It was early 2022, after the sale of my business, that we started seriously looking for something with a bit more space, and most importantly, a decent sized outbuilding.
Those familiar with the UK housing market will know, its pretty expensive, especially in the south east, where we lived, space is hard to find and large barns or outbuilding on a domestic property, virtually non exsistent.
Trying to get planning for a large building at a domestic property, is even harder still.
As we lived in the southeast, where house values are high, it made sense to look elsewhere, which for affordable means heading west, or north. Many, many hours were spent on righmove, the UK's main property website, looking for something suitable. Even looking in the cheaper parts of the country, budget was limited and options scarce. Whilst we were happy with a project, it needed to not to be a total basket case.
The search focussed, on Wales, or possibly, the north west. Lots of nice stuff, but always too expensive. The affordable stuff, whilst the house was usually, bearable, the outbuildings were the usual dilapidated agricultural sheds needing extensive work to turn into something useful. Which aside from the work can carry some planning permission risk too.
Many hours scrolling later, this picture catches my eye.
Looked great!
Appointment duly booked for a viewing. The following saturday was a trip to mid Wales.
The barn was fantastic, the house, well, needed some work, but was essentially sound, with a lot of expenditure having recently been made. But whose worried about the house? Priorities and all that.
A couple of hours later, we were pretty sure this was a property to make an offer on.
Having been here before, this generally hasnt gone our way, so we were very surprised our offer was accepted.
There was a lot of "what the hell have we done!" moments.
Actually buying it proved a long drawn out process, especially as the previous time it was sold was in the 70's, so long before electronic registration. This and some other issues did at times make us think we would never get it over the line. But towards the ens of '22, finally, it was ours.
Heres a few more pictures of our aquisition.
Obviously this was over a year ago, and lots has happened since. The move, geting the house livable etc, has been pretty frantic, hence only really getting round to this now.
As i dig out and organise all the pictures, ill try to update with any interesting stuff.
Those familiar with the UK housing market will know, its pretty expensive, especially in the south east, where we lived, space is hard to find and large barns or outbuilding on a domestic property, virtually non exsistent.
Trying to get planning for a large building at a domestic property, is even harder still.
As we lived in the southeast, where house values are high, it made sense to look elsewhere, which for affordable means heading west, or north. Many, many hours were spent on righmove, the UK's main property website, looking for something suitable. Even looking in the cheaper parts of the country, budget was limited and options scarce. Whilst we were happy with a project, it needed to not to be a total basket case.
The search focussed, on Wales, or possibly, the north west. Lots of nice stuff, but always too expensive. The affordable stuff, whilst the house was usually, bearable, the outbuildings were the usual dilapidated agricultural sheds needing extensive work to turn into something useful. Which aside from the work can carry some planning permission risk too.
Many hours scrolling later, this picture catches my eye.
Looked great!
Appointment duly booked for a viewing. The following saturday was a trip to mid Wales.
The barn was fantastic, the house, well, needed some work, but was essentially sound, with a lot of expenditure having recently been made. But whose worried about the house? Priorities and all that.
A couple of hours later, we were pretty sure this was a property to make an offer on.
Having been here before, this generally hasnt gone our way, so we were very surprised our offer was accepted.
There was a lot of "what the hell have we done!" moments.
Actually buying it proved a long drawn out process, especially as the previous time it was sold was in the 70's, so long before electronic registration. This and some other issues did at times make us think we would never get it over the line. But towards the ens of '22, finally, it was ours.
Heres a few more pictures of our aquisition.
Obviously this was over a year ago, and lots has happened since. The move, geting the house livable etc, has been pretty frantic, hence only really getting round to this now.
As i dig out and organise all the pictures, ill try to update with any interesting stuff.
