would you buy a property thats 200yards away from a motorway?

[vannah]

DH and I are completely devasted.
We saw our dream house 2 days ago, so unbelievably perfect as if it were made for us. Excellent schools nearby too.

After the viewing we went to see one more property which was 1 road away, and were shocked to see the busy M1 just beyond the back garden. How we had missed that in the A-Z I dont know.

Anyway, when we came home and looked up health/living close to motorway, reports were awful. Particularly bad for children, and my 2 are already asthmatic.

THe dream house is in a cul-de-sac, with big trees in the garden. But its only about 120m away from the motorway.

What would you do?

Blu Yes, I guess it is.

I'm not v good with distances, in yards anyway. I tend to translate to metres and then I can visualise it in terms of say a running track. Then it doesn't seem far at all (not that I run, just that I can imagine the space on DD's school campus!)

But because I only understand the relationship between miles and km, I tend to translate 800yds to 500m and that's only half a running track which is nothing.

Whereas in fact it's almost the same no of metres as yards - so almost a running track stretched out -which is double the distance I'm thinking of.

I blame those people who won't allow us to go fully metric. Why does my 11yo daughter understand 1ft = 30cm? It should have been dropped a long time ago from the rulers they use at school.

We are a bit further away than that, maybe 500-600m, and the motorway is in a cutting at that point. The other side have more noise disturbance than us as the wind prevails in their direction. For us it is more of a swishing noise at night and we don't sense undue air pollution. We looked at another house which was on the same level as the motorway and a little nearer and you would not be able to enjoy the garden, for instance, with noise to that degree. However we live in an area where it is very hard not be potentially blighted by something - be it roads, trains or aircraft.

I wouldn't buy it and you WILL find another dream house if you keep looking. Our supposed dream house fell through and we ended up buying a much better dream house a few months later

nO. I bought a house near an A road once and sold it within 6 months.

do you know, a friend of mine rented a house under a flyover of the A1. It was fab, old, huge garden, outbuildings and paddock. His landlord offered it to him to buy at a knockdown price and he refused - why would I want to buy a house so close to the motorway?

2 years later, they ''moved'' that whole stretch of the A1 arund 1/2 a mile. The house is now quiet, and marketed as ''ideal for links to A1. '' It is worth a fortune....My friend is still filled with bile whenever he thinks about it.