Thinking of buying an ex social housing flat

cherry76

I have been looking to buy a flat in london and have seen one I like.  It is an ex social housing flat.  It is conversion and the other two flats are occupied by social tenants.  Should I be concerned of having them as neighbours as I do not know if they are on long term secured tenancies or how frequently their tenancies change?  I am not a snob and I am aware you can have good social renters or bad private or owners as neighbours.  This is a big decision, I do not know much about social housing and hoping I will get some positive or negative feedback whether  I should go ahead if I like the property.  Thanks

lucypilates

This is very much a gamble wherever you're buying ... what are your neighbours like? Unless you're buying a house in the  middle of a field ... but you'll still have neighbours at the edge of your field ...

You should be buying based on budget, location, whether you like the property or not, pop round at different times of day to see what the area's like, listen and look for any noise? any drunks? any yobs? 

Even then, it's a risk that everyone has to take but if you REALLY love the house then it's worth a gamble ... good luck!

Also, if your neighbours are tenants, then you can always complain to their landlord if they're in breach of their tenancy or being a nusance

AdrianC

Even if the other two flats were owner-occupied today, they may be let by their owners to the local authority tomorrow.

NameUnavailable

Conversion flats are likely to be less well insulated against noise than purpose built flats, because the building was never meant as separate dwellings.

Regardless of the fact that it's social housing I would try to visit at least a couple of times, different times of the day, before you exchange. At the very least be a bit of a stalker and walk by the place in the evening/weekends to see how it seems.

Most block of flats are partially rented out these days with all the BTL investors, so judge the neighbours by the way the place looks - neat and tidy or bags of rubbish outside, bins scattered about, kids toys in the hallways etc. etc.

RelievedSheff

Now this is just my point of view and others will vary but having lived in an ex local authority house (our last house) on an estate that was a mix of owner occupied and local authority tenants, I would never do it again. It just wasn't right for us and we had no end of bother with the neighbours.

Now admittedly this can happen anywhere and you can equally have bad owner occupier neighbours but we found that all of the problems on that estate were generated by the local authority tenants.

Unfortunately due to our timing in buying the property we ended up stuck there for 12 years as no sooner had we bought it then house prices plummeted and took a long time to recover. We hated living there in the end and were so relieved when we could finally move on.

YellowCarBlueCar

My first house was Ex-local authority, and would echo what RelievedSheff says.  We did the due diligence - checking out the road evenings and weekends etc.  Trouble was the character of the road changed very quickly as the council seemed to use our estate as a dumping ground for anti-social families!

My view before hand was that there was a lot of snobbery around ex-LA housing, which meant we could get more for our money.

We were lucky that we bought in a rising market and were out again in about 2 years - but not something I'd do again.

kasqueak

I owned and lived in an ex council flat for 10 years and moved last year. 

I agree with the other posters about checking out the place at different times of day and days of the week (but that goes for anywhere you’re buying!) 
These are the pros and cons I had in my experience of living in an ex local authority property for many years....

PROS:
*The property was a good size
*Affordable
*Good location close to town/amenities 
*Low ground rent/annual service charge

CONS:
*The property didn’t really gain any value in the decade I lived there and we struggled to sell it due to the ‘stigma’ of it being ex council and some of the flats in the block (block of 6) still being council owned/rented   

*I felt as a leaseholder I had very little say in anything
*We’d get maintenance bills out of the blue and I felt the prices were inflated for the leaseholders share and we had little say in the work done
*Problems with council tenants (noise, ASB) and the council not doing anything about it 

nightingale101

Personally I wouldn't and I'm staying way out of it. This is coming from years of living in social housing and I'm currently trying to get out of because in all of the social housing I've been people generally just don't look after the place that well. I constantly have to be weary when I get out of the house as I've got anxiety and generally don't like to meet anyone in the communal areas. I'm also aware that with neighbours you can get noisy and tricky ones to deal with even in private owned places. I'd definitely walk around the area at different times and days to get a feel of it.

Nike79

Well this depends. do you have any other alternatives (not ex LA) in the area where you are looking, can you consider any other areas? Can you afford better?
I would say if there if there is no other options availble then yes, its ok. But ex LAs are harder to shift when it comes to sell. In the area where we are in (think London desirable NW area), ex LAs flats are sold 50% cheaper than private ones in the block next door and they stay on the marekt for ages. ex LAs were very attractive as BTL but with investors fleeing the market now there is essentially no demand. I dont how this will change in the future though

TBagpuss

I think it depends.

There is a lot of prejudice so an Ex-LA property will typically be cheaper than a similar property which isn't ex-LA. Which is fine as long as you remember that that will be just as true when you come to sell, as when you buy.  

Having neighboring properties which are still LA depends on the tenants. However, it can make life easier if there are issues - unlikely private landlords, LAs and Housing Associations will often have teams whose role involves dealing with any complaints or issues.
My previous house was an ex-HA property where the immediate neighbours were still tenants. I had problems with one neighbour, I contacted the HA an they both wrote to and visited her, and resolved the issue. I doubt that it would have been as straightforward with a private owner or private landlord. They also resolved things very quickly when a workman they had employed damaged my property.

I would however visit the area several times at different times of day and night, and consider talking to other neighbours if you can, to get a feel for the area - there are some areas which do become 'sink estate' or dumping grounds for problem tenants. It's also considering the wider area - if it is generally fairly deprived, then you are likely to have a lot of people who have nowhere else to be, minimal options for work and little hope of things improving, and those kinds of situations are likely to mean there is an increased risk of problems.