Are we mad to think about buying this place?

[Scubadivinginabox]

It’s Grade ll listed, although everything seems done. We would just add a new kitchen and a garage. BUT, a housing estate (2000 houses, maybe more) is due to be built all around it all over lovely green fields. There would be a green buffer so it wouldn’t be right outside the house. The road would get busier and there is already quite a bit of traffic noise. The secondary school is not that great.
The house is big though and beautiful and our children have viewed it and love it.
I’m mainly worried about selling it on. It’s been on the market for 18 months already. Could we be buying a whole heap of trouble! WWYD?

Possibly. I mean could you just add a new kitchen and garage to a listed property? - I’m not sure you could. The price would very much need to take account of the fact that it wasn’t going to stay surrounded by fields.

God no. You will be listening to building works, radios, cement mixers, lorries reversing for years! There’s a reason it’s been up for sale for so long, no one else wants to touch it!

The fact that it’s been on the market for that length of time in the best selling market in recent times, that would worry me a lot.

It's location location location for a reason.

The local area is about to become a building site with more traffic noise, you'll lose the green fields / views and the secondary school isn't great. Why do you want to buy the house?

I’d definitely avoid.

Yea absolutely you can. Your nineteen eighties b and q kitchen is not of historical interest 😂😂😂

thr listing isn’t the issue op it’s the surrounded by a new build housing estate. I suspect that’s why the owners are selling and no one wants to buy?

Oh christ avoid it! They've been throwing houses up in my village since 2019 and it's been a nightmare. Can't be outside because of the dust, the lorries make the road a nightmare, the traffic has tripled. Nothing is ever clean and I've given up on hanging washing out because it comes in dirty!

It would very much depend on just how big the green buffet is and will remain ad infinitum. If the house sits on its own acreage that no one can build on then I would crack on with buying.

Buffet? I meant buffer.

Sorry I would add you can’t just add a new garage. You will get permission ultimately but it’s a long and costly process and it needs to be built to effectively match the house and look like it’s always been there. The grounds of a listed building are included in the listing. It will cost you about three times as much as you think

Can you research the building works? Will they be building a new secondary school as part of it (which might be better than the current one). How long is the build scheduled to last? We viewed a house in a similar situation and the new development was a similar size. After a bit of information searching we found that the new houses were being built in phases and the total project length was 13 years! At that point we wrote the house off despite lot of other pluses about it as we didn't want the constant noise of construction going on for more than a decade.

I'm not worried about adding the kitchen - that's allowed and the garage already has planning permission with no specifications about what it should look like. Although obv we'd check that.
The price already takes into account the construction that will be going on around it - without it, there's no way that we would be able to afford a house like that. You can only just buy a modern house with the same square meterage for the same price.
My friend had a housing estate put up next to her house and she said it wasn't that bad - they were gone by 4pm every day. Also the walls of the house are so thick that you can't hear a thing when you're inside.
It has a biomass boiler though, which is more expensive than gas to run, although less expensive than oil. Its just five minutes' drive to my daughter's grammar school - it's the secondary for my son (who wouldn't do the 11plus) that I'm slightly concerned about.

I'm currently near a new build in progress (few hundred homes). I'm far enough not to be impacted by the noise, but the dust really does travel far. Also, tree are currently temporary traffic lights on my road, so going out is a pain. I know the people closer are unable to have windows open, due to dust and noise. I would not choose to live near a new development.

I’d want to know why it’s been on the market so long when most properties are being snapped up. Potentially something in the survey I’d imagine

Have you enough money/income to maintain a period property? It's usually the ongoing costs that make them unaffordable.

All very valid points. I think we’re just feeling desperate now as we’ve been looking for months and my daughter starts her new school in September (too far to commute).
It’s a really beautiful, wonderful house though! It’s stood in fields for nearly five centuries. Maybe sill just feel really sad if I had to watch them being slowly gone forever!