To sell or not to sell? Help!

[sayanythingelse]

We bought our first house on a new build estate in late 2022. The house is lovely. Neighbours are all professional single men, couples or families who we get on well with.
There is some housing nearby that was marketed to us as affordable housing. We didn't have a problem with that at the time as we saw some of the houses for sale as Discount Market Value or Shared Ownership but once we moved in, we found out that much of it was social rented housing.
I don't want to start a debate on social housing as I've spoken to some of the tenants who are lovely and as fed up as we are but the problem is, some of the other tenants have absolutely FERAL children. The past 2 summers we've had them playing football, playing music, screaming and swearing at the top of their lungs every single evening and weekend right outside my house until late. To cut a long story short, we've reported it to the police and the housing association (as have our many others on the estate) but nothing has changed and 4 houses have gone up for sale in the past year as people are sick of it.

I'm desperate to sell. We would be ok mortgage wise but we have very few savings as I'm currently working part time/sitting my accountancy exams/parenting small children. We would have to borrow money from family for estate agents/solicitors but it's got to the point where I dread coming home. It's been nice this week and I've had all of my blinds closed on the front as I can't bear to see them loitering outside.

DH doesn't want to move as he loves the house but even he's starting to crack with all the screaming and his car constantly being booted with the football. He thinks that places change, kids grow up and people move out and we should just see how it goes. I disagree and think that with it being social housing, we're always more likely to have a higher risk of anti social behaviour.

What would you do? Sell up and chalk it up to a bad experience or wait it out a bit?

What kind of costs would we be looking at to sell? Estate agent/conveyancing. What else?

To be honest, I live no where near any social housing and there are still a few households like this near me, and much, much worse. I think you could end up getting families like this anywhere. If you can’t comfortably afford to move, I personally wouldn’t move. You could easily jump from the frying pan to the fire, and you could find somewhere with perfect neighbours, just to see them move out and be replaced by terrible neighbours. It’s everywhere in the UK.

Stamp duty.

Just move. Whether they are in social rented or not is irrelevant - you are unhappy with noisy neighbours. That can happen anywhere!

Oh and other costs - survey on your next house, possibly early exit from mortgage fees and removal men. Plus of course solicitors, estate agents, and stamp duty.

Just a thought .... is there a space nearby you could develop as a tennis/basketball court or similar to allow these noisy children to congregate elsewhere? Not fair, I know. But might potentially work out cheaper than moving. Can you maybe get some other parents involved, apply for some funding and rent out local premises for a youth club? Just throwing some ideas around.

"...and 4 houses have gone up for sale in the past year as people are sick of it."

That says everything. It's clearly not just you.

What are the options? Taking a bit of a financial hit and escaping "dread coming home" on the one hand or staying put and living with the situation in order to, hopefully, save a bit of money?

If there are a number of other properties up for sale, that isn't going to help the values, especially if you bought at the peak in 2022.

I really don't know what to advise but, if it were me, I agree with you rather than your DH.

The thing is, now you've reported it, you'd have to declare it when selling.

I would put everything into trying to stop the antisocial behaviour. Keep reporting, the more neighbours you can get to do it the better.
Flag it with your local councillors too.
Try to get the Council to put funding into youth recreation services.
Keep logs of all incidents and see if the noise abatement team will get involved.

I suppose if money weren't a barrier to selling and you could reduce the price enough to entice a buyer regardless of the neighbourhood issues, then selling would be the easiest option.

Thanks for your replies everyone.

@Skiin I didn't think of that. I've never reported anyone specifically, just that there were noisy kids playing outside. The police drove by a couple of times and told them to shut up (which did nothing) and the HA identified a couple of the kids from photos but closed the case as children playing doesn't class as ASB no matter how loud and sweary it is. I wonder if I would still need to declare this as it's not about a specific neighbour?

You have to declare anything you have reported about neighbours or antisocial behaviour. It’s anything that you are aware of that could ruin the enjoyment of the new owner living in their home, because they can sue you if it’s not declared. The person involved is irrelevant really.

I'd get out of there now before the bad rep starts to affect selling prospects. cut your losses. The complaint might make things harder though, hopefully you won't be stuck. It'll sell at the right price.

My sisters friend bought a new house on just such an estate, though the proportion of HA housing was higher. Her house has devalued a lot. Be prepared for people to call you judgemental on here. Whilst true anyone can be a bad neighbour or have a bad neighbour people regardless of income need points for social housing and while points can be awarded through no fault of their own or it is sad circumstances it often means problems.

We were in a similar situation.
I had no issue with affordable housing at all and would have judged anyone who who did.
BUT then we lived it and it was bloody awful so I don't care if I am called a snob or whatever else but I would never ever want to live near affordable housing again .
We managed to PX our house with a large developer and just about got back what we paid but I loved that house, we bought it from a small builder who allowed us to totally redesign the inside and it was our first house together but we just had to escape, especially when The Council started housing "problem families" there and The Police used one as a safe house.
Awful experience

We have a similar problem, however, on our estate the housing association folk are lovely and it’s a group of three families who are really anti-social.

Weve decided to move. We were initially valued at £450,000 to £475,000 until the EA caught a glimpse of next doors party shed and 10ft football net then she quickly dropped the price to offers in the region of 450.

I would move sooner rather than later, but might be difficult with so many others on the market.