buying house, land, the whole dream. How did you do it?

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blackandwhite

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We've found ourselves landed with a situation where buying our own house and yard would be the perfect solution. It's what we want long term anyway but I'm wary of rushing in. We don't have vast sums stashed away to buy outright so we'd need to finance. Our solicitor (Scottish Law) has advised a mortgage on the house and commercial loan on land and buildings. Just wondering what other people's experiences are and if anyone's got any advice. It's all a lot scarier than just buying a house!
 
We were right place right time, plus we bought house/stables/barn and my mother bought the barn and just over half the land, and then got permission to convert.

This was a great leap of faith as we may not have got permission, but the dream was almost within grasp..........

We also mortgaged to the hilt, so much so that we could not even buy soup spoons!

Worth it though, house prices went up, work pay got better, mortgage payments were at an all time low, and we have just paid it all off. We did not know that at the time though, it was a BIG risk all round.

Good luck, live the dream!
 
We did it by selling our mortgaged house in a commuter belt, and then buying a property with land in a cheaper area further away from London. The property also had a problem with vehicular access across our garden to the neighbour's house which we were able to resolve, but that, the cheaper location and the fact that the house was fairly basic inside, meant we got it with the land for barely more than we sold the previous house for, and scarcely any noticeable difference in mortgage repayments.
 
We sold up and moved to northern Spain. House (currently in ruins), barn, over two hectares of land, amazing views and countryside, great food and people and cheap living. :)
 
We sold our 2 1/2 bed 1960's ugly semi in an estate in Berkshire and bought with the same cash £ for £ a 3 bed detached with 12 acres of barley crop in Lincolnshire (under £300k at peak of market in 2008) - we then spent 7 years getting the grass to grow, building stables, hay barn, school etc. as and when we saved some money we built some more.
Lovely people, amazing ifestyle and a crazy decision that I will never regret.
 
We rented it.

Moved in 10 years ago, and in that time have gradually built up a portfolio of 8 let properties, the profit from which now cover our rent. They are all mortgaged 60-70% LTV and have between £100-£300 per month profit over costs. They are also now beginning to creep up in value, which gives us the flexibility to sell one in the future should we need to extract cash for anything, something you can't do if you've sunk every penny into the house you live in. It's meant that we could have our dream house when we needed it, ie at beginning of married lives with young children, rather than spending years scraping and saving for the deposit. We have a 15 year lease on it from an estate so we have security. A major benefit is that we don't have unexpected costs - the landlord is responsible for heating, electrical and structure (obviously we sometimes have unexpected costs on the rentals, but they tend to be lower cost as the houses/flats are smaller and newer).
 
Luck, pretty much,

I bought a 3 bed end of terrace in Hampshire for 60k, sold it 6 years later for 150k. This gave me the deposit I needed to buy my forever home, a detached farmhouse with 5 acres in Wales, with money left over to build a yard.

Bought the first house in 1995 and this one in 2001, so I appreciate prices have risen. And I was very very lucky with the first house in terms of profit.
 
Clawed our way up the property ladder with grim determination. One bed flat - 2 bed terraced house - 4 bed house - house with land & stables. Lots of very hard work put into all the properties to get as much profit as poss & forget about holidays etc. I had my house with land by the time I was 34. I am a very single-minded person when I want something badly enough! Not to mention all the years of studying for hard prof exams, degrees etc & volunteering to do all the stuff other people didn't want to do at work to get the biggest bonus I could, learn as much as poss, get as frequent promotion as possible & then onwards to the next rung on the corporate ladder. Anything to do with horses needs money, & the only way to get it is to earn it. I've also written 5 novels purely to help with earnings. I want to do one more move as I want more land & an indoor school/barn big enough to be used as an indoor school before I'm 50. 50 is too old to be riding in all weathers!

