Update – Countryside Cottage & More

Those who are regular followers may remember that we were looking to buy a house and some land near to Shrewsbury in Shropshire. It was a white semi-detached cottage that sat on an old disused World War 2 airfield. The farmer owned the cottage next door.

Montford Bridge, near Shrewsbury – Airfield Cottage & Land

Our offer of £173,000 was accepted. We were aware a previous offer of £160,00 had been rejected.

We began to go through the legal procedure of buying it, and were about 3 months into that process when our solicitor flagged up some issues to us. To be fair to the solicitor, he didn’t brush over the issues, he did push the issues hard with us as he felt they were real legal problems.

Septic tank

One issue which was a sticking point was the property had a shared underground brick built septic tank with the next door neighbour, and the tank was on their land.

With the farmer’s wife, I did inspect the brick tank and it was in a poor condition, and required replacement. That in itself was not a problem, as we could later have installed our own modern plastic unit, but that would be a later consideration, and would only be possible if ground conditions on our own land were right.

However, having discussed the arrangement with the neighbour we took the view that there could be future problems if we began to allow people to stop on the land with motorhomes, and we provided them with ELSAN facilities, which would discharge into that shared system.

There was no legal arrangements in place that would have given us the right to use the underground tank, despite all the pipework having flowed into it for perhaps a 100 years or even more. The legal arrangement as to what the proportion of shared emptying costs might be, including the replacement costs, were also not in place.

If at some stage the neighbour, or someone else later buying the next door property decided that they felt it unfair how much waste we were discharging, they could in theory tap off our right to use the tank, and legally we would have had little recourse.

Our solicitor offered some solutions, but those were based around insurance cover if there was later a dispute.

Access to rear of property

One problem that really was niggling us was the land immediately to the rear of the cottage was owned by the farmer. Whilst this gave amazing views to the airfield fields beyond, it did mean in practice that if we wished to clean the outside of the kitchen window for example, we would need to ask the neighbour’s permission to walk onto their land.

The farmer was quite relaxed about this, and they are lovely people. But, we had to think, what if they sold that cottage and someone else moved in, would they be equally relaxed about it?

Grant of probate

From the outset, there was never a mention of a Grant of probate by any person. We also didn’t question this, despite us knowing that the person who owned the property had died.

Naively, we assumed those legal matters were in place, as the house had been placed on the open market for sale, the particulars made no reference and the estate agent also didn’t disclose an issue during the purchase negotiations.

Some 3 months into the purchase, Samantha received a telephone call from the estate agent to break some bad news. That news was there is no Grant of probate in place, she was told the solicitor firm who was previously dealing with it had gone into liquidation, and now there was no timescale for obtaining the Grant.

At this point, Samantha broke down into tears. We had invested so much time into the project. Samantha telephoned me and told me what was happening,

We formally withdrew from the purchase of the property.

About a week or so later, the same estate agent telephoned Samantha, to say its all okay, they have found the Grant of probate ??? Found it? Samantha was told that it simply didn’t exist.

Samantha made up her mind that she didn’t want to revisit buying the property. The signs were telling us that this property was just not to be, and we certainly do not regret that decision.

Consequence of withdrawing.

The contracts had not been exchanged, and so there was nothing legally preventing us from withdrawing.

We did have some legal work to pay for which had been carried out up until that point, which amounted to £525.00.

Loughor near to Llanelli, South Wales – Detached Property & Land

Along came another renovation property to buy. This time the property was in a place called Loughor which is near to Llanelli in South Wales.

Our little video tour.. If you look carefully, and know your plant species, you will see some Japanese Knotweed dotted around.

What a fantastic property that was. A four bedroom detached house, with a huge plot of land, and literally 2 minutes walk from the nature reserve estuary and 10 mins drive to a lovely sandy beach.

We had a good chat to the estate agent during a viewing, and he gave us the impression that he saw the property going for £200,000 (plus a buyers premium of £840), and was hinting that would be where we might like to place a proxy bid.

The estate agent estimated the property would be worth circa £300,000 when renovated.

With that in mind, We opened an auction bidding account, with a £5000 security deposit. On the morning of the auction, Samantha and I agreed that we would be the opening bidders, to go in at £160,000 which should in theory meant that we would have a bid sat at the reserve price, which we were. From that point we would wait the 24 hours or so, and place our final bid towards the end of the auction.

Within 10 minutes the bidding had soared above £200,000 and was on its way to the moon! At this point we declared ourselves out. We had no intention of borrowing money to buy the house, we want to remain mortgage free, and so £200,000 was our absolute limit. Bearing in mind we also have to repair it!

The next day the auction was over, the final bid was a staggering £333,000! We can only guess that someone bought it on the hope they can get planning permission to build on the plot given it’s stunning location. Someone got themselves a great future property there.

The Future

We have now found another property and land to purchase… We love it !

It is a lovely characterful cottage with land, it has an outbuilding sat on a large footprint (potentially useful for planning purposes if we were to remove it) and a small summer house.

During my research I found the property on a map dating back to 1880. It is believed the cottage to have been built for a worker at the next door 10 bedroom country house.

Informally, we have been advised by the agent there is a parcel of overgrown woodland that immediately adjoins it that we can also purchase that if we want it. This does not belong to the seller of the house, and would need to be a separate negotiation. We would not actually need that land, but might be a nice bonus if we can agree the right price later. We will think about that.

In respect of the character if offers, its easily the best place we have seen during our time of looking for a new place to buy.

We are paying less for the property than we would have done so, and the negotiated price reduction was helped as we suggested a gentleman’s agreement of a sale completion within 28 days, if this is able to be completed by both of the lawyers involved. So far all is going to plan.

The sale is being handled by Executors, but there is no Grant of probate involved as the legal owner of the property remains alive.

More news to come soon, including exactly where it is!