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I hugely prefer houses and neighborhoods with alleys. It gives the neighborhood a much nicer feel not to the have the front of the house dominated by garages and driveways, and keeps all the services (rubbish collection, power poles etc) out of the streets.
After 29 years of living in 2 different houses with alleys (concrete, city-maintained), I would never buy a house without an alley.
Keeps the ugly garage in the back out of sight.
An alley gives criminals a second option when casing your home and when removing your belongings. I've never had a house with one and I don't feel like I missed out on anything special.
Thats how I feel. In my area, alleys are a bit creepy - pavement is dirty, has holes, trash laying around, sometimes old mattresses ... generally feeling unsafe and I would not drive through there.
Do alleys usually have public access ways so people can cut through and get to the next block quicker? I saw something that looked like this in the picture of the house I'm interested in. But I'm not sure if it's a public space or if it belongs to a private owner.
It doesn't matter with what is 'usual' I would check and see what the specific case you are dealing with is. It may just be that a property owner hasn't fenced his yard. I will say that in the cases I know of with alleys there was no public cut thru in the middle of a block.
The alleys in my area do not have through access. If you are in the middle of the block, you have to walk to the end of the alley. To the extent that there are any cut throughs, they are private property. But it's going to be location-specific.
Our house has an alley, and it's my first experience with one. We have an attached garage and driveway in the front, as many houses on our street do. Others have no driveway and garages off the alley. It's good for us because we have space back there to store our camper and other things. The house wouldn't have worked for us otherwise.
Ours is gravel. Some people put their garbage bins back there but we put ours on the street. Either option is acceptable here. It's nice to have a little distance between neighbors to the back. However, there is an increased risk of crime and other shenanigans. A couple weeks ago we discovered some kids had thrown rocks through our camper window.
Overall, I'm not in love with alleys. I prefer attached garages and driveways in the front of the house.
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