T x
 
Had a small but good enough deposit from selling my OHs house (I had always rented before we moved in together), we bought a house with a bit of land but no equestrian facilities to speak of. Over time we've added stables, hard standing, fenced paddocks & a school
 
We had to compromise. We couldnt afford a nice house with land and ended up buying a bungalow made from asbestos, no foundations etc but 5 acres of land backing onto the forest .We had bought our last place as a doer upper and did well on the sale. Lovely area, fantastic hacking and we had to get a self build mortgage. We were going to knock it down and rebuild but our circumstances have changed dramatically and so we just made ourselves comfortable here .
We have pigs ,sheep ,poultry aswell as the neddies and the kids have had a great place to grow up .
One day we will rebuild but not anytime soon .
 
It must be said, that those of us of certain ages have had it luckier than some. I am 40, and just managed to catch the end of the last property bubble by buying my first teeny tiny house when I was 26 in 2001 and selling when I was 30 in 2004. It nearly doubled in value during that time, and having that sort of cash to start off your property owning life gives you options. My parents benefited from the same, buying a property in 1981 and selling in the early noughties, they made a huge amount out of owning their own property. I wonder if we will have the astronomic house price rises again that we had in the late eighties and late nineties/early noughties. They seem to be starting from a much higher base now things are starting to move upwards again. It must be harder for people to buy their first properties now.
 
OH and i both sold our houses so had a decent deposit (plus mortgage) and bought a house with 8 acres and outbuildings that have been converted back to stables/hay barn etc. 4 acres bought separately (though same seller) so not covered by the mortgage. 18 months later and we are still making it horse friendly and have spent a small fortune - all 8 acres needed post and rail and stock fencing on boundaries (stock fencing wasnt planned on purchase!), hard standing going in this summer with shelter bays (clay made our lives difficult last winter). Im on my final warning from OH not to spend any more on equine requireemnts - kitchen is next! Waking up every morning and knowing i can either see my horses from the house or only need to walk through the garden is worth every penny!!
 
tootsietoo said:
It must be said, that those of us of certain ages have had it luckier than some. I am 40, and just managed to catch the end of the last property bubble by buying my first teeny tiny house when I was 26 in 2001 and selling when I was 30 in 2004. It nearly doubled in value during that time, and having that sort of cash to start off your property owning life gives you options. My parents benefited from the same, buying a property in 1981 and selling in the early noughties, they made a huge amount out of owning their own property. I wonder if we will have the astronomic house price rises again that we had in the late eighties and late nineties/early noughties. They seem to be starting from a much higher base now things are starting to move upwards again. It must be harder for people to buy their first properties now.
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This is so true and something that terrifies me. I have completely resigned myself to not being able to afford to buy a property for a very, very long time. I seriously doubt I will ever be able to afford something with land either. It's quite a depressing prospect tbh.
 
It's a matter of choosing your sacrifices. For the same money we could have a reasonably well done up 3 bedroom house close to Cambridge City centre and my husband would have a five minute walk to commute to work even though we could afford a nice car or we could buy an ancient huge old wreck of a house (roof is off as I type this) with river frontage, tatty sand school, a dozen stables and around 8 acres in a grotty area where his commute is well over an hour and a half unless he leaves for work at 5.30am when it's usually 50 minutes. And he does the commute in a 15 year old car!
 
Apercrumbie said:
This is so true and something that terrifies me. I have completely resigned myself to not being able to afford to buy a property for a very, very long time. I seriously doubt I will ever be able to afford something with land either. It's quite a depressing prospect tbh.
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feel your pain! although have also realized that by accepting the fact we will be renting for a long long time we're managed to find a little place with land that would have been a fortune to buy but is not that much to rent so I'm a very happy girl and we're managing to save -only a little at a time but saving none the less so maybe one day we'll own our ideal place!
 
Apercrumbie said:
This is so true and something that terrifies me. I have completely resigned myself to not being able to afford to buy a property for a very, very long time. I seriously doubt I will ever be able to afford something with land either. It's quite a depressing prospect tbh.
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I'm with you on this. I live in hope that one day I'll be able to relish my dream of converting a barn with land but won't be holding my breath!
 
