New build on a new estate and social housing. I expect I’ll get torn to shreds but can I have your experiences please?

[ohwhats]

We are looking at buying the last house on a street that backs on to an area of the new estate that will be 50 plus houses owned by a housing association.
The house will be a real bargain, they are throwing all sorts of incentives in as I’m sure they want it sold asap as it will be ready in about 6 weeks time.
The sales advisor explained that the tenants will all be working and they won’t be misbehaving as they will lose their tenancy if they do.
DH thinks it will be fine and we should take a chance but I’m really not sure. Had anyone bought next to AH on a new build estate?

In my LA, you are most likely to be priority banding if you are disabled or have a disabled family member. If you have history of been chucked out of SH, anti social behaviour, not paying rent etc then you are definitely not going to get priority banding for SH.

The only reason I have SH is because I have a disabled child and was given the highest banding.

Yeah I’m a bit surprised. I can only imagine maybe it’s because the people who have had a bad experience are more motivated to post on this.

For balance let me add my experience, privately rented all my life in various cities and areas ranging from student areas in South Liverpool to the affluent Primrose Hill in London and all sorts in between. Never really had many problematic neighbours, they have tended to be working singles and professional couples as opposed to large families.

Currently living in my first HA flat and I love it. It’s a very clean modern and well insulated building. New build that was completed in 2023, with about 60 apartments and I know before I moved in they did checks to make sure I was earning over a certain amount and some other criteria. So far as I know everyone was working when they moved in. There’s very few kids, it’s all singles and couples. . It’s a mixture of HA tenants and privately owned. All us HA tenants are on a “rent to buy scheme” hence the check, so no lifetime tenancies! That may make a difference?

The only annoying thing is some instances of people not cleaning after their dogs in communal areas like the carpark and I’ve heard there’s been dog pee in the lift a few occasions , but they do keep on top of cleaning so nothing stays grimy for long and they have sent letters out to residents about stuff when there’s been complaints.

However tbf I also experienced that kind of stuff in the very expensive new build high rise apartments I stayed at in London too. In fact it was even worse there. Lots of dogs shitting in the otherwise gorgeous rooftop garden and owners not cleaning it up, vile! And that was all fairly well off London professionals privately renting or privately owned.

“decent hard working people' who often get shafted to the end of the list because they have a job and good references so can rent privately, even if they struggle to afford it and would really benefit from SH.”

That’s why I really like my current set up. It was a HA that was actively looking for people with jobs and references to move in their new development.

There needs to be of these rent to buy schemes. Because I finally am not paying through the nose for rent, I’ve actually been able to build up savings and start saving for a deposit.

It’s just crazy that I as a single person on a slightly above average salary was expected to pay so much rent for several years AND save for a deposit just because I wasn’t on benefits/on drugs/a single parent etc.

I’m so glad I don’t have to privately rent again for the foreseeable future.i will add that it’s even more peaceful than the privately rented modern high rises I lived in before that had so many residents smoking weed and having parties on the weekend .

Yeah I don’t agree with the HA hate but I think that poster meant feckless people as in folk who have huge families they can’t support, are just not working and tend to not do anything during the day beyond going to their local weatherspoons after they drop the kids off at school. They don’t necessarily have to have been chucked out of HA to be feckless.

I remember working as a young professional struggling to get by in flatshares (it can be realy stressful and awful living with strangers and dealing with shit landlords!) and I had a friend whose mum and stepdad had social housing and had never worked for decades (except cash in hand ad hoc work) due to them being on methadone. My friend herself after not working for over a decade, having 2 kids with men she wasn’t married to eventually got social housing too.

She and her mum used to always say to me “poor you I could never live in flat shares,” LOL.

I would think well lucky for you because you didn’t go to uni, get a student loan and graft for your first job and wait until you were stable before having your kids you get what was then housing benefit and get your HA rent covered.

Now, I get why vulnerable people need help but I think we also need to try and support young single people who are making smart life decisions and aren’t exactly rolling in it either.

