Ex-council house - Pros & Cons - What to be aware of?

natnhay

You can get problem families in a private housing estate ,because a lot are rented out anyway ,and the only type of families that can afford to rent them are families on housing benefit. I live on a council estate, and some of the houses are not very pleasing to look at ,but thats due to the councils not having money to spend on them ,not due to the tennants living in them.I actually own my house now,have lived here for 16 yrs,I have great neighbours and would'nt want to live anywhere else.Not all council estates are full of problem families.

chris_m

the_realist wrote: »

1) generally only the wavey roof tiles used on out buildings. No big deal and no need to have them removed just leave them be.

Indeed - asbestos is generally perfectly OK unless the material containing it deteriorates or it is disturbed. Appropriate precautions need to be taken if removing or working around asbestos but if it's just sitting on top of a garage (for example) and getting wet every time it rains, no problem.

olly300

Don't know where you are in the country but in London ex-council houses include properties built in the Georgian era, Victorian era, Edwardian era, 1930s and 1950s plus the more common concrete constructions of 1960s and 1970s. This means that unless you know the area properly you may not realise that your house is ex-council and that you could be surrounded by council tenants.

However if you are depending on the council if they cause you problems i.e. noise, threatening behaviour they are easier to sort out then normal neighbours as you can get them threaten with eviction and actually evicted.

One other thing you need to check is whether your house is in a conservation area and a tree preservation area, that one is being purposed or your estate is one of the first/well preserved example of a particular architect's style of social housing. I know ex-council and council properties built in the Victorian era, 1930s, 1950s and 1960s that are. In one area the proposal was floated around for 4 years before it became one. All this means that when you come to change something i.e. do the windows you have to spend thousands of pounds more doing it then if it wasn't. You can talk to the council planning department about this yourself - just phone them up.