We bought a wreck of a house with a couple of acres at auction. We weren't really in a position to do it at the time but the location was perfect so we remortgaged our existing house and sold a rental property as well as obtaining a mortgage on the new house which was pretty difficult as most lenders won't lend on a house with no kitchen or bathroom. We then sold the house we had been living in to fund the renovation and lived in a caravan on site for over a year. Financially it has been very tight as the renovation cost us more than expected but the value of it now is triple what we paid for it so it has been worth it!
 
We got our house through luck,it was lying empty and the land only about an acre was so overgrown you couldnt see the boundary and think it put people off,also was not advertised as having any land and is tucked away. Whne we moved in the farmer who owns adjoining fields allowed us to rent a couple of acres and join this from our land and we have since built 3 stables on our patch and a hay barn and a further stable and 2 shelters in the field. Feel very lucky,have been here 20 years and have never seen anywhere i love as much that we could afford.
 
We moved 3500 miles and bought a little hobby farm, 50 acres plus 10 stall barn, exercise track, blah, blah, blah.
We came over when the exchange rate was almost 2:1, our 3 bed house and 2 acres on a main street of a blink and it's gone Welsh village paid for 2/3 of this place (Bought that at the right time and got x3 9 years later)
We could never have dreamed of somewhere like this in the UK, actually, we weren't looking for it here either, this just happened to come along in the commuting area we needed.

Now our property is for sale (at less than 400K GBP) it was always just a stopgap whilst our daughter finished her schooling and until we got our Citizenship.
We are bored and need to move on, 8 years here now, close to the maximum (Welsh house) that either of us have EVER lived anywhere.
 
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Well, I went from being in a homeless hostel with a baby at 18, to a rented bedsit, to a rented house to buying a tiny 2 up 2 down derelict terrace cottage. My OH and I did all the renovation work ourselves and sold for a very good profit (although if you counted all our man hours we probably broke even!). Sold the cottage and bought a semi detached cottage with 1 acre, sand school and stables (rented a further 2 acres). Sold the semi to get our current barn conversion with 3 acres, the last move was also to accommodate OH's business as he now has his work premises on site. We built a proper arena and stables at this property. While doing all this I did a computing course, access course, cleaned toilets, was a care assistant, did a degree, professional exams and then had 2 babies. We made do and mend, go to charity shops, drive old vehicles and have never had a foreign holiday. I think this will be our final move (possibly) and keep buttering up the neighboring farmer as I would love more land, his current response is 'never say never'. We do still have a large mortgage though and I worry about interest rates going up.
 
We bought a rundown rural house (no land), then advertised in the local freeads paper (this was before the internet) for land to buy or longterm rent, with a landline number (infancy days of mobile phones too) and a guy phoned us up and offered to sell his 2 acres. It's about a mile from where we live, nice distance for a dog walk too so fits into daily routine well.
 
Had series of job moves to places that became more popular, ending up in the north where property was cheaper and bought a house no-one wanted that had been on the market for ages and needed a ton of work done on the outbuildings and boundary, which we did ourselves.
 
We bought our house years ago before they shot up in value. We wanted the house as it was the only one we could find with enough space for OH's old vehicles. It just happened to also have 3 acres. Wasn't till we got a daughter who was into horses (the local RS come up the road past us daily) got to 10 that we bought a pony, can barely afford the house now lol!
 
Apercrumbie said:
This is so true and something that terrifies me. I have completely resigned myself to not being able to afford to buy a property for a very, very long time. I seriously doubt I will ever be able to afford something with land either. It's quite a depressing prospect tbh.
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*waves* Hello generation rent. At least we'll never need to learn about fixing things.
 
I've just got the land bit set up will be moving in this August whoop whoop ! has taken three years to get to this stage everything from scratch. Can only dream I will get a house or log cabin static at some point in the future even a little glamping pod ok probably a tent ! LOL
 
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