Good house in an ok area, or adequate house in good area?

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Good dilemma to be in. Larger house in ok area, or smaller house in a better area?
Similar price. Larger has garage, extra bedroom. Small one is adequate, no garage.

I'm edging to the latter, both have driveway and somewhere to stash motorcycles.
Travel time is the same.

I'm thinking it's going to be easier to sell on one day if the areas nicer.
I'm also thinking an extra bedroom would accumulate junk.

Experiences and opinions welcome.
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[grr666]

Location location location.

You can't change an area but you can change a house.
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Ste wrote: Avatars are fine, it's signatures that need turning off.

[arry]

Depends.

The area we bought in isn't very salubrious but it's been up and coming now for the last 5 years or so; that means the likes of Costa are moving into the high street and the investment in the area means the type of people hanging around here is starting to shift back from the doleys outside the job centre to the Essex yummie mummies having lunch in the town centre.

That means property prices are very mobile. In a way that wouldn't have been quite as pronounced if I'd have bought in a nicer area to start with.

That said, I miss having a decent pub nearby that's not full of idiots. I don't like the chav muppets that hang around in their shit cars and on their noisy peds by the shops a few roads down.

So I've got a much bigger house, with a much better garage, for less money than I'd have moved to a nicer area, and I've made a paper profit on the house. And all I'm really missing is a decent local boozer which isn't the end of the world.

However, if there was any trouble around here, crap neighbours and the like, I'd have moved out ages ago as that shit isn't worth putting up with.

So, poorer area but nice enough street - I'd say go for it and enjoy the extra space.

[Hong Kong Phooey]

Thanks guys, I'm not for confronting chavs these days so if there was any of that nonsense I'd be quietly seething. As grr says, I could extend simply with a conservatory in a few years.

Thinking about it, it's similar to how I'm renting now but with a drive and bigger garden.

Don't get me wrong, I've lived and was brought up in some rough parts of Manchester, but these days I just want to be left alone to get on with it rather than resorting to barbed wire and inverted nails on fences and standing ones ground.
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'81 CG125, '97 FZS600 : '99 CBR600F4, '09 KTM RC8

[Tracey Suntan-King]

Good advice above.

Definitely go for the better location.

We're in the process of moving to Wales*. Started out looking for the archetypal character property, but they were either too expensive or too urban.

We've ended up buying a really boring-looking house which has no character features but is in a lovely rural location.

We realized that we will be able to eventually change the house into the sort of character property we want, but we could never replicate the rural location and views.

*All of the above assumes nothing goes wrong, we've already had one sale & one purchase fall through
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Whether you think you can, or think you can't, you're probably right

[grr666]

As you may know I'm a landlord, if I'd bought cheaper houses in worse areas then I'd probably have twice as many
properties. However, if nobody wants to live there because the area is a toilet or has no work(I'm looking at you
south Wales) then the rents must be lower to get the place let, subsequently the calibre of tenant usually deteriorates
in line with the chargeable rent. Usually meaning aggravation of one sort or another for me over the tenancy.
In addition the natural appreciation of the property is far slower.

Example - I bought a 3 bed semi in a decent bit of Bristol,paid 150k for that 3 years ago, it's been tenanted and
has been paying my mortgage on my own residence in full for all the time I've had it with as much again to bank
each month. It would sell now for about 230k

Another example, bought a flat a year and a half ago in same postcode, renovated and sold on (because management
company were rubbish) but still made 25k on the flat in 4 months of ownership. Flat was decent but nothing special,
just freshly renovated but it's a very popular spot for anyone working in town without it feeling like its all that close to
the centre. I'm looking there for another one at the moment. They let and sell like hot cakes.
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Ste wrote: Avatars are fine, it's signatures that need turning off.

[RhynoCZ]

Buy the one in the worse area and wait for the Brexit to happen. All the eastern European scum being deported will sure pop the value up.
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'87 Honda XBR 500, '96 Kawasaki ZX7R P1, '90 Honda CB-1, '88 Kawasaki GPz550, MZ 150 ETZ
'95 Mercedes-Benz w202 C200 CGI, '98 Mercedes-Benz w210 E200 Kompressor

[M.C]

[hellkat]

I'd go for the smaller place in the better area.
But then, I'm a bit of a snob.

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[Ste]

Better area.

You can build a garage if you want / need one.

Your quality of life and happiness will be greater if you don't have a room specifically designated for storing accumulated unnecessary junk that you've hoarded.

[Rogerborg]

[andyscooter]

Only thing I can say is round here they have a nasty habit of building housing association propertys next to nice new build estates

All the druggy dropouts end up next to the nice place and where do they go to nick stuff to fuel the drug habits

The nice shiney estate next door
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gilera runner vxr200 (chavped)
if its spelt wrong its my fat fingers and daft auto correct on my tablet

[Hong Kong Phooey]

[Hong Kong Phooey]

[Hong Kong Phooey]

[M.C]

I liked going on holiday to North Wales but it's actually a fairly dead and depressing place to live. My dad used to live in Snowdonia, the only enterprise going on seemed to be from outsiders, the Welsh are only concerned with keeping their pointless language alive.

