2Nd Home

[flyingscotsman]

Hi everyone

My wife and I have fallen in love with a village in the Cotswolds and we are thinking of buying a cottage or semi-detached house to use as a base for visits.

First and foremost we would be be doing this because we love the village that we visit - the countryside - and the walks.

So we would be in it for the long term - perhaps even somewhere to retire to in 15-20 years time.

Obviously we don't want to see the property we buy drop in value and a rise in value would be nice just in case we decide to sell - but that is not our primary reason for buying.

We've seen a semi-detached house in a village within 3-4 miles of Chipping Campden. We would be able to visit fairly regularly though it is a 5 hour round trip but the drive doesn't concern me.

After a 30minute viewing we instinctively felt it was right for us - but of course any progress would depended on a more detailed inspection on a second visit to be sure.

Our main home is mortgage free and any 2nd home will be paid for largely in cash plus around £50-£60K in mortgage so that we can keep some cash to hand.

There are a couple of things that keep my head spinning and I'd appreciate some advice.

Firstly - not having bought a 2nd property before - I am wary of taking such a huge leap in responsibility. The house we have seen is immaculate - there would be nothing to do inside or out - so that is a good thing. There would be on-going maintenance as you would with any house but I think we can manage it.

I suppose I am a little concerned that locals might resent outsiders moving in - I don't know if this is much of a problem - if at all - and I am maybe being paranoid. We are a couple who keep like to live a quiet life and hopefully the locals would see it as a positive that decent people are taking over the house.

Secondly - the house seems keenly priced already at around £190K and I am not sure how to negotiate on price. The house next door sold a year ago for £10K less than the one we are looking at and the seller is asking for £15K more than they bought it for nearly 5 years ago.

Not many houses come up for sale in this village and moreso at this price point as there are a lot of big houses that would require serious money to buy.

So on the one hand we would like to go in with the "insulting" offer - as some would suggest - but then maybe missing out on a opportunity.

The couple selling apparently are retired and have got "somewhere in mind to go" - that is as much detail we we could tease out of the estate agent.

My wife is very keen on the house and has been giving me the doe eyed - bottom lip pouting - look and is yearning for me to put an offer in.

I've read thread after thread in these and other forums and poured over websites to guage tactics but not sure how best to proceed.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

[levoleurdefruits]

Either you're trolling - in which case you have come to the right site, or you are serious - in which case you have come to the wrong site

Either way no-one here will advise you as HPCers generally don't like to think that people are buying up the houses that they want to crash in value. Have you tried singing pig?

[Rozza]

First and foremost we would be be doing this because we love the village that we visit - the countryside - and the walks.

I suppose I am a little concerned that locals might resent outsiders moving in - I don't know if this is much of a problem - if at all - and I am maybe being paranoid. We are a couple who keep like to live a quiet life and hopefully the locals would see it as a positive that decent people are taking over the house.

Would you still love the village if all the residents sold to people like you who will only be there occasionally and it becomes a ghost town?

The locals might resent you, they may see your property being empty as one more set of parking spaces they can use most of the time, or they may see you buying a property a local could move into but cant afford to due to outsiders overpaying for properties in their village and then not living there.

Personally i think 2nd property ownership particularly for a spare "go there sometimes house" is a bad thing and hope the government moves to tax this sort of thing heavily. Im not saying that makes you a bad person and your motives may well be honest in loving the place, but what you would be doing would be to ruin where you love.

If you are mortgage free why not just move there if you love the village so much?

[Swansea Estate Agent]

Singing pig forum does not exist anymore I believe.

Many on here like mentioned are waiting for prices to crash much further, so may not want to give you any advice.

However, if you are serious and eventually purchase, I'm sure many will be happy if you purchase the property for a lot less than is advertised. This would help to bring local prices down further.

At the end of the day though a property is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it. You seem to be in an excellent position to purchase and from what you have said have all the motives to buy at pretty much any price.

If you are looking to help the cause of many on this forum, then offer around £140,000. This is about 20% below what the current vendors paid for it and close to 30% below the current asking price.

From the information you have given I don't see any reason why you could not get this property for between £170k and £180k. Probably less if the current vendors are mortgage free.

[flyingscotsman]

Either you're trolling - in which case you have come to the right site, or you are serious - in which case you have come to the wrong site

Either way no-one here will advise you as HPCers generally don't like to think that people are buying up the houses that they want to crash in value. Have you tried singing pig?

We are definitely serious and not trolling.

[flyingscotsman]

Would you still love the village if all the residents sold to people like you who will only be there occasionally and it becomes a ghost town?

The locals might resent you, they may see your property being empty as one more set of parking spaces they can use most of the time, or they may see you buying a property a local could move into but cant afford to due to outsiders overpaying for properties in their village and then not living there.

Personally i think 2nd property ownership particularly for a spare "go there sometimes house" is a bad thing and hope the government moves to tax this sort of thing heavily. Im not saying that makes you a bad person and your motives may well be honest in loving the place, but what you would be doing would be to ruin where you love.

If you are mortgage free why not just move there if you love the village so much?

That I raised the issue of our buying a property in the - not so little - village should show I have some compassion with the locals.

Perhaps I should point out that the property was on sale last year for a quite some time and was withdrawn - apparently the owners felt they needed to smarten it up or something to that effect/ It has now been ob the market again for approx. 6 months and still no buyers.

So with that in mind we have a retired couple wishing to leave and no local buyers - so the opportunity for people more local to the area to buy hasn't been taken up.

To fair this could be to do with price.

We would be using the home fairly regular though I appreciate what constitutes fairly regular use to us may not be the same for others. But we would be bringing money into the local economy - not vast sums for sure but every little helps.

I don't get the feeling the area of full of 2nd home owners - though quiet it is obvious that many of the home are owned by locals and there is a lot of activity going on. So what impact we would have I really don't know - though I guess some would say it might be the start of something.

As for moving there that is not an option - we have jobs where we live and are happy with the work we do and who we work for and getting the same somewhere else most likely will not happen.

I welcome the feedback.

[flyingscotsman]

SingingPig still coming up for me.

http://www.singingpig.co.uk/forums/

I wondered what the reference to Singing Pig was.

Just followed the link and I think I get the gist but would need to browse a bit more to know if useful for us.

[flyingscotsman]

Singing pig forum does not exist anymore I believe.

Many on here like mentioned are waiting for prices to crash much further, so may not want to give you any advice.

However, if you are serious and eventually purchase, I'm sure many will be happy if you purchase the property for a lot less than is advertised. This would help to bring local prices down further.

At the end of the day though a property is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it. You seem to be in an excellent position to purchase and from what you have said have all the motives to buy at pretty much any price.

If you are looking to help the cause of many on this forum, then offer around £140,000. This is about 20% below what the current vendors paid for it and close to 30% below the current asking price.

From the information you have given I don't see any reason why you could not get this property for between £170k and £180k. Probably less if the current vendors are mortgage free.

Like most buyers who have limited experience of negotiating on the cost of a house it is difficult to make a very low offer.

I should say that I do agree that house prices are obscene and my wife and I have said so for years. Our own home was once valued at a price that made us blush - I never believed it was worth it but as we intended to stay it was never an issue.

We had considered an opening offer of around £150K subject to another viewing and so on - at least registering an interest and see if it gets a bite. We are in no rush and can wait though it just happens that we have seen a place we like.

Thank you for the reply - it has given us something to think about.