'Affordable housing'...what kind of people to expect?

[PussinJimmyChoos]

DH and I are looking to move house. We quite like the idea of a new build and have been looking at plots etc

One thing we have noticed is that all of these new developments have a certain number of affordable housing houses

What DH and I don't want, is to invest our money in what would be our forever house and then find we have problem with the kind of tennants placed in the affordable housing - from what I have heard and seen on other developments, some of the tennants housed in affordable housing are not ideal neighbours and can be quite disruptive

Before I get jumped on, I am not being a snob. We work hard for our money and its a massive investment that we want to be sure is right for us

Why is this so difficult for you to understand?

Peruse these boards. There are women married to alcoholic, sex addicted, drug addicted, wife beating twats simply littering this place. Some of them live in 300K houses. You don't know what the people in the houses near you are like, and this is not something you can tell from their rental/ownership status.

I really don't know how to make this any clearer.

hmm guess i am diffcult since ds3 is prone to screaming at early hrs of morning oh and he is also very vocal when in the garden better get yourself some ear plugs

I think even if you buy somewhere in a new build development and there are no problems with any of the tenants or AH buyers, you will be constantly worried about it anyway. People come and go, tenants will come and go and you will never know who is going to move in next (you never know wherever you buy).

I wouldn't be considering a new development if I were you!

ime affordable housing, is on offer to those who can come up enough money to part rent and part buy these so called 'affordable homes.'

They therefore would be people who have expressed an interest in affordable homes, and are therefore on a list. They could be people who are currently renting, and if they are getting a mortgae then they would have some sort of income.

The affordable homes are usually 'co owned' by a Housing assocciation. A housing association , may or may not also have other homes on a new estate that are for renting only. In these homes are people who work, and there are also people who don't. Like me. I am a single mother, who used to be married who 'owned' a home in London once, but I have been lowered to this, becuase my tit of an ex dh left us.

keep doing the research!!

Phoenix - am deaf so no ear plugs required

lol , tobe fair our only neighbours are cows not using a metaphore there

I see the PC brigade is out in force tonight.
The op was just asking a genuine question. Cut her some slack, people.

[twirls baton and joins PC brigade]

Affordable housing? I'm a language teacher and these days housing like this is aimed towards people like me isn't it?

I do think this is a valid question and I'm a council/HA tenant.

We've had a dire neighbour - drug peddling, partying, throwing rubbish everywhere, violent, fights spilling out in the stair, etc.

If it makes me a snob not to want to live near people like this so be it.

At least as a renter moving out is an option.

For buyers it often isn't.

TBH, I've had so many bad experiences with discourteous (and worse) neighbours unless I had the money to buy a detached in an older neighbourhood I wouldn't buy at all.

However, I pointed out a long time ago in the thread that in the OPs situation it might be worth it to find out if the affordable housing were shared ownership because then you're going to get people are getting a mortgage and therefore have to be in work.

Sorry, but it makes a difference a lot of times.

All the neighbours from hell I've had (and as a veteran of a council home and two HA homes it's not a limited one) have people who don't work.

Not having to get up early in the morning makes a difference.

but expat. thats only your experience. i've been in both council and HA....and rented married quarters.

army neighbours were hideous....look on the forces sweetheart threads for lots of exexamples of hellish neighbours!! and these are families of serdeants etc,but the behaviour is awfull in some garrisons. really was NOT what i expected.

my council house was a horrrible shell but the neighbours all were great

here in HA the estate is full of nice people,mix of working and not,but my immediate neighbour has dogs and is a nightmare.....and she works! she has a drug problem too.

its different everywhere

'but expat. thats only your experience. '

sadly, iLOVE, it's not.

our neighbour across from us moved last month.

why? because of the neighbour next to her.

and on and on. there are loads of people on here on estates who've sadly had loads of bad experiences.

plenty of private renters, too, it is a valid question, IMO, particularly if you are looking to buy.

i guess if you were buying an older property then dont you have to disclose neighbour problems? but brand new obviously,,,no neighbours so no neighbours

i think the way the op put it was quite a snobbish attitude. there would be nicer ways..

Haven't read whole thread, but here's my advice to the OP:

Neighbours can cause you problems regardless of whether their property is affordable housing or not. You need to try and choose a plot where you don't have too many neighbour issues to deal with (regardless of who the neighbours are). eg on my estate, there 4 houses down a shared drive - the arguments are so shocking and ridiculous because of the owners of one of the houses - they ask everyone to move their cars becuase they don't like how they have parked (not because rules have been broken etc) - they put plant pots by people's car doors so they can't open them etc, really stupid petty stuff, but making life miserable for people for no reason. The trouble makers are in their 70s, "respectable" and own their house mortgage free.

Bad neighbours come from all "classes". I would advise you never to get into a confrontation with any of your neighbours about anything and always be polite etc whoever they are.

The stereotypical problems with affordable housing that you are referring to do of course exist - but on the other hand, often you find that some people in expensive houses have a grand sense of entitlement and think that they are better than everyone else and will dictate who everything is done. So, the upshot is you have to make a huge effort to get on with your neighbours regardless of who they are. I try not to fall out with people, but I have found that the biggest problem I have ever had with neighbours has been created by people in the biggest house I have ever lived next door to!

Go detached wherever you can.

My worst experiences (aside from drug dealing) with neighbours from hell are all issues which would be more tolerable without shared walls - booming, blaring music shaking the walls and furniture, thin walls where you can hear every movement, fire raising, dangerous dogs, etc.

