Why you should never buy a house on a corner lot
Any prospective home buyers out there? If you are looking to buying a new home, here are some things to consider if the house you are looking at is on a corner lot (especially in a Y intersection). There quite a few annoyances that you will discover only after living on one for a while. So here are some things that your real estate agent won't tell you that you might be having to put up with.
1. Bus Children
Corner lots that are at a joining intersection are usually bus stops. So you get to have noisy children singing, laughing, crying, screaming, etc from usually 5:30 AM to 8:30 AM which is usually when the bus comes. So unless you are a morning person (which I am not), you will most likely get to put up with that.
These same bus children will also step all over your front yard foliage, move landscaping stones, stick branches in your grass, dig holes in your yard, peek in your floor level or basement windows. The older kids in the afternoon will use your yard to sit around for 20 minutes and smoke with their friends, leaving their trash and cigarette butts in your front yard. I could keep going as I could make an entire post on bus children but I will stop here because all of that comes down to their parents (or guardians) not teaching them how to respect the property rights of others.
2. High Traffic Zone
You will get many cars / motorcycles driving by at all hours of the day and night simply because they have to drive by your house in order to enter or exit the community. This of course comes with people blaring mind numbing trash on their poorly installed, rattling car stereos. 4 AM seems to be the perfect time to start up your Harley and blare down the road and make sure your radio loud enough so that you can hear it over the motor as well.
3. People are slobs
Because of the High Traffic Zone that I described in point 2, this also makes your yard a perfect dumping ground for everyone's trash to throw out their windows into your yard. Cigarette butts, gum wrappers, soda bottles, beer bottles, bottle caps, papers, pill bottles, you name it, it has probably landed on my yard at some point.
4. Dog Shit Highway
Your yard also seems to be the destination for everyone to walk their dog to. Simple logic can deduce that because one's dog is going to smell someone else's dog and feel the need to mark it's territory. So your trees will always be saturated in dog urine. Since they are also doing that, they usually take a shit as well. People are supposed to pick up after their animals, but they often do not.
5. Yard restrictions
One of the reasons I bought this house is that it was in a nice community and did not have an HOA. However I was wrong or lied to and was notified shortly after moving in that they indeed did have an HOA or got one shortly after. I do not accept any form of external government of any kind as legitimate so I certainly, by choice, would NOT choose to live somewhere that has a Home Owners Association. Thankfully it is cheap, but they do nothing for my property or me in general so I do not appreciate having any more expenses, especially for something I do not believe in.
Due to the "regulations" of the HOA's I am not allowed to extend my fence or make it taller (despite people having patios that are on the second level of the house where they can see every inch of my yard in all directions). I could potentially solve some of the issues listed above by being able to move my fence closer to the street but due to the "regulations" I am not able to. I am also not allowed to have a tall fence, so why bother having a fence at all?
This also ends up where you only have half your yard being unusable because if you put things outside the fence they will be stolen, messed with, eaten, etc, so the extra yard that you would get only ends up being more unusable land that you have to maintenance.
6. Zero Privacy
I have neighbors on all sides of me as well as visibility from the road. There is no privacy for corner lots.
7. Weed problems
Due to having very strong wind tunnels that drive everything from two directions down towards me and away from me, Everyone who doesn't take care of their lawn on all sides end up blowing the weeds into your yard making you look like the asshole who does not take care of their lawn.
I am sure there are more things than this. These are just the items off the top of my head. My advice to you would be that unless you are okay with these things, then strongly consider NOT living on a corner lot. You will get a lot more than you bargain for!
Love to all (even to the assholes described above).
Now you tell me...
Haha seriously. I wish someone DID tell me. I even bought the house from a co-worker. He must have not thought it was a big deal or something. I know you are familiar enough with people not respecting your property. Have you had a corner lot before?
I have a corner lot now. And I'm right across a small-town street from the school.
Oh no! You got the double whammy. At least you can yell at cars to slow down from your porch lol.