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I think it depends not only upon the park, but upon the location. Last time I checked apartments and condos on Central Park in NYC weren't exactly being given away.
I live 1/2 a block away from a small city park in a small town and love it. One of the trade-offs of living in the "city" is a smaller yard, but I like having less to mow and still having plenty of room to walk my dog.
Our park is a traditional park with gravel walking paths/sidewalks, a playground, tennis courts, a public pool, and an old cemetery. There is also a "park patrol" that cruises the park and the surrounding neighborhood. It's kind of nice to have the added security. If our house was "on the park" I wouldn't mind at all.
On thing that would be a concern for me would be the ball park. If it is lighted, you want to find out when those games and practices occur.
It's a bummer to read this thread and find out that so many have negative experiences with parks. Public parks are ~supposed~ to be shared green space that provide physical activity and a bit of fresh air (helllllllo trees!).
A public park ~should~ enhance the value of any property. If it is not, then the problem is most likely deeper and the whole community needs some remediation.
One main reason would be resale value since most people don't want to buy a house next to a park like that.
I'm envisoning the community park where I grew up in an upper class neighborhood. It was a few blocks away from our house and I loved to go there.
In our younger years, my friends and I would always walk or ride our bikes through the yards that were next to the park as a short cut. We'd pet their dogs. (I'm sure some kids were mean to their dogs because some kids are mean like that.) Sometimes we'd sit in their yard instead of the park because their grass was softer and had less bees. If they had fences, we'd climb their fence to get a ball that went into their yard. If we got hurt, it would have been their liability. We loved watching the ballgames. There were huge crowds, all of the players, the parents from both teams, and all of the neighborhood kids would scream and yell and run around, often into the neighboring yards.
When we became young teens, we hung out at the playground. We'd sit on the swings or on top of the monkey bars. (I fell off the monkey bars in 7th grade. Broke my arm. My friends went running to a house along the park. I vividly remember they were having dinner. The owner drove me home.) That's where we went to smoke cigarettes, our first risky act. That's where we met the older kids who smoked marijuana. Yep, the children's playground. Cause teens, they're more into hanging out, talking, and socializing at those ages. And there was drinking but only at night in the edges of the park.
People who lived near the park had to like not having privacy. To kids of all ages, the adjacent yards are an extention of the park. They don't honor it as private property. Their minds don't work that way. Word quickly spread about any homeowner who tried to be possessive of their property. Anyone who built a fence to keep people out of their yards, quickly learned that kids climb over fences. And goodness help the homeowners who actually yelled at kids. Their houses became targets for all sorts of mischief including outright vandelism.
From a raising children perspective, it looks like a good idea. There's a children's heaven right outside your door. But just imagine that your kid's enemies will have every right to be a the edge of your property all the time. Kids who don't live next to parks don't have to contend with that sort of constant conflict. When you consider that the community park is where the older kids go to smoke, do drugs, and drink, you realize it's not really the ideal environment to have in your backyard as a parent.
If you're a territorial person, a house next to a park isn't for you unless you love to always be involved in controversy.
If you like your privacy, it just won't happen because it's impossible.
Probably not. I grew up across the street from a large park. It was okay. It was nice to just go across the street to play however I saw some pretty creepy stuff there. I saw my first hardcore porn magazine when I was 8 yrs old. Someone left it by a tree. It was pretty shocking to see something so graphic and it disturbed me for a while. Teenagers would hang out in one section and smoke weed. A few times the cops had to run off some bums that were sleeping in the park.
A friend of mine owns a lovely home on the border of a state park. She said its only enjoyable during the summers. In the fall people hunt and she has had bullets hit her garage. She worries about getting shot. In the winter people snowmobile and cross onto her property. She puts up little fences before the snow falls but they get run down every winter. I would not want any sort of sporting area close to my house. Baseballs will be driven toward your house. The thump of basketballs would drive me nuts and the screaming and crying of kids all day long would get on my nerves.
I guess it depends on how crappy the park is but around here, I would live on pretty much every park in our town. With the exception of an occasional soccer game, the parks are not that noisy--not like a school playground or anything like that. Even with a soccer game, the noise is intermittent with scoring a goal. Living on a nice park would not deter me from buying a home. Now, if the parks are like a lot of people are describing here, no I would not buy a house near a park like that.
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