[instigator.]

If living in the UK, I would choose an Average house in good location for me. THat is based on the relatively safe assumption that not so good areas are full of chavs and kids running riot.

In the Netherlands, I live in a not-so-good area that I was told to stay away from but truth be told, shit areas here have nothing on the UK. I find it pleasant and no kids dicking about at all hours.

[stevo as b4]

[andyscooter]

not sure if its law or not as in droitwich the new estate they are building is all private houses so far but they have more to build yet

there is a proposed site in my village but the locals (including me ) are fighting it at the moment as they want to build 300 new homes on an old factory site

we have 1 doctors surgery and one shop and now we only have two pubs within walking distance

most of these houses will be two bedroomed

so guessing an average 2 cars per house if not three on a road that was build for village traffic

at the moment we are a nice small village but just lately we are noticing more theft going on
three break ins in three weeks
they have just built some social housing up the road from us and people from the next dodgy area have moved in to it

coincidence or is there something dodgy
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gilera runner vxr200 (chavped)
if its spelt wrong its my fat fingers and daft auto correct on my tablet

[Hong Kong Phooey]

[stevo as b4]

Not sure which site specifically in Droitwich your referring to as there are several new build sites, none of which I think are called for. A nice small town but as you said with limited facilities and shops and only one high school, the feeding schools are full too and not enough doctors, shops, supermarkets etc for such a large amount of new housing.

One of the sites I've worked on is on the site of farmland looking over the fields near the motorway. Its a nice rural location, but with tiny country roads that are not up to the amount of traffic and use the new homes will bring. This site does have a fair percentage AFAIK of shared ownership homes, while there is noting wrong with that, (helping first time buyers) it's big enough to have to include a certain amount of H/A homes or flats too.

You can literally drive through Worcestershire and at the edge of every village or town you will see often several new housing developments tacked onto any spare land there is.

[grr666]

^^^ I hear that!

We've had about 2000 residences tossed up in my town over the last 3 years.
No extra roads, parking, doctors, schools etc and 1500 more homes on the way. It's so Bath and NE Somerset council
doesn't have to have the social housing in posh old Bath. The crime has already increased in my area, there are now
security tags on the meat and coffee in my local Tesco. Never used to be. The reason? Right next to Tesco the council
built some 'housing' and then once it was fully built revealed it was actually a drug/alcohol residential rehab centre.
Pretty sure if they had been honest about its purpose, the locals would have had a fair bit to say about it.


Starting to see broken glass in the car parks too so the cars are now being done as well. Shame, I like it here but
the decline is obvious and apparent, fortunately I can afford to upsize and price myself out of reach of the shitbag
scummers. Currently looking at 600k+ places further out in the countryside to live in because what was a quiet
town with about the right amount of people is rapidly being rammed with all manner of dreck and is now heading
toward being overcrowded. All the car parks are always full, the traffic is worse, if you work you've as
much chance of getting a doctors appointment as there is of Donald Trump adopting a few 'syrian' children
to move into the white house with him and his fit mrs.

Thank god for BUPA. I don't use the school system myself (even though I subsidise it with tax) but there's one
good school round here that everybody wants to get their kids into and a few average ones that take the rest.
Unfortunately, there already aren't enough seats for all the bums so those kids presumably have to travel elsewhere
for their schooling which only adds to the traffic on the roads that are already chocka block at peak times.

All this change has happened since I moved here which was only 6 years ago.People don't mind gradual change,
but this is all happening way too fast here. Still, the increasing popularity of the area should net me about
a 100k profit on my current house because people would still sooner buy an old house with a proper garden front
and rear than one of these Barrat new build rabbit hutches with a couple of parking spaces and a 10ft
square patio area. I'll get out before the house prices start to fall when people here start to realise it's
all slowly going to the dogs.
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Currently enjoying products from Ford, Mazda and Yamaha
Ste wrote: Avatars are fine, it's signatures that need turning off.

[stevo as b4]

The question is though where will you go to escape?
I assume you'll need to be within reasonable distance of your rental properties to carry out maintenance and inspections etc?

Unless you go full out rural it's all going the same way. The villages and towns are eating into the once fully rural neighbouring areas, so you'd need to live in somewhere like mid-north Wales, or the middle of Dartmoor to ensure the problems your seeing are far enough away to not worry about.

Its the same everywhere, but Warwickshire seems to me to be particularly hard hit. I believe it's because they are on the M40 corridor for London commuters, and also because they expect that they will be very close to an HS2 station in a few years.

[hellkat]

*has not played Sim City and wonders what she is missing out on*

Post-Google edit: oh wait, The Sims, yes of course I have played it yonks ago in its original form, and also other city-building games on Facebook ... but not a snazzy version like Sim City looks like.
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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[grr666]