Buying house next to green area - positives and negatives?

gt12

Hi,

Want to know if buying a house in a new build estate & deciding between two semi-d houses almost next door.

House 1 - side of the house is big Green area (which is estate's only green area with pedestrian access to a park bit further away), road turning directly in front is the only access road to 20 houses further on in the estate.

House 2 - 2 doors next to House 1, mid-lane, exact same size/layout/direction etc.

What would be advantages and disadvantages to consider? Would be grateful for your comments, thanks!

athtrasna

If you want peace, get as far away from the green as possible. They attract people from first light until late at night be they kids playing, people walking dogs or teens hanging out. You can also expect footballs to be bounced off your house.

Eric Cartman

The house next to the green area is more likely to have the wall separating your property and the area vandalised, more likely to have rubbish thrown over and more likely to have lads hopping your back wall for opportunistic robberies.

Now in a good area this might mean increasing from 0 incidents ever to 2 incidents ever , in a bad area it might mean going from 5 incidents ever to it being a weekly occurrence. If its a particularly quiet, upmarket area , it wouldn't bother me, if it was an area that has some antisocial issues id be avoiding it.

DoozerT6

Having rented in a few corner houses before I bought my apartment, I would not recommend it. The side of this house faces a green area: you will without doubt have either a: ) kids screaming and playing football right on the other side of your side wall, kicking the ball against it, and inevitably the ball will end up in your back garden more than once; or b ) if the corner wall is 'sitting height', you will end up with groups of kids sitting on your wall as a meeting point, with all their associated noise. I actually noticed it in my own development this evening: three young fellas just kicking a ball against the tall side garden wall of one of the corner houses. Tbh that would drive me mad. Don't get me wrong, nobody minds kids out playing, in fact it's great to see them out for the short time that we have weather good enough for it, but a house like that (beside a green area, on a corner) is always going to have more kids around it than a mid-row terrace or semi-d. It would be like living next to a school playground during weekends/holidays especially. Even if you have kids yourself, it can be hard to take when it's relentless like it will doubtless be (speaking from observing things in my own estate. During the height of the summer the kids were out till after 10pm, from earlyish morning). Even the house next door will still be fairly noisy.

Also the pedestrian park access could be a concern: you may be sure that will be used as a short-cut by some less than savoury characters late at night.

My advice would be not to buy the corner house. The house next door, maybe at a push. Are there any others in the estate not *quite* so close to the green area you might consider?

Teyla Emmagan

There are only negatives to living near the green area OP.

Go for a cul de sac right in the back of the estate. A cul de sac that backs onto a river.

2RockMountain

It depends really. We have no anti-social behaviour on our green. It's a great facility if you have young kids - great to be able to sit in your house or garden and keep an eye on them.

Stealthfins

It's handy for digging worms if you're into fishing,but always make sure you put the sods back properly.

DoozerT6

2RockMountain wrote: »

It depends really. We have no anti-social behaviour on our green. It's a great facility if you have young kids - great to be able to sit in your house or garden and keep an eye on them.

It's not even really about anti-social behaviour as such, just the constant noise that will inevitably come from living next to the only green area in the estate. And yes, it is of course a great facility to have, but that doesn't negate the downsides: I'm guessing by your comment that most of the kids in your estate are quite young? Give it a few more years and they will be out without parental supervision, 'testing the boundaries' as such, gathering in loud groups on the green areas. Big groups of teens/tweens, even if they are genuinely doing nothing wrong, can be intimidating for people passing by.

Plus, add in the inevitable dog poo, the build up of rubbish (even just stuff blown there from elsewhere) that short cut to the park (a highway for escaping thieves, etc) and its just not something I'd like to be living right beside.

Lumen

2RockMountain wrote: »

It depends really. We have no anti-social behaviour on our green. It's a great facility if you have young kids - great to be able to sit in your house or garden and keep an eye on them.

+1 on this.

We overlooked the green in our estate for over a decade. The kids grew up playing on it.

It was great to look out the front living room window and check on them.

JimmyAlfonso

I fully agree with the gist of the above. I lived in a quite a well to do estate with our house at the green area, kids however well brought up will become an annoyance and push boundaries. They used to congregate on our wall and kick the ball off it and hit our cars, front house window occasionally. Kids will be kids but this was every day or evening and can make you dread the thought of seeing them on the wall as you come home from work.

Lumen

JimmyAlfonso wrote: »

I fully agree with the gist of the above. I lived in a quite a well to do estate with our house at the green area, kids however well brought up will become an annoyance and push boundaries.

