Buying a house with decent garden

currynchips

Partner and I are happy where we are, but continue to look for the next place. What really makes us happy is a large garden area, even if the house doesn't replicate it in size. Where it is, in terms of urban/rural, does not concern us at all. A lot of mainstream agencies only seem to deal with urban areas, with small gardens.

Basically, where do we look for these houses, what do we enter into property sites etc? Is there a way to get large gardens without the mansion in front of it?

BASFORDLAD

When we brought our current house it had a massive garden, huge by today standards. Most modern houses have smaller gardens.

If your not a snob the best way to get a large back garden is to look at old ex council houses that were either built in the 1950s (proper brick built ones), or in the 1930s. They were often built with really good sized gardens.

Another trick is to look for a corner plot (which ours is)

Even though our house wasnt that special(we have done it up and is lovely now) it was the garden we brought the house for. Large enough to keep chickens, pigs and ducks!!.

All in the a suburb of a big city

delmar39

I agree with the above. We're on a corner plot new build and it came with a reasonable size garden, as we got an extra bit behind the garage.

If garden is important to you I don’t think you’ll necessarily find this on property websites. Some do show photos of the garden, but you need to see it in the flesh to get an idea of size, aspect i.e. south facing, whether you’re overlooked and whether there is room potential to develop.

You could go into estate agents and specifically ask for details on properties where garden is a feature.

Garden is important to me. We’re in the process of buying a new house. When I viewed it I loved the house from the off. When I arrived in the rear garden it was huge and this put the icing on the cake for me. I’ve had our current rear garden fully landscaped and it’s my pride and joy (!) so to move somewhere better is important to me.

Whether a new build, terrace house, x council house or mansion, you’ll only be sure what the garden is like if you go and have a look. My favourite garden was in my first two up two down. It was only 4 sq mts but I worked on it to make it more private and I loved it. If you go and have a look you might decide you like something you otherwise would have ruled out having looked at it on the net.

sunshinetours

Some good bits above but also use the google maps functions to zoom in on the house (and area in general) and you can get a good feel for garden size

Older house generally as mentioned have larger garden assuming they haven't been developed. Avoid new build estates as they almost without exception, in our part of the country, have small gardens

What many other countries like Oz and NZ have is total plot size on property details so you can get a good feel for the overall size which I think would certainly help.

Ultimately no substitute for getting out there in the agents offices and regular contact with clear details of what you require.

silvercar

In decent areas, houses on big plots will have been extended to provide that sought after family home with large garden. You will need to be lucky to find a small house on a large plot and you may find yourself bidding against developers who can see the potential.

olias

Use a property sit that allows keyword searches like www.primelocation.com and type something like 'large garden', 'corner plot' or even 'acres' or 'paddock' or something similar.

Olias

guy0wen

I agree corner plots, and older houses are usually best.

Try areas in the county side, sometimes they come with huge plots (wouldnt exactelly call them gardens in some cases though, more like paddocks or fields).

A few friends have bought in the countryside and they have gardens that are huge. Litterally big enough to play golf in (up to about an 8 iron anyway).

Jue_xx

Garden size was one of our biggest factors in our recent house search too, and we found Google Maps invaluable for this. We didn't even make an appointment to view a property until we'd found it on Google Maps first to check the size of the plot.

Jue_xx

Jue_xx wrote: »

Garden size was one of our biggest factors in our recent house search too, and we found Google Maps invaluable for this. We didn't even make an appointment to view a property until we'd found it on Google Maps first to check the size of the plot.

...Having said that, even Google Earth isn't foolproof! We found one lovely house that on GE appeared to have the nice big garden that we were looking for, only to find on viewing that the vendor had already sold the garden seperately as a building plot, so most of the garden didn't come with the house! Grr!!! Our pet hate!!! :mad:

There was no mention of this in the EA's details!

Catblue

You often find that older-style bungalows sit on a reasonably sized plot.

Soot2006

We managed to find a large garden (small house) ... we told the estate agents what our priorities were and checked out everything on Google maps before going for a viewing -- very happy with several we saw but everything was right with the one we bought. Ex council 1950s 2-bed, biiiiig garden! Surveyor described it as "unusually large plot"