Nice house, rubbish parking...

[Tatiepot]

Just that, I've found an otherwise perfect house (location, size, cost) in an old part of town which is known for parking problems. But there is a public car park five mins away that apparently some of the neighbours use...

Cannot decide if this is a compromise worth making (it's just me and DC10).

Thoughts?

No way parking is so important

I managed for years with crap parking until I had children and have moved to a house with a driveway but mine are still little.
Yours is 10 are they ok to be left when you park the car for example if you drop the shopping and child off at the door and then drive round to the car park?

Do you drive regularly? As in, do you rely on the car for work/school etc? For one adult and an independently walking tween this wouldn't bother me too much. Can you pull up outside to drop stuff off etc?

I park on a road maybe 3 minutes away. It's really not an issue, especially as you have a bigger kid who can be left if you need to pop to the car/can help carry.

I wouldn't. Everything is ok, until it isn't. Needing hospital, sprains, elderly visitors, deliveries...I just wouldn't. Unless it is a cast iron space in the car park guaranteed, and it's flat and no issues getting in and out (probably still wouldn't).

Is the car park free?

I wouldn’t personally buy a house with no parking. It may also be more difficult to sell in the future.

Not on your Nelly. I can't be doing with parking issues.

If you can stop outside to unload then possibly. If you can't even do that then no.

Unless it was an amazing house, there's always a compromise unless you're super rich or super lucky

Imagine yourself undergoing chemo and needing to walk from the car park. Or with a broken leg?

if you are healthy it’s easy to think it’s no big deal. It probably won’t be, until the day that 5 minute walk will feel like 50.

Are you likely to get any EV in future?
Will you have to pay to use the car lark?

Depends how much you drive, I guess.

Plenty of people live very happily without parking.

But you have to be realistic whether it will be a problem for you.

No I couldn't compromise on parking. I have to park my car twice a day at least usually, parking issues give me rage, I would be miserable. If I used my car less it might be less of a deal breaker.

How secure is the car park? How well lit? How visible from roads/pavements?

I live in this place! On street is hit and miss (even with a bb and allocated bay!) but I have a parking permit in the local car park. £120 for six months.

Always going to be an Issue when you decide to sell unfortunately OP. Is there residents permit parking? Only you can decide whether it represents a good value purchase, given the compromise and whether it’s doable for you & your family.

It wouldn't be a massively significant issue for me, as I've spent 80% of my life without access to cars (didn't learn to drive until my late 30s, no car growing up) so until the last few years, every trip has always started with a walk to a bus stop or train station. If the house is otherwise perfect, it's a sacrifice I would be prepared to make.

How car centric is your life?
At certain points in mine it would have been a deal breaker. Now I'm looking ahead to retirement and really fancy a nice house right in a town centre as long as I could walk most places. Our nearest town like this has a car club as well.

Do you think you have time to think about it or will you need to make a decision ASAP if you want to offer on the house? If you have time, could you do a sort of trial run for a week? Find some where (legal and considerate) you can park which is five minutes away from your current house and park there for a week instead of outside your house and see how inconvenient or annoying you find it, or whether it actually doesn't bother you much.

Nope, if you have a car, you need parking, preferably your own off street parking, either a drive or an allocated space in your block's car park. Having to constantly park, even a few minutes away, is very inconvenient, especially when unloading the car of shopping etc., loading it to go to the tip, loading/unloading suitcases for a holiday, etc. After having lived in a house with no parking, for a short time, we'll never do it again. Just too inconvenient and causes too many problems with neighbours on the rare occasion there's a free space on the street which someone else has "designated" as theirs! Also, with the push for electric cars, on street parking is going to be even more of a nightmare - you really need your own drive or space!

I live in a city centre and i love it. Sometimes i have to park quite far away, but i find i use the car much less cause i have great public transport links. With smaller kids it would be a pain but i have teens so its a non issue.

I’m generally all for reducing car usage. I don’t think off street parking is essential. But no parking at all? No.

You'd probably struggle with the stairs as well. Do you think the OP should only buy a bungalow, in case she can't cope with a staircase one day? Maybe she should also only get a house with wheelchair access, in case she ever needs one of those?

These comments are insane. Millions of people manage without a car. I can't drive at all for months at times, because of a medical issue. Is it sometimes inconvenient? Yes. Is it manageable? Also yes. And that's without any local public transport except (crap) buses.

I wouldn't buy anywhere without a driveway but my kids are still little and I often carry a sleeping 3yo up to bed from car.

Vast, vast swathes of streets in London, including the outer reaches, don’t have allocated or off road parking. People manage. Sometimes even with multiple small children.

Well, yes, people's circumstances are different. Where I live, there isn't ANY public transport at all - not had buses through our village since 2005! Where my son lives, he's on a bus route, but it's a crap route and he basically has to go into the city centre, just to get a different bus route out again, to go to the nearest retail park, which takes over an hour by bus, or 10 minutes by car, same when he wants to go to the football stadium - 90 minutes by bus but 15 minutes by car, and the last bus leaves before the end of the game, so he'd have to miss the last 5 minutes if he went by bus!

Re chemo, my OH has suffered it. You don't really "go out" much during the courses as you're not really up to going shopping or socialising etc., so it's a mute point really. At certain times in his treatment cycle, he couldn't leave the house at all (except for hospital appointments), so wasn't really bothered about how far the car was as I would have needed to go and get it and double park it outside if we didn't have our own parking space. He'd hardly be going down to Tesco to do the shopping when he could barely get out of bed!