what are the drawbacks of a corner lot?

[Anonymous]

We saw a house (from outside, after going in the street to visit another house) in a corner lot. The house looked nice and I commented with our realtor who said: "but it is on a corner lot and that is not good." I didn't push because at the time I was not interested but now I am curious on "WHY" a corner lot house is not good?

I just saw similar comments on the AuPark thread, something along the lines: "this house is charming, but it is on a corner lot."

Can someone elaborate pls? Besides having to shovel more snow of sidewalks, what is/are exactly the drawbacks? Are they harder to re-sell? If so, why?

[Anonymous]

You have a small back yard and two large side yards. The issue is that the side yards may not be able to be fenced in with 6 feet fences for privacy.

[Anonymous]

If you want to renovate down the line you might have more setback constraints.

[Anonymous]

No privacy

[Anonymous]

Triple or more the frontage to shovel in the winter! Less privacy. A lot of yard space but broken up in pieces. We don't use our yard a lot for those two reasons. I think we have 5 times the frontage of our neighbors and shoveling is a PITA! Benefits: more space around the house, only one neighbor, which is a big plus, possibly more quiet, more light possibly. It's really fine overall. Just things I hadn't thought about before buying.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't buy one as it generally means there's little real backyard for kicking a ball, etc. Kind of wasted space.

[Anonymous]

We're on a corner lot and it's fine. It may depend on where in the neighborhood you're situated, but in our case it's a complete non-issue because we have almost no traffic on our street. Yes there's more shoveling of the sidewalk, but it's just not a big deal.

[Anonymous]

Ebola

[Anonymous]

Sometimes traffic can be an issue or a big yard that people don't want to deal with - depends on the house. I wouldn't rule out a corner lot automatically.

[Anonymous]

More dog poop to clean up

[Anonymous]

We have a large backyard and room for garage. It doesn't have a ton of privacy because the driveway prevents a fence but without the driveway we could fence it. Less privacy isn't terrible. It just depends what you want.

[Anonymous]

No privacy. The house would need to blow me away to buy a corner lot.

[Anonymous]

The corner lot on our street (cul de sac) has their playset in the side yard, next to the driveway (with bb hoop). It makes a big and open play area for kids, though not private at all. But there's only street traffic and all the kids go there when they see other kids.

[Anonymous]

I moved from a house in the neighborhood that was not on a corner lot to a corner lot. I like the corner lot more because the houses are close together and it is much more quiet - just one set of neighbors to deal with. If you were in a high traffic area you might have more noise, but that is not an issue for us.

Yes, shoveling is a bit of a pain but we don't get much snow so it isn't a big deal. Our backyard is small but big enough. However, we are doing an addition and adjusting our fence to have more yard and as PPs have mentioned, we can only have a 4-foot tall fence beyond the perimeter of the house. That is somewhat annoying but we will still have a small private area because of the way the yard is configured.

[Anonymous]

Are the houses close together, OP? If so, I would say there are two strikes.

Is the street busy? Is it a cut through neighborhood? We are looking now, and paying close attention to whether the streets go through, from anywhere. Which would mean serious traffic, especially at rush or school hour!

Are there sidewalks? Not part of your actual question, but something else that has come up from our current search.

Any of these are definite deal breakers for me. I'm buying a house, not an apartment.

Plus, I would not want "two front yards", and limited options for the property down the line; including limited resale, if I tired of it.