New housing estate... Opinions please, please help!

greensparkle1234

Hi All,

I'm new to the site :hello: and was wondering if I could ask opinions of those who have moved to new housing estates...

An opportunity has come up for us to buy a brand new house, the house is perfect and ticks all the boxes, plus they do part exchange, stamp duty paid and removal packed, unpacked and paid for and the nearby schools are outstanding, but...

• We're not keen on housing estate where cars are parked on the roads, and this would probably be one of them as a lot of the houses only have 1 parking space (we would use our garage to solve that issue for ourselves)
• The housing estate is between 2 'less affluent' areas, of which they have the reputation, so I would worry about that
• There's the unpredictability of knowing what it'll be like when it's complete - will it be a nice place to live, or will we have made a huge mistake?

I was wondering if anyone else had been in a similar situation, if so, what were your experiences of moving to a new estate? Especially if it was near a less desirable area?


Many thanks in advance


xx

Fire_Fox

Welcome! All those benefits suggest to me it will be overpriced. How much can you afford to lose on the value when the shiny newness wears off?

greensparkle1234

We're looking at 3 other properties today to gauge whether or not it's a good deal and what we really want. If/When they value our house, we will also get our own valuation done. I wonder if we could knock them down a bit, but I don't know quite how, or by how much, as we've never bought a new build before.

Before all that though, it would be very useful to get other peoples' opinions on a new build/estate and their experiences.

xx

mundibananas

Hi, I live on a small new estate in an area of Bristol that is not affluent, and after living in a posh area of Cheltenham for many years, I find that the place I'm in now is the friendliest and safest I've known !

Buzby

Always! As a new build, you cannot get the feel of the place if much of the area is not complete and habited. You've no chance of knowing HOW it is going to work out until the residents move in, as it is they who are instrumental in makiung it a great or hideous place to stay.

If you don't want the risk, avoid new build - but only you can decide whether the gamble is worth it!

Winkle1908

I've just moved into an 8 year old house on a housing estate. Each has 3 or 4 bedrooms but most have room for just 1 car and one on the end of the drive.

We have two cars and parking isn't an issue, the house next door has a van and a car and our 2nd car is tiny so everyone can fit, if we had a van on the other hand we would struggle to park. The other thing that concerns me is due to the style of houses the estate is full of young families - ours included. It worries me slightly that as the children grow up and pass their driving tests if they're still at home there are going to be parking wars!

There is some spare land though just round the corner on our estate where cars can park. I'd just recommend you had a look at the layout and think where could other cars park if you had all of the family over.

I don't think it should be the be all and end all though.

The following link might be of help to you, it will let you see reported crimes in your area. This might show you what crime is like on the areas that are near to this estate.

www.police.co.uk

bex2012

If you are actually going to use the garage to park your car, measure the garage doors beforehand! A large 'exclusive' developement near us has had huge problems with the garages. According the CAD drawings the developer did, you can park a Merc C class in them... However no-one thought to see if the same C-class would actually fit through the door opening... which they dont!

Mobeer

For parking, you need to think if there will be space to park on the road. I bought on an estate with some very curved sections of road that had parking problems, and some straight sections with no parking issues. Parking can also be bad if the estate is near a station or school. Generally it seems that when the properties are new people cannot afford more than 1 car per property, so parking problems are not so bad in the first few years.

I'm now on a second new estate and so far so good. The only bad thing to mention for both developments is that as new houses are sold the people have no established community - everyone is new. This has given a bit of a lack of spirit in both developments.

pinkshoes

I lived on a new street inbetween not so great areas and hated it! 1/3 was social housing, and although 95% of my neighbours were lovely, the other 5% were a nightmare, and the council couldn't care less. Car vandalised twice, bikes stolen, late night street fights and foul language etc... Was very grateful I was only renting and moved out a year later!

embob74

I lived on a brand new housing development in a very affluent area. The houses were beautiful but we soon found the workmanship was sadly lacking. While it looked pretty it soon lost its appeal when the handles fell off and we couldn't put curtain poles up as all the walls were really thing plasterboard.
Most properties had one parking space which did become a bit of an issue. There were only 4 visitor parking spaces on the whole estate (mostly taken up by flat owners who had no parking space themselves) so visitors had to park away from the estate. As there was a sports club nearby on Saturdays football players would park on the estate and make the roads quite blocked and dangerous.
Bear in mind most new developments will have to have a proportion of social housing so you could find your neighbours are scummy tenants from hell (stereotyping!) and worse than any you might find on the dodgy estates nearby.
We had to pay a service charge for the road until the council adopted it and for lighting and gardening - you may want to check if and how much yours will be. The charge increased without fail every year but it was less than £10 a week when we left.
Can you check out the neighbouring areas? I find that it is best to check the amount of families about. If you can gauge how old the majority of children are you can usually guess what sort of area it is.
Once again I'm stereotyping but an estate that has mostly elderly people will be much quieter than one with teenagers in abundance. Most new estates will attract families with young children and unfortunately these kids grow up into teenagers which could mean your nice estate becomes the one with the bad reputation while the so-called dodgier areas have seen the teenagers grow up and leave the area to the now-retired parents and it becomes the desirable area!

embob74

People I know that have bought a brand new property have mentioned the size of the bedrooms - you really need to work out exactly how much you need to get into a bedroom. Our 3 bed was designed to have a double in the master room and one single bed in each of the smaller rooms. Although they were not exactly poky rooms we had 3 children and when we tried to put 2 singles in one room there was nowhere for it to go without blocking the door! We ended up with bunk beds but that may not be an option depending upon the ages of your children.
And storage can be an issue - is there anywhere to put your vacuum? There's nothing better than having a cupboard big enough to hide coats/bags/shoes and cleaning stuff rather than having everything on show.