Snobbery towards Shared Ownership/Social Housing

Newbie78

About 3 months ago friends of ours were due to buy a home on a new estate and at the last minute pulled out, the reason was they would have been next to shared ownership/social housing


We recently bought a share of and moved into our shared ownership house on the same new estate


We are surrounded by other shared ownership properties, a couple of rental properties and 3 and 4 bedroom houses all brand new


We and our neighbours ( who are all lovely, friendly and quiet) are the people they were scared of buying next to


Makes us laugh now.

Boredatwrork

Bad neighbours are always a bit of a gamble shared/social or brought.


I guess for some social housing is a bigger gamble as the neighbours could change regularly. Next week your social hosuing neighbors might be moved on and a new nightmare family could be put there.



I guess your friends would be laughing then. Who knows.

elverson

For shared ownership specifically, a lot of people on here have said it's difficult to sell when you come to move out, and you also pay a lot in service charges.

Newbie78

Boredatwrork wrote: »

Bad neighbours are always a bit of a gamble shared/social or brought.


I guess for some social housing is a bigger gamble as the neighbours could change regularly. Next week your social hosuing neighbors might be moved on and a new nightmare family could be put there.



I guess your friends would be laughing then. Who knows.

Haha funny thing is the place they brought in the end is surrounded by other home owners, 2 who are causing them grief :)

pinkshoes

I have also lived on a street with shared ownership and housing association rental.

Most my neighbours were indeed lovely, BUT... one neighbour was not, and because they were housing association renters, it was a nightmare to get anything done about them.

Vandalism, stereos ripped out of cars, bikes stolen, trees ripped up by their kids, late night music, shouting, violence, people bashing on their door etc...

I moved out and a previous neighbour told me that eventually this tenant was moved on after YEARS and the crime rate dropped!

I also had a noisy/antisocial private tenant neighbour too, but the private LL did not want a troublesome tenant, so they were evicted once their 6 month tenancy was up. A much easier process!

neilio

elverson wrote: »

For shared ownership specifically, a lot of people on here have said it's difficult to sell when you come to move out, and you also pay a lot in service charges.

So what? That would have no impact on the person buying a property outright who is a snob towards the shared ownership people.

Fosterdog

It would seem your friends are not the only ones, near me there is a development area with planning for 250 new homes to be built, then moving on to the next phase where there are either supposed to be a further 400 built or the total number going up to 400 so just an extra 150 homes. They cannot get anyone to invest and start the building because of the number of homes that will have to be social housing. When they've researched it that is the predominant reason for people not wanting to live there or to expect the houses to be a lot cheaper than on a site with no social housing, of course the developers don't want to reduce the end prices to what their research has said people would be willing to pay.

The site has been sat there for almost two years since the roads were done with no building started and every bit of interest shown has fallen through.

It's one of the tough situations because there are many decent people living in social housing but the few nightmares make life difficult for everyone all it would take out of a whole estate is one "bad" family and they can have a negative impact on everyone. Add to that the fact that the "bad" ones get moved around quite often and there is a good chance that at some point every development with social housing will have at least one of them living there.

Of course people who buy their own homes can also be bad neighbours for many reasons and there could also get nightmare private tenants living near you so there are no guarantees that no social housing would mean only good neighbours but it does take out one of the three potential "bad" situations.

booksurr

Boredatwrork wrote: »

Bad neighbours are always a bit of a gamble shared/social or brought.

Newbie78 wrote: »

Haha funny thing is the place they brought in the end

the even more funny thing must have been watching them bringing these people with them as opposed to having bought a place and then found neighbours in situ

teddysmum

Even on originally all private estates you can have bad council tenants inflicted on you.


Some years ago, our council bought a number of houses from private owners and most were grabbed on rtb by the first tenants, but there is at least one still under council ownership and the family in there are dodgy ( one of our near neighbours knows someone whose estate they were moved away from).

Newbie78

Fosterdog wrote: »

It would seem your friends are not the only ones, near me there is a development area with planning for 250 new homes to be built, then moving on to the next phase where there are either supposed to be a further 400 built or the total number going up to 400 so just an extra 150 homes. They cannot get anyone to invest and start the building because of the number of homes that will have to be social housing. When they've researched it that is the predominant reason for people not wanting to live there or to expect the houses to be a lot cheaper than on a site with no social housing, of course the developers don't want to reduce the end prices to what their research has said people would be willing to pay.

The site has been sat there for almost two years since the roads were done with no building started and every bit of interest shown has fallen through.

It's one of the tough situations because there are many decent people living in social housing but the few nightmares make life difficult for everyone all it would take out of a whole estate is one "bad" family and they can have a negative impact on everyone. Add to that the fact that the "bad" ones get moved around quite often and there is a good chance that at some point every development with social housing will have at least one of them living there.

Of course people who buy their own homes can also be bad neighbours for many reasons and there could also get nightmare private tenants living near you so there are no guarantees that no social housing would mean only good neighbours but it does take out one of the three potential "bad" situations.

Wow our estate is thriving, still selling like hotcakes


Totally agree with everything you said there, we have our fingers crossed too!

rtho782

Part of the issue is that generally housing associations won't take the tiny rabbit hutch box houses with no/tiny gardens and no storage that the big builders put out, so they end up with different (better) designs for the housing associations.

Then your tiny rabbit hutch house is devalued by the much nicer social housing next door.