I think you may be confusing money with manners.

riclad

I would go for a house away from the green,a new build estate will have a
alot of kids growing up, there will be noise from the green.
A small metal fence on the wall will stop kid s sitting on it.
i,ve seen many lanes closed by the council ,to stop anti social behavior ,
one end is closed .
a House beside a lane is more vunerable ,to burglary,
than a house in the middle of a row of houses .
Someone can go down the lane and just jump over the back wall.
Look at both house,s , is the one beside the green more secure .
Groups of teens can hang around a lane ,creating noise problems .
Facing a green at least you can see whats going on .
my sister lived across from a green, in a estate with maybe 50 houses ,for 10 years
there was never any problem,
in the summer there might be 8 kids playing on the green.
estate was new build , when she moved in .
There was never a problem with kids kicking balls into gardens ,or too much noise.
her house is across the road from the green.
in a middle class area .

JimmyAlfonso

Lumen wrote: »

I think you may be confusing money with manners.

To clarify, you could tell these kids to go away and they would without the risk of a stone being thrown through the window. Repeatedly having to do this got annoying though.
If would feel like I was drawing a target on myself doing that in a less well off area. Not confusion, just a realistic opinion that you don't have to share.

Moonbeam

If you have kids I would buy beside the green so that they can play out and you can keep an eye on them.

Dardania

My house is overlooking a green area, and I love it, as it's the only decent green area in the estate. So calming to look out on.

There are people using it, be that kids with footballs & kites, or the outside weekly exercise sessions (boot camp types) - is great to see people making use of it.

Only time it's a negative for me is when one of the local kids got a scrmabler bike (until he took a tumble), and at halloween - the bonfire is quite intense incl. all the drinking that goes on.

I should note that there's a vehicle road between us and the green area. Were I in an end of row house to the green area...I'd be less positive about it

2RockMountain

DoozerT6 wrote: »

It's not even really about anti-social behaviour as such, just the constant noise that will inevitably come from living next to the only green area in the estate. And yes, it is of course a great facility to have, but that doesn't negate the downsides: I'm guessing by your comment that most of the kids in your estate are quite young? Give it a few more years and they will be out without parental supervision, 'testing the boundaries' as such, gathering in loud groups on the green areas. Big groups of teens/tweens, even if they are genuinely doing nothing wrong, can be intimidating for people passing by.

Plus, add in the inevitable dog poo, the build up of rubbish (even just stuff blown there from elsewhere) that short cut to the park (a highway for escaping thieves, etc) and its just not something I'd like to be living right beside.

We're in the house 20+ years, so there are kids of all ages, including teenagers - more girls than boys around here as it happens. We've never had a problem with 'testing boundaries' or hanging round in groups. It's great to see kids hanging round outdoors, and they would often mix across broad age groups, which is good too. One summer, a gang of Spanish students discovered it, which wasn't much fun - but lots of adults constantly roaming around put them off. There was one crowd of local teens who tried stashing their tinnies in the bushes, so the adults would drink their tinnies and leave back the empties. They found a different estate to stash their stuff.

the_syco

Wouldn't buy the house next to the green.

The guy who lived next to the green would often come out to moan about anyone kicking the ball against his wall, kicking balls into his garden, destroying his flowers when someone went to retrieve said ball, etc. He was a bit of an ar$ehole, so you'd usually see egg on the side windows looking towards the green, and if he ever left his bathroom window open, kids would see it as a target; get the ball in the window, or cause window to close.

Another house further down the green was next to a "rat run" shortcut over the nearby green. They had CCTV on their house, as their house often got "knick knocks", etc.

I'd buy the house not directly next to the green.It may be useful when your kids are small, but when they're not you'll regret living there.

gt12

thanks guys for your inputs. Even if we do have kids but then regular noise and stuff coming in garden may sometimes annoy, area has a history for being social but I suppose you never know the future, and of course security can be a bit of concern with the side wall. Very helpful points, thanks again!

Snakeblood

We live beside the green. We moved in and had a shopping trolley thrown through our glass porch door, a breezeblock smashed into the rear window of a car in one night, and about a month later we had a handbag thrown over our wall.

Other than that, in the five years we've been where we are (in a settled 'mature' estate) it's been really grand. We have kids and we can see where they are. I think in a new estate, you'd have a bunch of kids around the same age all growing up at the same time, and that would probably lead to more antisocial behaviour, just because people get stupider in crowds.

I wouldn't recommend it in a new estate, I suppose.

Grolschevik

2RockMountain wrote: »

There was one crowd of local teens who tried stashing their tinnies in the bushes, so the adults would drink their tinnies and leave back the empties.

I love this!

Dardania

Grolschevik wrote: »

2RockMountain wrote: »

There was one crowd of local teens who tried stashing their tinnies in the bushes, so the adults would drink their tinnies and leave back the empties.

I love this!

Yeah, the third party "adults" and not the poster of course!