How Did You Make Your Move To The Country?

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southerncomfort

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We've always had a grand plan to get us our dream countryside retreat!

We moved house several times, always buying a house that needed renovation or could be extended and then sell on at a profit. The plan was to keep doing that until we afford the dream house with land. However! Our last move was right before the housing market crash which completely floored us.

We are now desperate to move. I've always hated living in a town and it's becoming more and more built up with plans to build on even more of our green spaces. And their is a very real possibility of me losing my grazing at some point.

OH has been applying for jobs in areas where houses with land are much more affordable (we are currently in Bucks). He has been shortlisted for a couple but we need a back up plan for if he can't secure a job this year.

We have a couple of different options in mind:

a) extend mortgage and use the money to purchase land and then try and find a house nearby (this would have to be within reasonable commuting distance of OH's current job so does limit our options)

b) purchasing a house with a business (and land!) on a commercial mortgage i.e. nursery / kennels / holiday lets etc.

Any other ideas? I would love to know how other people have achieved the 'house with land in the countryside' scenario. Anyone done anything really brave like moving to the other end of the country? Anyone regret it and wish they'd stayed where they were?

Sorry for all the questions! :)
 
I'm country born and bred but OH grew up in a city. Initially he needed convincing that moving to the countryside was a good idea but once having taken the plunge he's never regretted it and I am definitely happiest in the country. We have lived in towns and cities along the way (because of OH's work rather than through choice) and it's been ok but never feels like 'us'. To keep myself mentally healthy I simply have to walk in the countryside so I used to take myself for a long meandering walk every day as though I were an ancient Labrador, ha ha.

As to how we did it. Well, we bought our first house on the edge of a large village and the second one we bought was on the edge of a much smaller village and then we moved to the edge of an even smaller village/hamlet and so on and so forth. I like your idea of buying into a commercial premises if that is something that interests you though. Do you fancy running kennels/nursery etc?
 
I'd love to move to the country. I've always been a country girl but have somehow ended up slap bang in the middle of the city.

I spend so much time looking at houses for sale in more rural places dreaming to move one day. It's so depressing to see how much more you get for your money in pretty much any other part of the country - 1.6m here will get you a four-bed terrace. In Lancs that would get you a seven-bed estate with land.

AirBnB is a God-send for weekends away in beautiful, rural cottages.
 
We are just going through this - I have lived in rural and suburban areas forever, OH is a town and city person. We've done it purely by luck to be honest, we live in an area where house prices have shot up, couple that with the fact that OH has a very good job, my job is decent, we have the means to afford our dream countryside property. Concessions are being made though, the new house is over an hour away from where we live currently, its further for me to work (about same for OH) and we are going from a place with lots of amenities, to a place with not many in the immediate area (a few amenities in the nearby village).
It's going to be a complete lifestyle change for us, OH will take some time to adjust but he is excited to move.
 
I married a shepherd who lives and works on a 15,000 acre Scottish Estate :D Not sure that would work for you given you already have an OH! ;)
 
Oh, I forgot but, as SpringArising says, it's far more do-able if you don't aim for the more affluent areas of the country/posh villages. Not that they'd let OH and me into a posh village anyway :o
 
We went from a rented flat in Berks and jumped straight to a detached 3 bed family home (so in theory missing out the typical starter home!) further from London in Bucks and then last year we sold and moved to a barn conversion with 3 acres and stables even further from London and civilisation also in Bucks. We have stretched ourselves, the move was more for me to be honest and it is tough going at times having your own land and everything is a five + minutes drive.

I dont personally think we are that remote although friends and family think we are in the back end of nowhere now .... I dont think such a place exists in Bucks to be honest but thats just my opinion!You 'could' say we are very rural, I would say rural ish, lol!

Moving into the country isnt easy. You are the 'newbie townies' for a VERY long time! People move to the country to get away from people so dont always expect everyone to be friendly. Do have a bottomless pit of money and from my experience dont dare ask anyone for favours! We live just outside a small village in a cluster of barn conversions ... its very clicky! You get two types in the nearest village .. the townies and the webbed fingers who were born there ... they dont like newbies much!!
 
