If you had the choice would you pick a cul de sac lot?
Why /why not??
Any experience or recommendations welcome
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In a subdivision I would always pick a cul de sac, if I couldn't get that I would pick a corner lot on an interior street (not entrance street) because it would at least be bigger.
But back to my reasoning for a cul de sac; it's not a through street. Subdivisions inherently have crappy teenage drivers that text & drive or speed or all of the above (I know adults are guilty of this too), so not having a through street makes it a little safer to play out front...
My husband would not agree with me because it's not tactically sound to be on a "dead end".
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All other things being equal, I would. But it isn’t the most important factor. I simply appreciate the slower and less frequent traffic.
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We live almost at the end of a cul de sac and I love it! Hardly any traffic and the traffic there is is mostly people who live here so drive slow, or landscape or delivery trucks turning around. I can leave my kids in the yard for a minute without worrying about cars. They ride their bikes right outside in the cul de sac.
I would also be fine a non pass through street in a neighborhood, but the cul de sac would be my first choice.
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We live a few houses from the end of a cul-de-sac. Although from a planning perspective cul-de-sacs aren't very efficient, which kind of bugs me (but suburbs in general are bad for the environment and such, so...) we like it and it's been great for the kids.
@Sams Mom: My husband didn't say that but that seriously sounds like something he would have said. We actually picked a house partially because the layout would be easier to fend off intruders. In the suburbs. In a super super low crime area. Pretty far up a hill. But you never know I guess, people get followed home sometimes.
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@2littlepumpkins: my husband picks seats in the movie theater based on if they're "tactically sound"
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@2littlepumpkins: @Sams Mom: well one benefit to the cul de sac- we went away for a few days this summer and I’d asked our neighbor to bring our garbage bins back in after trash pick up. She texts me asking if we meant to LEAVE OUR GARAGE OPEN. But because of the way the garage faces the end of the street, the only people who could actually see it was open was two neighbors. How would your husbands like that?
(the neighbor kindly closed our garage door for us).
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@Sams Mom: @2littlepumpkins: you guys, our chicken enclosure door was shut when we got home once (the wind) and my husband decided we need security cameras. We live on a farm with a mile long driveway. I don’t know who would be threatening us by locking the chickens up.
@Ajsmommy: we used to live on a cul de sac and I really liked it!
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@Foodnerd81: my husband would still find a problem with that
, I love that we've got to know one of our neighbors well enough to ask things like that though! He just has to get over it.
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@Sams Mom: @2littlepumpkins: LOL, my DH has to sit facing the exit/entrance, preferably the main exit/entrance to any establishment we go to..... guess he somehow thinks he'll single handed twart anything bad happening if he "sees it coming"
Thanks all for the confirmation regarding the cul de sac!!! We have been waiting for sites to open and had previously been told that the model we wanted was not allowed on the cul de sac lots but they changed their tune and opened them to our model. Our inclination was to jump on it and get a lot on the cul de sac but I just wanted to make sure we weren't making a mistake by "moving/changing" so fast.
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I mean, without factoring in anything else, I'd say yes because it's quieter/safer!
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It is definitely my preference versus a cut through street. I have a pretty wild kid so I'd prefer to know there are only going to be a few cars going by here and there.
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Typically cul de sac homes will resell better/faster and have a higher value for families with kids. We live on the very end (in the circle) of a cul de sac and LOVE it. We bought our current home over a house I liked a little better (honestly, my dream house) because that house was on a busy street (though the lot itself was great). I’m not sorry for our choice.
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@Sams Mom: @Ajsmommy: Omg I'm so glad it's not just mine!! Haha.
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@Ajsmommy: @Sams Mom: @2littlepumpkins: @gotkimchi: You girls are cracking me up with your husband stories! Threats re: chicken coop will have me laughing all day. I'm a LEO wife and have a husband who does and says all of that and more.
