If you suspect a property may be afflicted by traffic or aircraft noise, don't rely on reassurances from the estate agent, follow these tips from James Greenwood, of Stacks Property Search (stacks.co.uk):

Make sure you visit at rush hour, talk to neighbours and go to the local pub to get the gossip.

Find out if the road is used as a rat run - sleeping policemen are a good clue. “One property I saw on a sweet little lane in Devon seemed blissfully rural, until I went along at 8am and about 200 cars went past in an hour. The lane turned out to be a rat run taking people into Exeter.”

Nothing beats being on the ground and making as many visits as you can. A house that looks as if it is near a motorway on the map might be screened from the noise. After all, one person's road noise blight is another's insignificant background buzz.

If you do decide to buy a property with any sort of blight, negotiate incredibly hard - there are bargains to be had.

To minimise road noise in a house you already own, move the bedrooms to the back and install double glazing and screening such as walls and vegetation, although not leylandii, which is just a different form of visual blight.

Aircraft noise can be harder to avoid; Heathrow noise blights much of southwest London, for example. This BAA leaflet:

heathrowairport.com/assets/B2CPortal/Static%20Files/LHW_botheredbyaircraftnoise.pdf

contains maps of flight-paths and “noise contours”.

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