Does living near council flats devalue your property?

ognum

Bantex wrote: »

Just look for the Sky dishes an Engerland flags.

Where is Engerland?

I_have_spoken

This question comes around more often than the bizzies to reports of yoofs doing crack...

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Talc1234

Yes terrible living with all these social housing types. In my newish development (2008 -2010) the people living in social housing (well housing association if you want to be picky)....And

Are quiet, friendly and polite,
Kids play nicely in the street
Have sky satellite dishes, just like me
Keep their front gardens nice just like me
Don't use my parking spaces, and have apologised on the rare occasions they have

Even worse There is a Bulgarian couple living 2 doors away who bought their own house, tended to their front garden, always give me a cheery hello in the morning and are community spirited

Ok there are a few more Ford Mondeos and a few fewer Nissan Quashqais but

1. You wont know your neighbours until you move there

2. Your house price will already be dependent on location

3. People on housing benefit also live in private housing

makeyourdaddyproud

Can you put up with flying cans of Tennants?

Bantex_2

ognum wrote: »

Where is Engerland?

sorry typo, should have been Ingerland.

sebtomato

I live in a private block of flat next to a housing association block of flat, and they do create some trouble: football playing in the common grounds (despite being repeatedly told is against the lease) sometimes hitting the ball towards walls and windows, kids throwing stones at windows, a lot of litter around their building (bottles, bags etc), car park gate between repeatedly vandalised, damage to the communal garden etc.

When we try to talk to the HA residents,never goes very far and they very quickly insult people, and the housing association does very little, unless there is some escalation.

The condition of their building inside is terrible: marks on walls, damaged lifts, old bikes left behind, old cars abandoned on the car park etc.

So yes, leaving close to such residents will affect you and the property value, and I am actually considering suing the HA for such loss if they don't put their act together.

Snakey

Just to chip in with the opposite perspective, I live in a council block and have had no problems at all. The neighbours are a lot quieter and keep more sociable hours than in my last place which was not council.

And I got one heck of a lot more space for my money.

cloo

Well there's council flats and council flats. There are estates that are well maintained, peaceful etc (which is probably most of them) and then there's grim, crime ridden 'sinks'.

Campervanman

Depends on the location of the property. If its in a high value London borough - say Chelsea or Westminster then I would think not. Also it depends on the estate some look great, some much less so. If a viewing means negotiating burnt out cars and youths doing drugs then it will affect value. May be worth considering that during property booms then most properties sell but in a slump less desirable properties become hard or impossible to sell. Finally good nice folk live in social housing and unpleasent ones too.....just like private housing in fact.

Kikikickin

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the responses. Interesting to get a few different perspectives.
To clarify, I wasn't asking this question because I think it's bad to live near council flats or that I think it's likely that there'll be problems.

It's more that the blocks of flats look ugly.. concrete high rises.. and not everyone would want to be looking at them on their street. So I wondered if that would put people off in the future (this is all speculative because we haven't even put an offer in yet!)
Personally I don't mind because I don't spend much time looking out my front windows.

Anyway, thanks all for taking the time to reply, appreciate it.