Corner Lot - Yes or No?

[Bluestars]

I might give it some thought for more land, but here the lots are the exact same size even if they are on the corner.

Yes, it definitely depends on the particular lot and location. It looks like some people have good experiences because of the size and location and other people don't. Our yard is huge, but my husband doesn't like it when he mows.

 

[MrsPete]

I wish I didn't live on a corner lot:

- The street runs parallel to our backyard fence, so we have no privacy in the back yard.
- We have more traffic than our cul-de-sac neighbors.
- We have to mow not one but two ditches, which are more of a pain than plain flat space, yet these spaces don't add any usefulness to our lot (except for extra parking for parties).
- At night, cars turning onto our street shine their lights right into my daughter's (front of the house) bedroom. It bothered her, so we put in window treatments to shield her room a bit.
- The bus stop is on our corner, so kids stomp around on our grass. I wouldn't say they're being rude, but when you have 8-12 kids who are standing around waiting every morning, they're certainly not helping your yard. And sometimes they do drop candy wrappers, etc.
- We have a fire hydrant in our front yard (though that does lower insurance costs).
- We have road set-backs on two sides of our property, which means that if we wanted to build anything in our back yard, we'd have more restrictions than other lots.

I can see that it would depend upon the specifics of your lot and your house, but -- in our case -- the negatives outweigh the positives.

 

[aprilchem]

I live on a corner lot and love it, but I live in a real town, not a subdivision. Our corner lots are larger, you only have to deal with one neighbor's property touching yours (we have an alley behind us). Nobody "cuts the corner" because they'd have to run up over the sidewalk and knock down the stop sign to do it. Our property value is higher because of the larger lot. Our town does have restrictions about the type of fence you can have if you live on a corner lot (no privacy fences), so we saved up for a beautiful brick and iron fence which I love. And my children can play in the front, back, or side yard without my worrying about them being on our neighbor's property. If we were to move within this town I would definitely consider a corner lot to be an advantage.

DH and I would never willingly live in a subdivision, but if we were forced to for some reason I'd probably try to live in a cul-de-sac. My sister lives in one and it's nice for her kids to play in.

 

[tzolkin]

Just moved to our corner lot in a subdivision home in May and love it. We have not had any issues.

Everyone sticks to the sidewalks. The bus stop is one block away, but the kids don't go in any yards there either. We do not have any windows that can be seen from the sidewalk on the side of the house so pedestrians looking in or lights flashing in is not a problem. Very little traffic. DH and I love to sit out on the front porch. No snow here, so haven't had any shoveling (we moved from an area with an avg of 15 feet of snow, so this has been a dream)

We basically have no back yard the way the property is set up, but we were fine with that. The front and side yard are beautifully landscaped and the sidewalk winds far away from the house at the corner. There is an alley in the back and that's where our driveway and garage are. We have a large patio with privacy fence so we have plenty of private outdoor space, but our backyard is sloped so the rest of the small yard is not really useable. All of our neighbors have the same sloped unusable backyard, so we actually wind up with more useable space on a similar sized lot.

 

[design_mom]

I have not lived in a corner lot. My sister-in-law had one for her starter home and says she will never live in another one. I agree that it probably depends a lot on the exact lot, etc.

Some of her major complaints involved traffic. Their driveway was at the front of their house and the stop sign stopped the traffic in front of their house.
-- She complained about the noise of traffic stopping and then accelerating at the stop sign, especially school buses and delivery trucks.
-- She complained about the headlights shining on her house.
-- It only took 2-3 cars waiting at the stop sign to block her driveway. During busy drive times, she'd sometimes have to wait for someone to let her in/out of her driveway. (This probably would not have been as much of an issue if the stop sign was at the side of the house, away from the driveway.)

Her other complaint was the yard. The house appeared to have a large yard compared to other houses. They only realized the "problem" when they wanted to install a fence. They neighborhood building restrictions basically treated the side yard as a second front yard since it had street frontage. They were not allowed to fence any of it (all fences/buildings had to be something like 25' from the street.). So, they ended up having a smaller-than-average useable back yard for their kids and dogs, and a large, basically unusable side yard that they still had to mow/shovel/maintain.

I am sure a lot of it has to do with the exact yard, exact house, exact requirements of your neighborhood, and what you're looking for in a house/yard.

 

[tvguy]

Same here. You don't get a bigger lot, the lot usage just changes. Most of our corner lots lose half of the backyard land but get a lot of yard on the side. I know one person in our neighborhood put in a pool and it is out to the side of the house and pretty much is next to the street.

Yeah, then you risk this. This was my favorite story locally in 2014. Yes it was a corner lot.

http://www.news10.net/story/news/lo...to-backyard-pool-of-carmichael-home/17013721/

 

[Disneychick75]

Yeah, then you risk this. This was my favorite story locally in 2014. Yes it was a corner lot.

http://www.news10.net/story/news/lo...to-backyard-pool-of-carmichael-home/17013721/

Our neighbor at our old house had 1 acre in front of her house and a truck still went through the front of her house and into her living room.

 

[indimom]

We have a corner lot.
We do have a double lot though; so, we have twice the space.

PROS
I love that we have streets on two sides, and a parking lot behind us and the extra lot between us and our only adjoining neighbor. It makes our home feel a bit more isolated than all our neighbors who are side by side by side.
I like that my trash doesn't sit in front of my house.
I like that family/friends can park in the driveway and use the back door through the mud room, instead of tracking snow into my living room, or having to take a sidewalk around the side or back of the house to access my preferred entrance.
I love the extra parking.
I love that the only thing in front of my house is landscaping and a sidewalk: no driveway, cars or basketball hoop.

CONS
The bus does pick up on our corner, but not in front of our house. We did have quite a good crowd out there some years, and they did get rowdy in that family's yard from time to time. I liked the convenience for my own children. They could stay on the porch during bad weather and just dash across the street once we saw the bus at its previous stop.

I do not love having a fire hydrant, street sign and stop sign in my yard. I planted flowers around the two signs to make it a little prettier, but they will always be eyesores.

I do NOT love clearing 2X the sidewalks in the winter, but we got a snow blower to make it less of a burden.

I HATE edging along the sidewalks in the summer. We have a lot of trimming at our house: 8 trees, the driveway, the front walk, a shed, the landscaping, and all that sidewalk. It's a lot of maintenance.

But, I still wouldn't give up my corner lot. I just may hire someone to maintain the yard and sidewalks for me as I get older...