I refuse now to buy a new build, went to look at one for the kids so they could have easy access to their university - single mothers covered in tattoos and swearing at their kids- that is what greeted us on our 2nd visit - also when you sell you have to give a percentage of your profit so they can have their creches etc - why should I - we have worked for what we have - no one helped us and now my kids are taking out huge loans for their university fees. It is my right to live where and with whom - and not its not being a snob. You could turn that on its head and say council tenants want to be snobs by wanting to live with private - the way I see it all rights keep being taken away from hard workers and more given to those who refuse to work - No new build for me, they can stick it. We also discovered that the new build going up next door was to be for the drug addicts - NO THANKS!!!!

Affordable housing is just that - housing that someone might actually be able to afford to buy, which is what a lot of first time buyers are reliant on, especially down here in Cornwall, where there is a ridiculous proportion of second/holiday properties.

But you can have shitty neighbours anywhere.

I think what is important is the character of your neighbours rather than how much money they can afford to put in the place they live in. For having lived in various places, I can tell you you can have posh horrible neighbours and less well off fantastic ones. concentrate on the people rather than their income.

I would be hesistant of a new house for reasons other than social housing allocation. The main one would be parking, there is never enough on new build estates and that will lead to disputes at worst or a difficult to navigate road at best. I think the density of new build is horrendous too. If you want a newish house I would say go for one built in the 1980s.

My experience of social housing allocation on new build estates is that with flats it has made the whole estate a hell hole because one bad tenant can have a huge impact. We viewed the flats when they were new and they said they were part buy, part rent but they have since become housing association, I guess noone wanted to buy them.

Our estate borders a new one with a lot of social housing peppered about within it and know quite a few mums from there and none of them have complained, they may well be the social tenants, I wouldn't know. There have been 'problem' houses in the local paper and they seem to have been rented ones. I would be more wary of houses where they appeal to the buy to let brigade as you are more likely to get landlords who don't care as they don't live with it I'd have thought.

Can I clarify are you looking to sell and buy or buying a second home and retaining current home?

It would be easy to join this thread in order to mock the OP's snobbery; or to post something outrageously sarcastic about oiks at the end of the drive, darling.

I confess that I was going to do just that!

(but others have done so already, and much more effectively than I would have done. Thank you)

But.

The thing is, this is a real concern of many. However snobby it may sound. And may I offer a confession. When looking to move in 2009, I looked at a couple of new builds. Quite expensive (nearly 400k!) houses. And, liberal though I think myself to be, found that I had not dissimilar thoughts.

I didn't voice them though.

But I know of two colleagues who lived, briefly, in 'affordable' houses on two separate developments that I had viewed. Both left swiftly for other private rents in mixed areas, as they found the stereotype to be confirmed. And not at the end of the street either. One colleague found that a brothel had been established next door. Really!

However, just for now, I shall join in the liberal mockery darling. And thank Dawkins that I didn't buy one.

(though we now have our own, very different neighbour problems in a well-to-do village! Another story involving intolerance of our noisily disabled children.....)

Well, we have HA over the back from us (not really sure if that's different). Most are single mothers. Most are quiet as mice. I know a few to nod to, and they seem nice enough. The nightmare tenants tend to last about 6 months before being moved on. Oh, and having HA over the back seems to make it difficult to sell. We had many, many viewings last year and most feedback went along the lines of 'great house, love the location...if only the houses over the back weren't HA'.

I think any owned property is an investment to some extent and the op's simply trying to protect that investment from losing value through the actions of others - be they rich or poor.
I don't think the distinction between 'affordable housing' and 'social housing' is being made clear enough though.
Affordable housing is simply govt/developer subsidised housing in expensive areas - it's for purchasers not renters, so there should still be an incentive for occupiers to maintain their properties. I've lived in 'social housing' and it was a nightmare as processions of young single mums (accompanied by tribes of fanny mad feral boys) and mentally ill young men, casually and carelessly, destroyed the peaceful enjoyment of all around them. I'm not saying the rich don't do the same, but they probably wouldn't have as much of an incentive to steal my bike, my computer and my washing.
If you buy a new-build, you probably won't have such problems from 'affordable housing' occupiers as they are usually owners too - just at a lower price.
The difficulty arises is with buy to let landlords/small-time developers and if the affordable housing isn't all sold but farmed out to a housing association for letting purposes.
Builder/developers often bulk discount to 'buy to letters' and that can blight any development, whether tenants have 'social' problems or not - they often just don't have a committment to maintaining their environment and don't care if the communal areas go to the dogs. But you can still get that with buy to let landlords in established areas too.
With new-builds the difficulty is you can't literally get sight of who your neighbours are likely to be - so it makes any investment a bit more risky. They do tend to lose value initially too... so maybe not for the cautious or the owner-occupier.

• I'm not sating all 'social' tenants are the same as the ones I met - the block I lived in seemed to have been reserved for young people who would not have been considered by private landlords. I had no control over this though, and when I first visited the block it seemed to have mainly elderly tenants but the HA involved changed it's policy on who they sent where - nothing I could do about it - except leave.

I bought my first house in my early 20s. It was a new build on what appeared to be a lovely estate. What I hadn't realised was that there were housing association houses on the estate also. Some of the people (and this was probably 50/50) were a complete nightmare - I was living alone at that time and the police used to be in the street on a regular basis and I was treated to domestic violence in the street and some general anti-social behaviour i.e. loud music etc. I also had some damage to my car and my shed broken into and items stolen. Before anyone says those things could happen anywhere I'm well aware of that but these were regular problems and I often felt unsafe returning home alone late at night. I'm not sure what affordable housing consists of but if it's shared ownership I would think that it will be less of a risk.