Ground floor flats, yes or no

[rubberduck68]

So I have been looking at a few garden flats. Curious about the pros and cons? Also have a dog so probs going 'shared freehold' is that ever an issue?

Pros: garden, probably easier to sell in future, you might be able to extend
Cons: likely to be a conversion flat which often don’t have good sound insulation. If the ceiling is wood instead of concrete then you will hear everything

Share of freehold can be a PITA if you don’t have co operative fellow freeholders. I would ask questions about how often things like guttering and communal spaces are cleaned, maintenance etc. Yes you don’t have a service charge but consider all the things you will now have to do and co ordinate

Better if it's not an actual basement - damp can be an issue. Some garden flats are ground floor rather than lower ground floor; imho that's better.
What direction will it face and are the utilities (bathroom and small kitchen) taking up the good side of the flat..as it's common for most drainage/utility zones to be tacked on to the back of houses ..so your view of garden or access to garden from a habitable room wasted.
I had a basement flat with a west facing garden and the living area and main bedroom had no view or access to the (very lovely) private garden. You could see it out of the small kitchen window only!
And through the hall of course, where door to flat was accessed by a path through the garden.
Levels of the outside are important...especially if the land slopes up, it's expensive to make a eating terrace with retaining wall.
Access for landscaping/gardening ..is there access from the front to the back without going through the house.
Grass is very nice but gets muddy if overlooked shaded in winter and has attrition in form of dog! Where will lawnmower go? Too much paving too hot for south facing gardens if small. Artificial grass very horrible unless it's very small kids and no dog, much too hot if you are south or west facing.
But a garden is an outdoor room and great for bikes, extra storage, entertaining, dogs, creativity.

Fences can also prove expensive to repair. We had to pay half of repairing an enormous brick wall with piers on our boundary which collapsed; we were share of freehold but it was considered part of the private garden not communally owned,whereas the front garden /roof/render on main house was communal responsibility for repairs.

Half with our neighbour , not the other freeholder flats in the building I mean

Tbh people have gardens which they do nothing with, are completely overgrown and neglected, and it can be a bargain if you find one of these because it's space that has been undervalued. Conversely you can have garden flats which have tiny courtyards which are presented as oases but essentially overpriced for what they cost to create and the usable space

I lived in a ground floor Victorian conversation before. Pros: the amazing garden all to ourselves. Cons: we could hear upstairs! Conversion was poorly done so I think that does impact. Also we had mice and slugs. I think the mice was the whole building but the slugs was definitly because we were downstairs. I think they get into a lot of houses at night but it’s different when you are sleeping downstairs…. Pretty grim to be honest.

A lot to think about for sure, but you had me at "mice and slugs" ewww! I did live in a first floor Victorian "conversion" once and the sound from above was pretty bad.

Oh I loved, loved, loved our 2 double bed ground floor garden flat in a converted edwardian double fronted house.
We were so happy there.
Big long hallway.
Huge spacious rooms, every room was massive.
Had a gorgeous big dining table in the kitchen.
Lovely tall ceilings.
Wooden bay sash windows.
Beautiful features, cornicing, ceiling roses, high detailed skirting boards, every room was filled with character.
And the back of the flat overlooked the beautiful mature huge garden.
Sigh.
I miss it so much.
We traded it in for a bog standard very small 1980s semi which has half the size lounge, a third of the size kitchen, no hallway, no interesting features, no wood anywhere it's all upvc everywhere (yuk), can't even begin to fit our dining table in to the kitchen had to get rid of it, much much smaller bedrooms, and smaller garden. House cost £150,000 more than what we sold our beautiful flat for, priced more expensively purely because it's a house and not a flat.
So we've got a much bigger mortgage to live in a much smaller space.
I've never adjusted to how much smaller and pokier the rooms are.
Only did it cos we had kids and thought we couldn't bring them up in the flat.
I'd swap back tomorrow if I could.

as others have said I’d be a bit wary of basements as they can be cold, flood, attract mould and damp. They also can be a bit dark.

Ground floor flats don’t have any real issues as far as I know that are different from general flat v house issues.

Lots of people like ground floor because of the accessibility, particularly if you have kids or might do later on. Some people say ground floor flats are more prone to break ins, I don’t really understand this argument because all houses have a ground floor and no one avoids buying a house because it has a ground floor.

be a bit cautious with a shared garden as you’ll be right next to it in a ground floor flat, so if your upstairs neighbours are using it they might be able to see you/disturb you and you won’t have any control over how often/late they are in there.

As others have said, be a bit wary of conversions as noise and tobacco/cannabis smoke tend to travel between flats more than in purpose built flats. In purpose built flats try to avoid ones with lifts if you are going for ground floor as lifts push the service charge up and you won’t get the benefit.

share of freehold is good, but longer leases aren’t terrible and should let you have dogs as long as they don’t cause a nuisance. Make sure the service charge is reasonable and the ground rent doesn’t increase.