Should I buy the house?

[BreakfastClub]

Hi,
We are in the process of purchasing a house.
it backs onto a council owned retirement complex which I thought was ok as it is quiet.
It is an area made up of a few block of flats -2-3 story high.
I recently found out that the council have been re designating the complex to general housing. This worries me as the garden backs onto a communal garden and some of the flats are visible from my garden as they are quite close.
the house is lovey but because of the latest searches, my gut feeling is to avoid purchasing. Am I doing the right thing?
Any advice please 🙏

In our experience I'm afraid it was a mistake for us. We bought the last private house on a leafy street of semis, totally underestimating the impact of living at the crossroads of an entry road to a small council estate. Because of this, our experience of living on our street is totally different to our neighbours' only 100m away down the 'quiet' end of the road.

We regularly hear drunken shouting and fighting on the corner at 2 to 3 am on a weekend, mopeds and ebikes on the pavement, litter (empty vapes, drink cans, sweet wrappers) in our garden, neighbours having bonfires, dogs left to bark all day, radios blaring. The anti social behaviour is another level. We've decided to put the house on the market after only 1 year and can't wait to leave.

However, the entire row of houses opposite are also social housing and those neighbours are all fantastic. So I think as with any area, you get good and bad pockets. If you like the house in all other respects, maybe you could ask a few neighbours what the area is like?

Go with your gut, you won't regret it.
A general housing situation will likely mean any council tenant and then you have no idea of who will be living there and can get right up close to your garden.
I wouldn't buy it.

It would also be a no from me. And I grew up in social housing.

I live at the quiet end of a street like yours and the boy racers and drug dealers and weed smoke and litter still bother me. Most of the residents are lovely but the 10% of dick heads ruin it for everyone else.

I wouldn’t buy the house either.

No

I saw a property online recently as well which backs onto a close with retirement housing. But Google suggests that the housing facility has been closed since Covid. So, decided not to view the property because of the risk that the facility will be sold to a developer to build flats, which would then overlook my house/garden

I grew up in a council house on a council estate and it was lovely, I had a pictures childhood in friendly streets backing onto fields and parks, neighbors new each other and kids could wander safe. It was so nice in fact so much so that the area gentrified and we cannot afford to live their anymore.

The idea that council estates are bad is hilarious to me, I have lived in some dog arse rough areas since and non had anything to do with the council they are all private rent areas.

Its the London landlords that tend to buy up the auction stock cheap after the council leave an area and run them into the ground by renting them out blind and doing no maintenance until they are uninhabited and abandoned which then attracts druggies and crime.

Council stock is rare now and really not the problem at all. Council houses worked (people had safety/security and looked after that) its the greedy dodgy landlords that laid waste to whole villages.

Social housing professional here. Sheltered housing would have been fine, a block of one bed general needs housing is every housing officer's nightmare, let alone the neighbours. They are likely to be given to single people with issues of various kinds. The sad truth is that only people with "issues" are housed nowadays if they are single. There might be some whose issues are medical and not likely to have an impact on their lifestyle but, in my experience, there are not many of those.
Social housing has changed considerably over the last 20 years and can't be compared to the experience it used to be.

Not a chance.

I probably wouldn’t and I’ve lived on a council estate with a mix of ex-LA houses and still council owned, so this is based on past experience. It might be fine, most people will be lovely, but moving is so so expensive it’s not a risk i would want to take.

Definitely don’t buy. Council housing now is not what is used to be, not comparable at all. Sadly, gone are the days of houseproud workers in that type of accommodation. The change, the spiral downward, has been astonishing.

Ture. We live at the quiet end of a street with a big council estate at the end of it. The people higher up the street have to deal with so much more grief: noisy motorbikes, furniture dumped etc.

I lived in an expensive neighbourhood with a council retirement block behind me. It had a big garden that was really well looked after by the council, and there were any number of people living there who were definitely not of retirement age so maybe it got reclassified. I was there for 20 years with no issues whatsoever apart from the weird man with a Labrador that used to crap on the pavements every day and he never picked up the poo!

I sold the house a few years ago in a week so other people weren’t bothered either. I don’t think I would be that concerned really.

Thanks all
I have three kids and we like to spend time in the garden. It makes me nervous thinking of the overlooking flats and mostly how it will change/develop for the worse in the future.
Trees won’t be enough to mask it all.
shame as the house is lovely but my gut says no.

We brought a lovely house near a council estate and about 12 months in started to experience bad antisocial behaviour and had to move. So unfortunately I wouldn’t do it again.