We just bought a house inside a cul de sac. Cul de sac is so appealing that we gave up on the size of the back yard because of all the of benefits that come with cul de sac and there being no thru traffic. However, there are some cul de sacs that are so tight and have no curb for guest parking. That would be terrible. So only a spacious cul de sac is appealing.
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We live at the end of a cul de sac, there are three homes around the circle, one being ours, and WE LOVE IT. There is no traffic so the kids can play out in the circle and if any cars are coming they can see them from far away.... Our circle is also really large, I know the smaller ones aren't great for parking, BUT - its always desirable to be on a cul de sac for resale.
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We live on large cul de sac and LOVE it for all of the reasons stated above. Its been hard to look at future homes because we feelike we were already spoiled living on a cul-de-sac and can't fathom not being on one
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@Ajsmommy: I voted no. we had to make this decision and I intially had my heart set on a cul de sac plot. Our sales person was really nice and shared her opinion. She mentioned key things like how everyone makes a uturn in front of the cul de sac as well add the fact that the houses tend to sit on the property at an awkward angle since its a curved plot
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@Mrsbells: but aren’t those same cars that are making a u turn in the cul de sac driving past all the other houses on the street, only at a faster speed? I won’t disagree that some houses are probably situated oddly, although in my area all our lots have weird hills or rocks or whatever to deal with as well.
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@Ajsmommy: when our street was first developed, 40 plus years ago, our old neighbors bought their property but also bought across the end of the cul de sac, in cooperation with the neighbor across the end of the cul de sac, to make it impossible for someone to ever build a through street there. Like their properties puzzle together so basically you would have to have agreement from both to get a pass through. Kind of cool forward thinking.
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@Foodnerd81: very smart of them!! When we bought our current home we were the last house on the street and then a year later someone bought the lot next to us and built. We often said we should have purchased that lot and kept it empty.....
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@Ajsmommy: I know a few people that have bought the lot next to theirs to keep from having a neighbor on top of them... But in the area I live, depending on if its a walkout lot or not and the size of it; a 1/3 of an acre lot goes for $35,000-65,000 (also depending on what HOA/neighborhood they're in).
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I'm more meh on it than most of the responses here, though if it was a question of comparing two lots in the same subdivision, I'd probably take the cul de sac lot. I've done some reading on the statistics behind auto-pedestrian or auto-bike fatalities and injuries, as I walk/bike to get around and want to be as safe as possible. There are some surprising facts that are very informative about what the biggest risks actually are. One of them is that fatalities of children under 5 caused by collision with an automobile are actually slightly higher on cul de sacs. The reason for this is that the majority of children under 5 killed in collisions with an automobile are not killed by a car moving forward but by being backed over
On cul de sacs their parents are more likely to be relaxed about letting them out to play because they feel it's safe, but the biggest danger is a family member or one of the neighbors backing over the child, not a car speeding forward, which isn't any lower 
I also love older neighborhoods - they tend to be more walkable and I love construction from the pre-depression era. Less of a fan of houses build in the 1950s-70s, which was the height of the cul de sac, so I have that association with them. But that's just my own personal preference/associations...
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I would always want a few ways out to the main road. This past winter, a large tree fell across a road and had there been no other ways out, we would have been stuck in our house for 4 days.
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@Foodnerd81: we can't avoid people drugging by the constant u turns in the front of my house woukd dive me nuts. Also in our community all the mail boxes are in the cul de sac so additional cars and traffic pile up there
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@Mrsbells: huh- having the mailboxes there seems really inconvenient and to defeat the purpose of a cul de sac in general!
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@Foodnerd81: ah so many typos in my post! Yeah not sure why the mailboxes are all at the end of the street its like an apartment style block of mailboxes. I think the purpose is to make the street look cleaner without individual mail boxes in front of each house
On cul de sacs their parents are more likely to be relaxed about letting them out to play because they feel it's safe, but the biggest danger is a family member or one of the neighbors backing over the child, not a car speeding forward, which isn't any lower 
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