How long ago was that though?

It isn't at all easy to get a SH property these days. I only moved in to my SH property at the beginning of last year and the criteria I stated above is very recent criteria.

No one in my LA at least is a priority for SH because they are a single parent or are on methadone. Many people in my LA end up renting if they can afford that or in temporary accommodation which isn't very temporary because they will still be waiting for years. Temporary accommodation such as a local hotel is where I hear about the fights, police cars etc.

As I said, the only reason I was able to go straight to the top priority is because my child is disabled and my private rental was deemed unsuitable for him. Otherwise I'd have had no chance at SH myself.

I left social housing last year. ASB, house stunk of drugs from neighbours and the HA did absolutely fuck all to stop it. Tried to move and couldn’t.

All the new builds in our local area are goinf
to the homeless register. That includes evictions, prison leavers and those who have outgrown their current homes.

Avoid it like the plague, I wouldn’t go anywhere near social housing if I were you. Where some are nice, some tenants are absolute scum and the HA’s do not care.

Yes, the reason is they want to sell as many off plan as they can, in order to maximise their revenue before they complete. There will also be restrictions on how many they can sell in any given year, in order to ensure local services such as schools have regularly sized in-takes. They won’t be able to start the next phase or the next development until this one is done. The won’t want to have a show home operational with only a couple of homes left to sell. The last few houses on any new build estate will be pushed hard, but if these houses aren’t built yet as OP has said, they haven’t slashed the price to rock bottom in desperation. Our new build home was last to complete and was 2 months away from being finished when we bought and it was still priced the same as the others just with a couple more incentives added. There was nothing wrong with the estate or the location, it was just a timing issue.

Of course there are some dodgy people about in SH, but our last neighbour was arrested for drug dealing, and we lived in a “naice” new build estate. The anti-social behaviour there was what made us move.

sat up reading this after 1am, sick with worry. I was already having 2nd, 3rd, 4th thoughts about moving to a shared ownership house - there's about 60 houses 50:50 shared ownership and HA - no private houses at all. I am on the edge of a HA area, there's my house, the one next door and then the rest are social housing rentals. I can't afford to make a mistake.

I'd love one, I really need to move area because of medical needs, but I don't want to live on an estate again and I'm an HA Tennant.
Been there, done that and it was awful.
Being honest is not vitriolic or saying every HA Tennant is awful, most aren't, I'm not, but a few can make life hell.

The thing is, nobody can say for sure if this particular new build estate with SH will have problem tenants. As evidenced by this thread - and no I don’t think people are making it up as has been implied - some social housing tenants are a bloody nightmare, just as some privately owned/rented properties will have nightmare neighbours too. Until you live there and people start moving in you just won’t know.

I will add to the chorus of people who have had bad experiences, though, as I’m currently in that same position myself and desperate to swap, because the housing association is useless and behaviour that has been going on now for years is just continuing, unchecked.

It won’t necessarily be a nightmare, OP, but it could be. Nobody can say for sure.

And btw, I think the reason there are a fair few posts on here decrying living in SH is simply because those people responding are the ones having issues. People without issues would probably be less inclined to be drawn to the thread and post.

I don’t have experience but I have read that housing associations take an absolute age to evict nightmare tenants. I personally wouldn’t risk it.

I live in a new build estate. I have 8 SH on my street. All are lovely. One young girl did start having parties with loud music. But a neighbour had a word. She said she excited to get her own place. It stopped. But I li e next to the most expensive none SH and they are nightmare neighbours with their 7 dogs barking 24/7

I was on a new build estate and a few doors down was a row of 3 social housing homes. 1 was a busy family who kept their home wonderfully and were really part of the community. One of the children had SEN and would sing loudly when they left the house, it was lovely to hear them go by (genuinely). I’d often stop and natter with the mum about the local area. She would walk everywhere with the kids so she knew everything really well. The next house had 5 dogs and 6 kids in a 3 bed. My eldest ended up going to school with their youngest and I go chatting to the mum and she just kept saying how “lovely” everyone at the school was. Got me thinking that maybe people weren’t that nice to her… which was really sad because she was a young mum doing her best. Yes, sometimes their front garden was untidy but they had a lot going on. The dad was a dog trainer and they were some of the best behaved dogs I’ve ever met. The third house had a young couple in it. They were very house proud and kept it perfectly but otherwise we rarely saw or heard from them.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Honestly, all three of the neighbours above, while characters, were great in their own way. Maybe it depends on area?