We also took a walloping on our last house during the crash. we did it by saving like mad, buying a property that wasn't marketed as a small holding or equestrian property and also one thats 45-75mins commute for us both in opposite directions. Its also up a hill, very exposed and the house was built by cowboys. And OH is a townie so I had to move him out of Edinburgh in carefully planned stages ;) if I had tried to move him here from Leith I'd never have seen him again lol.
 
we did your option a. TBH wish we hadn't. no want to sell but land is separate from the house so will incur CGT. And its so isolated here just a village full of commuters and old people some with dementia its awful. I've grown to hate the place. if I could persuade my husband to sell his horse it would be good I'm not really that interested in them and don't ride anymore myself. I feel like an unpaid groom infact I am an unpaid groom. I would love to move back to the city where there are cafes and shops and young people.
 
i rented out my house and rented a house with land/stables. did this twice (for 3 years) and then was in a position to sell my city house and buy in the area I was living. The rent I received was much more than the mortgage I was paying (yes had to pay tax on the profit) which helped pay the rent not eh house and land I was living in. It also gave me the opportunity to see that I am happy living a country life :)
 
Downton Dame said:
we did your option a. TBH wish we hadn't. no want to sell but land is separate from the house so will incur CGT. And its so isolated here just a village full of commuters and old people some with dementia its awful. I've grown to hate the place. if I could persuade my husband to sell his horse it would be good I'm not really that interested in them and don't ride anymore myself. I feel like an unpaid groom infact I am an unpaid groom. I would love to move back to the city where there are cafes and shops and young people.
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Sounds as though there would be plenty of takers on here if you wanted to swap your OH!!!
 
We made a killing on our first property during a housing boom and gradually reduced our mortgage over the years by buying projects and doing them up for a profit. We kind of meandered into country life as OH never really wanted to move back to the countryside (he grew up in rural Donegal and doesn't have very fond memories of it for a variety of reasons) but our kids hated town life and wanted their own ponies and he agreed to give it a go for their sakes. Now we all love it! We have found that a town to country move was tricky as we really didn't realise how much of a country life we wanted. The first country move we did as a family, to Cheshire, wasn't rural enough - busy roads, ever expanding village and access to a great bridlepath being blocked by a landowner, leaving us with nowhere to go. So after 18 months we decided to head up to the Scottish Borders (I have family up here so know Scotland well) and it is much more rural, the riding is fab and land is cheaper. I have also found people welcoming in both places and have found my farming neighbours very happy to do favours. Our last neighbour took our muck trailer away, helped out with any repairs that needed doing and was always happy to give advice as I got to grips with managing land and a yard. Our new neighbours have accompanied us out on hacks to show us the routes, one farmer came down with a fork lift the day we moved in to help us shift stable mats having never met us before in his life and generally, everyone gets on very well. There is always someone who is hard to get along with but they live in towns too, there are just more of them. Yes, we will be newbies for a long time but honestly, that just doesn't bother me!
 
We had two tricks, first of all to make ourselves homeless so we could be without a chain, then to move to a less affluent area.

The area change meant a longer commute, 80 miles, and being in the middle of nowhere is inconvenient at times, but that was the trade off between a very ordinary 3 bed semi and a 5 bed farmhouse with stables, arena and land!

They accepted a lower off from us because we were well along with the sale of our old house, and then because they were in a rush the purchase caught up with the sale of our old house, and it did end up happening on the same day.

I do like where we live, the only disadvantage has been when getting a new job there was less choice and a bigger area. However, the distance ,at be more, but often there is not much traffic so the journey is more relaxed.
 
Snowy Celandine said:
Oh, I forgot but, as SpringArising says, it's far more do-able if you don't aim for the more affluent areas of the country/posh villages. Not that they'd let OH and me into a posh village anyway :o
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I agree we live right next to the main roads, I hack on a dual carriage way for goodness sake (bridle path before anyone has a heart attack BTW ;D) and housing estates popping up and still get the 'country' feel down our tiny road.

Honestly hardly anyone knows our road is here so leave us alone - we could have a far... and no-one would notice no jokes we're like a little community, helping each other out and there's even a couple of small yards down my road too!

Our only problem is turnout it's brill :D!
 
