How did you choose the area you live? (Paranoid about moving to a bad area)

Phirefly

Living in the house for two years prior to buying it was pretty much all the research I needed...

sassybooboos

i used to live in a chav area then moved back to a posh area.

the thing i noticed most was that in the chav area people would help you any way they could but in the posh area they were too busy holding their noses up to even notice you.

i have just sold my posh house (same area i grew up in) and am now returning to the chav area. why pay a big mortgage when you can be happier with a small one i say.

my buyers of the above posh house has sent me a questionnaire through their solicitor asking if i have had any disputes or cause for concern for anything regarding my neighbours or anyone in the surrounding area. i believe if i had lied on this i could get into trouble. so it might be worth getting solicitor to send one.

tanikk£

The best source is https://www.upmystreet.com as mentioned above, but "conversations" rather than "neighbourhood profile". These are real people views on the area. Very helpful.

If you prefer numbers, you could also use this website: http://www.checkmyfile.com/neighbourhood.asp

eldowardo

you could move to the nicest place in the world, and your lovely kind neighbours suddenly decide to let theirs out and move in some unsavoury characters..

you cannot plan for that.

chavs also drive and get buses places and can find the nice estates to cause trouble on. unless you live in a gated community there isnt much you can do short of blocking up the windows and living like a hermit.

you have the same risk even if you were to rent. The only difference is you can move out once the tenancy expires... but you have a different worry of having to move in the future if your tenancy is not extended.

depends on you as an individual

i think anyone who has bought a house worries about this but lets face it there is nothing much you can really do..

jockettuk

oh and dont forget the lovely little kid next door who was helpful and pleasant grows up into a door slamming grunting teenager lol..

chav towns ive put loads of postcodes into that site and they all come up with some kind of comment about chavs..

mummytofour

We needed a 4 bed and looked pretty much over the whole of the uk for something we could afford! Spend 3 yrs looking on and off.
In the end we decied we HAD to find something and narrowed down our search to our fav beach! The hous ehad to be in wlaking distance, which its is! First time I drove down this street I ran a mile its council and looks crap, but dh said we had to view the house which is private and always has been and we fell in love. Our living room looks on to our garden and we are not over looked its so private I would never know there was anybody else around. I love it here.

affordmylife

we purposely bought on a new estate which did not have any local authority houses being built on it.

it is in a lovely village in suffolk away from the 'chavs'. it is multi cultural and that i welcome cos if anyone is working and can afford a decent house im happy for them to be my neighbour.

as it happens about ten/twelve of my immediate neighbours and my family are all off to the pub monday night as one of them is singing in a band.

great bunch of people. most of them moved here from london as the housing is so much cheaper.

everyone has the right to choose where they live and i choose here. its lovely. coastal, rural, quite and decent.

Addy1

Chav towns is not that helpful, I put in my parents postcode, which on upmystreet is ACORN number 1 which is the highest rating you can get (ie poshest area) and it still went on about how many chavs there are! I live in what could quite reasonable be described as a chav town, but my parents area most certainly is not!

TBeckett100

i discounted areas that has a large white van population parked up at nights. Also i looked at ages of cars in the area to work out general wealth. we settled on a village that had a large number of wealthy people and nice looking teens. If I saw Donnay or that other brand chavs wear i moved on.

david89999

My wife's solution is remarkably accurate - check for matching nets. If the area is full of places where the net curtains are dirty or don't match, you will find the people living behind them are on the lower rung of the ladder, or missed it completely.
That doesn't make them bad people, and in fact they could all be far nicer than the miserable and ignorant gits who live in my brand new estate, all with matching nets.
However as a rule of thumb it does work well. I can say this, as my job involves going to a lot of houses, and the ones where I go most often because of prolems they are having or causing tend to have dirty / non matching nets!