budget!

The majority view seems to be it may become a nightmare which is quite disappointing. We will do a second viewing and have to really think if the house is worth the garden and privacy sacrifice.

Thanks for all the thoughts!

Plant some trees, there are ways to make your garden less accessible to prying eyes. The house sounds perfect.

Tough one , houses look a good size but not the plot. I'm aware of what site this is. The developers have had a decent effort at making the houses fit in with the original buildings. I would definitely have second viewing . The vibe in these estates make or break them , which can be tricky to pick up on .

There are a lot of houses all crammed together there, it must be a huge village. I would stay in your semi.

If it's the best you can afford then do it . We have a detached 3 storey house and it's been brilliant for space . We won't stay here forever but it's what we could afford at the time and is maintenance free ( pretty much ) and has increased in value

Have a second viewing and see how you feel. It wasn't personally for us (for all the reasons above) but I know a few people who live in very similar houses. Two say that it's brilliant as there's so many families with children....and you don't care about noise from children in gardens as your DC are also out there making noise. The other person I know isn't happy in hers but that's mainly because she ended up with three young lads renting out the house next door and blaring music constantly....but that can happen anywhere.

We have viewed it and really liked it. In an ideal world a bigger private garden would be great but probably also out of budget!

It's good that you recognise this! On Mumsnet, you'll always get people saying, "Oh, I'd never choose a house with a small garden", "I'd never choose a house with a shared drive", etc etc. All well and good if you actually have the budget to be that selective, but the reality is, most people have to compromise on something! It's a matter of prioritising your requirements.

We’ve just moved out of a second floor flat, which was in a block that had a row of townhouses attached on either side.

I always said I’d hate to live in one of those townhouses. The gardens were tiny, and from our window we could see absolutely everything going on in them. Even if we weren’t looking out the window, you could hear every single conversation anyone in these gardens were having. The houses themselves were nice but the gardens were complete deal breakers for us.

Sorry OP, but now you've said it's spread over 4 floors, I'd definitely say no!

Going up and down stairs between living areas gets annoying really quickly, and you may find that some rooms just don't get used at all for this reason. We had a basement level play area that opened onto the garden, but because our kitchen and main living area was one floor up, the DC just moved most of the toys up there to be with us.

You'll also have 4 storey buildings looming over you and your very small back garden.

What are the room sizes like? Knowing some of the tricks that developers use to display show houses, I'd be concerned that the rooms aren't as spacious as they appear.

Sorry to be negative, but I've lived in townhouses and would only do it again if the layout worked really well and we had a sizeable footprint. I don't enjoy vertical living.