When moving or buying a new house in new place. Anyway to check out your neighbours?

[Blackjack Davy]

Yeah I sympathise sometimes its just a nightmare been there done that from noisy party people with no jobs so awake all night to someone who was violent i moved out in the end before one or other of us ending up in hospital/jail. Present place you get bellends who annoy you for one reason or other but nothing on the level of actual dispute/conflict if I was thinking of moving in future I'd certainly take measures to at least try and do a recce on the neighbours beforehand

Don't buy a house on a council estate.
Don't buy a house near social housing.

It's all usually pretty obvious because the houses aren't looked after.

Wasn't either of those and theres a council owned retirement home/flats opposite at present and you don't hear a peep out of them

 

[HangTime]

Looking at RightMove the popular property web site, and others, there is no way to filter out nuisance neighbours ... there should be IMHO.

How would this actually work in practice though? I mean, how does Rightmove know if there is nuisance neighbours?
Is someone selling their house going to tick the box saying "Crap area?" or "Crack addicts next door y/n"?
The estate agents get commissions based on sales, not the experience of the buyer after they move in, so it's not in their interest to put any information on the listing that might discourage buyers (unless it's an obvious problem with the property itself, in which case they might highlight it to reduce time-wasters).

To answer the question, I think what people are saying makes sense, a polite knock on the door. I wouldn't read too much into it if they aren't talkative though, they might be in the middle of cooking dinner / looking after an infant etc after a long day at work and don't particularly want to stand around chatting to a stranger, doesn't make them rude people. But the converse might be valuable, e.g. if they open the door to the smell of weed, a screaming baby and "who the **** are you banging on my door at this time?!?"

 

[EddScott]

I spoke with neighbours when buying a house for my daughter. There was a bit of shared drive and the estate wasn't the most salubrious - only suited because of other family members living on the estate. You either get salt of the earth type folk or pyschopaths.

Folk were lovely really and were known to the wider family. Sadly, the owner of the property we were buying was a bit of a pain and it fell through in the end.