Viewed a near-perfect house yesterday, one thing putting me off

[booomshackalack]

Currently in an elevated two up two down mid terrace with two DCs of opposite sex sharing a room, DCs are 13 and 9. On street parking which is terrible at times.

We viewed a house yesterday which we fell in love with and it ticks a lot of boxes - only a few steps at the front door, three bedrooms plus a dining room and converted loft, new style kitchen and bathroom and home survey highlights no issues. It's another mid terrace, we were set for a while on a semi however with the economy and fuel bills as they are, it probably makes more financial sense to go for a mid. We are moving within a very sought after area where semis in particular get snapped up fast at tens of thousands over asking so no guarantee we would even get one if we held out i guess.

The only downside is it's on-street parking. The majority of the street are semi-detached houses with their own driveway, with just a couple of rows of terraces. When viewing yesterday it didn't look too bad - or at least, not as bad as where we live atm! Would this put you off if the house seemed ideal in every other way? I guess in the future we could look at putting a drive in the front garden, although it would be a shame to rip the front garden as it's quite nice.

Urghhhh, you're one of them 🙄

Not for me, but we're in Outer London. Since we moved in, we have managed to get a parking permit system so that only residents get parking access. That has helped enormously as we were very popular before with non-residents.

We moved from a flat with parking to one without - it's never really mattered to me even when it was awkward to park.

The house itself was so perfect for us it was a compromise I was prepared to risk - and I'm glad I did

As others have said, pop back at different times. Also, is there parking both sides of the road? My dd lives in a terrace and never has trouble parking (mostly right outside her house) as the road is wide enough to park both sides.

No parking would be a ‘no go’ for me.
Id try for a semi moving up to detached asap. When we were buying I was told to check all houses we liked at different times of day - even weekends) Also it’s school hols at present.
We live half a mile from a school. If we weren’t fortunate to have a driveway it would be horrid. The 6th formers and staff all park on our road. You can’t see this during hols or weekends.
Good wishes house hunting (go for the semi with the plan for detached asap, you then don’t have to think about neighbours)
also check the police for crime in the area. Get on the ‘next door’ Facebook site too.
xx

I'd never buy a house without a drivexway, I mean where would you charge your eV?! 🤭

I'd hold out a little longer for something that's more suitable. Everyone's saying there's a property crash on its way 🫣

Where I live, terraced houses would be regarded as a “step above” semi-detached. That’s because they are Victorian or Edwardian near the city centre. Semi-detached houses would be 30s/50s distant suburbs. Even the fact that the latter houses have a drive doesn’t match the cachet of the older houses nearer the centre.

Parking is top of my list after living in a mid terrace for 2 years. No way would I ever have street parking again

You also have to look on to getting a drop kerb if you convert the front garden as without drop kerb people will still park there

If this was a thread about, say, a divorced dad wanting to share custody and requiring his mixed sex dc to share a room, I suspect more people would be focusing on this! Whether the 13 year old is male or female they will be in puberty and unless OP has done something adventurous with IKEA Kallax units, they will hate being on view to their opposite sex sibling in the bedroom. "Holding out" for the perfect house (which will cost more if it's perfect, or have some other area of compromise) seems unkind in this situation.

Deal breaker for me as well. My car got broken into when I didn’t have a drive.

Would be a deal breaker for me. Been there, done that, never again if I could possibly avoid it.

If you're already used to it I think it's something you could easily live with. Going from having off street parking to not would be a whole different ballgame. I know it puts a lot of people off but honestly that's what we used to have and it was never as bad as many imagined.

With little kids yes; at this age, when they can be trusted getting in and out of the car, not a massive problem.

There are countless empty spaces. I’m the only house at the end of a long no-through-road. There are six houses on my street and it is near half a mile long. My drive is the last. I park on the street at the end of the drive, because my garden is not that big, and the kids play out on the drive a lot with their bikes, scooters, chalks, in a way they can’t do on the grass. I am blocking no one. My insurance company do not think I park on the drive. No one except delivery vehicles delivering to my house or people visiting me ever get up to my home. There is plenty of turning space. There is literally no problem. I merely said I park on the street by choice to reassure the OP that parking on the street is fine regarding shopping, kids, all that.

I don’t know why everyone has decided that I live on a packed street in central london and am purposely winding my neighbours up by parking in their spots.

It definitely makes a difference if you're in a controlled parking zone, it's so much better

Sounds fine to me, but then we've never had parking and couldn't care less about it. I know some people find this weird! I will say though, that where we live there are no parking wars. People park where there is space and no one sticks notes on cars to say, "You're outside my house, what do you think you're playing at?" or puts cones out to save spaces (unless they're moving house and awaiting a lorry), or any other such nonsense.

Interesting, most of the evening crowd are dead against a place with no parking. We had another walk by this evening, again there were some spaces around no problem and we noticed that round the corner there were two adjoining mid terraces with driveways. They appeared to be the only mids with drives that we could see, and they were located across from some flats with no private parking. We were debating that it was maybe done for that reason - likely parking issues in the past?

Forgot to say, we have decided to put an offer in tomorrow. There were 6 viewings on Friday and more yesterday so odds are we'll have done competition. Wish us luck!

Good luck OP!

Yes, good luck!

If that's the only compromise I'd go for it!

You've said yourself you could put a drive in if needed... don't not do it if it's only because of that... check that the front garden is deep enough to do it though and that the local council would be happy for you to go ahead in theory

Wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me as you have a front garden that can be turned into a drive. Our house only had room for one car and a lovely front garden but they are extra work to maintain and only having one space was impractical so it’s now a 4 car drive with no garden :)

The kids having their own bedrooms would be more of a priority for me over parking. Plus, shouldn’t kids of the opposite sex be in different rooms at those ages?

@booomshackalack good luck.