Would living next to a yard(B2 & B8 use)

[Homeiswherethedogis]

Would you be put off buying a house next to a yard designated as mixed use class B2 general industrial and B8 storage and warehouse. It's history is agricultural and has had various uses including storing sand and vehicles.

Or do you have experiences of living next to similar land you can share?

The house is lovely but don't want to later regret buying or struggle to resell in future.

The other concern is what if the land is sold for housing development.

Clumsy title as got distracted by the kids!

It would depend on the hours of operation .. if its generally business hours so 9 to 5 weekdays, then that makes for a peaceful neighbour during evenings and weekends. Those usage classes are generally ripe for conversion but usually on the existing building itself rather than multiple new dwellings

Yes if you’re fine with housing being built behind you. I did the same, big barns and noisy agricultural use but it is FINALLY to be replaced by the best thing you can have behind you other than protected land/AONB- houses!

@Fancytrike did you regret moving there / was it bad enough to consider moving?

I would be wary of B2 usage. An industrial use is defined as:
a process for or incidental to any of the following purposes:— (a) the making of any article or part of any article (including a ship or vessel, or a film, video or sound recording); (b) the altering, repairing, maintaining, ornamenting, finishing, cleaning, washing, packing, canning, adapting for sale, breaking up or demolition of any article; or (c) the getting, dressing or treatment of minerals;
in the course of any trade or business other than agriculture, and other than a use carried out in or adjacent to a mine or quarry;

Similar uses which can be carried out in a residential area fall under a different class, so by definition, Class B2 can include uses that would not be acceptable in a residential area by reason of noise, dust, fumes etc. Don't forget the permission goes with the land, not the current occupier, so operations may change from what currently exists.

Personally, I would rather houses were built!

You are confirming my doubts, such a shame as it's a lovely house

We moved into our house in 1997 next to a 2 acre agricultural property which was almost derelict at the time. We also asked ourselves the question would we still buy the house if the site next door were to become developed. We didn't mind the site being developed to be residential so we went ahead with our purchase. It took 20 years before we ended up with 2 large houses being developed next door to us. In the interim years we had to deal with all sorts of nonsense going on there from a new owner that purchased the agricultural site shortly after we had bought our house. They intensified the operation and the site became far more commercial. It was unsightly and generated white noise (electric motors) that would have definitely put off potential purchasers had we wanted to sell our house. You can never tell what a subsequent owner of the property behind the house you have found will put it to in the future. You need to be careful because the planning designation includes light industrial which covers many more types of uses. You can't rely on the site remaining in the same use as it is now.

@Copernicus321 thank you so much, your response has been very helpful.

At any point did it push you to want to move?

So the consensus is generally houses are better neighbours.

So the operation next to us was aquaculture. When we moved in it was a quiet little operation with a single large tank (circular 50' diameter). About a year after we moved in the business was sold and with the new proprietor it became far more intensive with 8 large outside tanks. The tanks had heaters, large pumps and the site generated quite a bit of white noise. You didn't notice it during the day or if the wind was blowing the leaves on the trees but on still nights the noise was sufficient for use to close the windows in the summer on that side of the house.

At no point did we think of selling out house and moving. However, it did postpone us from extending the house and investing in our home until the certainty of the site next door was settled. We knew that if we kept the value of our house about the same level, we'd always be able to sell our house to someone. If we invested £200K in further developing our property, the site next door might become an issue for potential purchasers.

All the time, we knew the proprietor next door was very keen to sell the site for development. However, he was refused by the district council and at appeal every time he put in for planning. Nearly all the neighbours wrote in support of the applications on each occasion but this didn't influence the district council. They wanted the site to remain agricultural as part of the business development strategy for their local plan and refused to change the site's designation. After 20 years, planning for 2 houses was finally approved after yet further appeals.

I think our worry was that the proprietor was getting increasingly keen to sell. He might have gone down a change to light industrial designation which the council might well have approved. We could be living next to an agricultural contractor depot with tractors, trailers coming and going at 3am, or had pneumatic air tools running all day which would have been very intrusive.

As it turns out, all we had was a slightly noisy (on a windless nights) eyesore to one side of our property for 20 years. I think if your site isn't in a rural area or AONB and is likely to have housing development fairly readily approved then you may well be fine.

The new houses are better neighbours. In our instance the site is large enough to have had 16 - 20 houses, so having just 2 large detached houses is more than OK. They probably look in our direction us as we did on the previous site and think what a shabby little place, wish they would do something about it!