I drive past an estate every day, where there are 4 council owned properties facing the main road. All the other other houses look like any other estate, but these 4 are something else. Children’s bikes and toys spread everywhere. Piles of wood/ items left outside. Great big decorations left up half the year. Women congregating in their dressing gowns at 4.30, when I drive home, puffing away on their fags.
I actually enjoy driving past, watching their lives unfold. They could be the loveliest neighbours ever, but the flipping mess would do my head in…

The rep from the house builders won’t actually have anything to do with who lives on the estate as it will be administered by the HA.

Older estates tend to be fine, my friends parents have lived in their house since the 1970’s. The Estate is lovely, they still rent. They are just regular people, people with problems tend to get further up the list which is why new build ones tend to be so much worse.

I live in social housing (not the UK though) and they're very quick to throw people out for anti social behaviour. A couple of houses in my street were being used as squats and quite a bit of drug dealing was going on there which the cops ended up raiding one night and they weren't social housing but private rentals. So be careful when stereotyping people and where they live.

I wouldn’t do it OP. I moved into flats years ago (not new build) not knowing it was mixed private / social. Social neighbours either side of me were lovely. The one upstairs from me made my life a misery for years - 3 dogs she never took for a walk so barked for hours, leaving her rubbish and dog shit in a shared side return and refusing to move it, fleas coming down from her flat to mine. Never again.

And that’s the problem. One rogue family can
ruin the neighbourhood. There’s nothing worse than anti social behaviour and intimidation. It ruins lives.

So true. My NDN has a job for an insurance company, hybrid, and his partner self employed working evenings as a nail technician ad hoc. They make a rammy late into Sun morning with friends 2am and we are absolutely fed up of it. Hear them right through the party wall. Bloody noisy. They've four kids. But crucially they own their own home. They're not council tenants or HA tenants. Idiots buy homes too. So I would argue that buying a home is definitely not a social marker!

Just for some balance, I’ve twice lived in new build estates. One had a block of flats owned by a HA - no issues at all. Nice people, only interacted at the residents AGM other than the usual nodding.

Second case involved a street owned by a HA for low income families. The weird thing was they had a separate entrance to the estate which turned out to be the more convenient entrance by far. Again no issues whatsoever.

I just thought I’d add those examples even if a bit uneventful and boring!

I will say that I didn’t live in the second place for long so didn’t get to see the kids grow to teens etc.

If you are uncertain about the estate do an AI search of that estate, that will highlight any problems
My son lives on a lovely new estate with social housing, no problems, across the district there is another similar estate that is a nightmare, overspill families from the cities have been brought in and brought the drugs and violence with them.

There is a development like this on my road - there were 3 privately owned apartment blocks and a couple of years ago a 4th was built for social housing. It stands out like a sore thumb - all sorts of rubbish dumped outside it, unsavoury looking men with scary dogs, the police are always there.

I grew up in social housing btw, back in the 80s when it was fairly accessible for most families and before it was largely bought up by my parents’ generation.

I find this hard to believe. Dressing gowns? Onesies are surely de rigueur these days. No dogs? No cans of Stella?

An honest question, when did all this unruly behaviour begin? We were brought up in rented accommodation in the 60s and 70s, there was a massive council estate near us, so we went to school with many of the residents. The families were all decent, strict with their kids, all worked and really took pride in their surroundings. Even had 6 monthly checks from the council.
Where did it all break down?