Sloped driveway / front garden

[Aida11]

Hi,

We are looking to buy a house with a sloped drive way - ie the front of the house is lower than street level. The owners have paved the front garden for their cars which makes the slope into the house look very obvious. This is my only reservation as I keep wondering if this is why no one is buying it. They have installed drainage near the front door so I don’t think flooding is a concern but I wonder if we can do some landscape works to make it less sloppy and obvious. Any tips please? Thanks. I don’t want to post a link to the house out of respect for the owners.

Is the house dark? Is that why it hasn't sold? Our house is like that and the front of the house, the lounge is really dingy!

Do you still need the parking? We’ve just bought a house like this. The previous owners have planted a variety of shrubs in the sloped part and it doesn’t look too bad, you can’t really tell until you get up close to it. I am finding the idea of keeping on top of the shrubs daunting though - I’ve never had a garden before!

I should add as well that they do cover up about half of the front window, this only affects half of the house and luckily it’s the side with the study, so the shade is actually helpful to keep the glare out, but as a PP said it could make the living room for instance quite dingy.

Ours is also lower than street level. The drive way is at the side of the house so directly in front of the lounge is grass. If that part were paved it would look awful! And if a car were parked there it would block out all the light

How much distance is there from the lounge window to the top of the drive? If a car were parked there, would it dominate the lounge?

@MerryDecembermas

Ours is also lower than street level. The drive way is at the side of the house so directly in front of the lounge is grass. If that part were paved it would look awful! And if a car were parked there it would block out all the light

How much distance is there from the lounge window to the top of the drive? If a car were parked there, would it dominate the lounge?

Yes if a car was parked there it would somewhat dominate the lounge because the car would be angled like it was coming towards in the lounge. I don't think the room would be dark though; just that all you would see is the car not the road.

We don’t need the parking and would most likely reinstate back to shrubbery but it’s difficult to visualise what that would look like. My DH is fine with the slope but I just have a reservation about it and sellability of the house.

I'd be worried about water flooding into the house with a drive shipping towards the house. See if it flooded with yesterday's rain!

Yeah, those drains aren't fool proof.

If they've installed a drain then flooding has been a worry or a problem in the past.
Personally I wouldn't buy it, but if you do just check how many times it has flooded in the past and adjust your offer if needed.

In very heavy rain there is a good chance the volume of water running down over the paving would be too high for the drain to cope with. Replacing the paving with garden would help a lot, as the rainwater would soak into it. It would also be far pleasanter to look at than a car looming through the living room window - I wouldn’t like that at all. But if that’s the only parking then it’s tricky.

Thank you all for your comments. Really helpful.

I have a sloped driveway, nothing fancy just ugly concrete.
It's just off set from the house where I have a lawn and bushes.
No extra drain on the drive and never flooded.

You can always build a small step at the front of the house and divert the water coming down the drive away ( down the side of the house ) , if your worried about when I rains a lot .