House viewing tips!

[Bats]

Our new build house is now 7 years old, but the management fees continue forever. So if we sold it to you, you'd then have to pay the fees. It's not just until a house is not classed as 'new new' anymore unfortunately.

I would be really worried about the parking situation personally. A 4 bed house with 1 space? You say about the park and ride, but is that really what you're expecting people to do when they visit?
On our development, we have 1 space and our garage (we have 1 car so this is fine), but most others have at least 2 cars with the same amount of allocation. Like others have said, it's like a car park at times, especially overnight and at weekends.

Our neighbours had a party on Saturday and their visitors parked all around our house, blocked gates, footpaths and on corners - because there just isn't anywhere else to park close by and they didn't want to walk more than 10 feet!

We have what's called 'shared space' which means no defined pavement to road change. It's all one level and you only see the difference in a line of block paving turned the other way. It means people don't consider to be a real pavement so park on it and park on corners - you just wouldn't do it if it were a raised pavement.

I think I'm siding with your mum a little and would encourage you to look at somewhere with more parking/space.

3 double rooms are lovely, but is that what you need? Could you go to 2 doubles and 2 smaller rooms? A smaller garden perhaps if you hate gardening.

With a baby on the way, I'd guess your mum would be visiting lots to help out - she needs somewhere to park!

[vhm672]

Yes sorry but a four bedroom house with one parking space is definitely an item that goes to value. It will discourage visitors and will limit buyers on resale as most people will have more than one car.

[SquishTheWhale]

Originally Posted by WhereIBelong

Four bedroom houses with one space each - ouch...

would go round on a Saturday morning and look at the state of the parking. We live in a leafy, open, 70's suburb - 3 bed houses with driveways for 2-3 cars and plenty of road space to park - but on a Saturday when everyone is home with their 2 or more cars - it is like a car park, and just getting down the road can be hellish.

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I think you're definitely right to pick up on that- our previous house had a similar parking situation and even though the properties weren't as large some houses had 4 cars. There was around 20 houses and 2 large blocks of flats and 2 'visitors' spaces for the whole place! And one house monopolised those two spaces by parking their spare cars in them and never moving them. Grr.

While not a massive issue for us as we only have one car and nobody was allowed to park in our space, it was a pain when we had people visiting.

I'm not sure if everyone in the development we are looking at only has one space or if some have two. There's also some un allocated parking, on Streetview I can see a sign there that says its for customers of businesses (not sure who as there's no businesses immediately there?!) and parking during business hours isn't allowed. So I'm guessing people use those after hours or maybe just all the time?

If we get there at 5.30pm tonight and can't find anywhere to park then it might answer the question on how bad it is!

[SquishTheWhale]

Originally Posted by Bats

Our new build house is now 7 years old, but the management fees continue forever. So if we sold it to you, you'd then have to pay the fees. It's not just until a house is not classed as 'new new' anymore unfortunately.

I would be really worried about the parking situation personally. A 4 bed house with 1 space? You say about the park and ride, but is that really what you're expecting people to do when they visit?
On our development, we have 1 space and our garage (we have 1 car so this is fine), but most others have at least 2 cars with the same amount of allocation. Like others have said, it's like a car park at times, especially overnight and at weekends.

Our neighbours had a party on Saturday and their visitors parked all around our house, blocked gates, footpaths and on corners - because there just isn't anywhere else to park close by and they didn't want to walk more than 10 feet!

We have what's called 'shared space' which means no defined pavement to road change. It's all one level and you only see the difference in a line of block paving turned the other way. It means people don't consider to be a real pavement so park on it and park on corners - you just wouldn't do it if it were a raised pavement.

I think I'm siding with your mum a little and would encourage you to look at somewhere with more parking/space.

3 double rooms are lovely, but is that what you need? Could you go to 2 doubles and 2 smaller rooms? A smaller garden perhaps if you hate gardening.

With a baby on the way, I'd guess your mum would be visiting lots to help out - she needs somewhere to park!

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I totally get the potential parking issues, but my parents live 200 miles away so its not like they'll be here every weekend. My mum has health issues and DH's mum doesn't drive so normally we go to visit them rather than them come to us. My sister's family also live far away so they maybe come down once a year. I think we have to buy what is right for us as a family rather than what would be right for people visiting don't we?

While no we don't need 4 bedrooms right now, it would mean that we are buying this as a family house rather than a 'it'll do right now and we will need to move in a few years' house. But we are definitely open to something a little smaller if this one doesn't work out for us.

We need to scope it out I think and see what the parking is like in person. The actual space allocated to the house is in a parking courtyard behind the house so people can't park over it.

It looks like the development has taken steps to combat rouge parking, it's hard to explain but there are poles. In fact here's a streetview shot:

There are some unallocated parking spaces so I would have to find out what the deal is with them. The ones in front of the houses aren't numbered, and there's some more in the centre of the square that aren't numbered.

[djewkes]

When we were looking for our current home we did a lot of “drive pasts”, nice houses with awful parking problems. The houses are 3 and 4 bedroom detached with each one having a garage and parking for at least 2 cars, when we looked there were no cars parked on the road at all. Fast forward a good few years... some of the houses have put a little fence and a gate between the street and their garage so effectively can’t use their garage and have reduced their space to 1 car. A lot of the houses have at least 2 cars and one has 4... the road is now full of cars... we luckily have 1 car and space for 3 more, which is handy when the kids come visiting. I wouldn’t consider moving to a house with just 1 allocated space... I’ve heard so many parking problem stories on the dibb... it can make your dream home a nightmare...

[TeeKayDawn]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this in previous posts but on the internal viewing check that ALL internal doors open and shut. When we viewed our property we went around all the rooms but the door to the living room was open. When we moved in we found out that it wouldn't move because the carpet (which had been newly laid to sell the house) was thicker than the last and whoever had fitted it (or the owner if the carpet fitter wouldn't) hadn't shaved the door to take it into account.

I also would check that all windows open and are unlocked and would ask to see the key if unlocked as we also had an issue with one window whereby it wouldn't open - we had to get a new handle, granted not a great deal of money, but the hassle of doing this when we just wanted to share our new home together as quickly as possible and on a tight budget added to a few little tensions.

[Lisa29]

Re. the schools, our school website has a map of the catchment area under the Admissions tab. May be worth you looking on both schools' websites to see what theirs is.

Good luck!

[SquishTheWhale]

Originally Posted by Lisa29

Re. the schools, our school website has a map of the catchment area under the Admissions tab. May be worth you looking on both schools' websites to see what theirs is.

Good luck!

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Ooh thanks will check that!

[BnDamo]

Originally Posted by SquishTheWhale

It's a fairly built up area anyway, a modern development that backs onto an industrial estate (with a street or two separation from 'our' house) so no beautiful lakes to ruin lol.

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Another thing to check is what type of business/ industry on that estate. A newly built estate near us was built very close to a food recycling plant. When the wind blows in the wrong direction the smell is awful. All the locals knew about the smell unfortunately many buyers were unaware of how bad the problem was until after they had bought their new home.

[SquishTheWhale]

Originally Posted by BnDamo

Another thing to check is what type of business/ industry on that estate. A newly built estate near us was built very close to a food recycling plant. When the wind blows in the wrong direction the smell is awful. All the locals knew about the smell unfortunately many buyers were unaware of how bad the problem was until after they had bought their new home.

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Ooh okay good point. We did live in a house previously that backed onto a small industrial estate and that was fine, but this one is bigger.