Month: June 2012

Well, after spending some time looking for the right property, it looks as if we have decided on a rennovation project.  Scary!

It seems to have happened almost by mistake – we have looked at lots of house, but it has been the usual story.  Nice house, wrong location.  Right location, house too small (with no scope to extend).  Beuatiful house, right location, but who wants an 8 bedroom Georgian mansion when there is only two of you? Tempting, but the heating bills would be crippling.  And as energy prices are only set to increase, this situation will only get more acute.

The property we have found is just on the outskirts of the village that we live in.  It is a farmhouse, with attached cottage and barn.  The barn needs to be converted.  There are a number of outbuildings including at least 4 chicken coups.  There are a couple of adjoining fields attached that probably amount to around 3-4 acres included in the price of the property.  The reason that I am vague is because we have put an offer in before the details have been produced (or the property was put on the market).  Given that the property has now been taken off the market, I doubt that we will ever get a set of property details.

It currently doesn’t have planning permission for any sort of development, so there is an inherent risk that we might not be able to get the permission that we need for the sort of property that we want to build.

The current plan is to bottom out as much of the details (and viability) of what we want to do before finally pass the point of no return on the purchase. We would not want to be left with a property that we couldn’t get planning permission on.

First stop, the local planning department……