Remortgaged the 3 bed city flat on to a maximum value buy to let mortgage and at the same time released the capital it had accumulated since purchasing it a couple of years previously. Used that lump of capital as a deposit on a crappy farm that needed a load of work, and got a normal mortgage on that. Rented out the city flat, which yielded sufficient to cover BOTH mortgages, meaning that I could take a job with much lower pay within sensible commuting distance from the farm. Lived without doing the farm up for a few years, then eventually sold the city flat when its value had increased again to have some equity, and put that money in to the farm.

Tricky at the time, but worked out well and I was definitely a beneficiary of the high cost of rental property in some cities.

It's all about moving from high cost city/urban property to a low cost rural area and still being able to earn a living somehow in that rural area.

I miss: late night take-aways, early morning papers, the colour-culture-creativity of city life, but if you buy well you can live in the middle of nowhere and still be in your chosen city within a couple of hours by train, and in fact some of the furthest routes have the fastest trains. I moved from the hip east end of London to the borderlands between England and Wales, and thanks to a great train service and no traffic on the roads to the nearest mainline station I can be in London in 90 minutes, which is less than some of my friends commute from outer London in to town.
 
southerncomfort said:
Anyone done anything really brave like moving to the other end of the country?
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How about moving to a different country, does that count?

I'm a city lass originally (Leeds) and my OH is a townie but always wanted to live out in the country and I wanted my own land for my horse. We did the same as you, buying renovation projects and selling at a profit, and had managed to get as far as a decent semi in a Somerset village with no mortgage. That was where we stuck though, having had no mortgage getting a big one wasn't enticing, and for detached with land in Somerset it would have needed to be a very big one!

So we moved to county Mayo Ireland and bought a smallholding from the sale of our house with a bit left over. It was pretty scary, but has mostly worked out okay. The shortage of programmers over here meant I was able to get a better paid job relatively easily, and I've gone from a 45 min commute to a 5min one as I work from a local hotdesk thanks to the e-fibre broadband rollout. We are in a small village and everyone has been very friendly and welcoming, its got a good mixture of ages and of natives vs blow-ins.

Although we are rural we are not totally remote, they've recently improved the road so its only about 25mins to Galway city now, and I go down to Dublin occasionally for work - either there and back in a day or staying over in the work-owned flat and getting an evening in the city - its motorway all the way so an easy enough trip.

Its not been easy, the place was a wreck (barely liveable) and is still a work-in-progress though we have the kitchen and bathroom done now so not so bad. Probably the biggest unexpected challenge has been fencing, we didn't realise how bad the dry stone walls are until we got here. We also have too much land (and way too much grass) so are looking into options for a bit of small-scale farming at the moment. I love having my boy just outside and being able to have him live out happily and healthily with company, its also made a massive difference to the time and money involved in keeping him, but from a riding point of view its been a big negative so far - I'm just too busy with getting the house and outbuilding done up and cannot ride in the evenings when its dark with no school. Longer-term this should improve though, I'm hoping to get transport sorted which will make a big difference.

I've kept a blog about the move (mostly about doing the property up) if anyone is interested: http://towercottage.weebly.com/
 
Lovely little blog Laura :) Your cottage looks good. We're doing something similar, albeit in England even though OH is half Irish, ha ha. I'd love more money so that we could so things faster but it gives you a sense of satisfaction when you do things yourself and make the house better all the time.
 
Snowy Celandine said:
Lovely little blog Laura :) Your cottage looks good. We're doing something similar, albeit in England even though OH is half Irish, ha ha. I'd love more money so that we could so things faster but it gives you a sense of satisfaction when you do things yourself and make the house better all the time.
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Thanks :) Yes, the speed of progress does get frustrating but its also nice to look at the finished bits and think "we did that". I think the blog is as much for us as anything, when it feels like your getting no-where its good to look back at the old pictures and realise how far you've come. Its a balancing act though isn't it, at the moment its finishing the utility room vs cutting down a row of sycamore trees and in good weather the trees tend to win making utility room progress slow (but the AM risk will be much lower this autumn :) ).
 
I am plagued with sycamores :( It's a huge worry. I'm currently getting quotes to get them taken down. That's one job OH and I can't manage as they are huge. Why couldn't they have been beech trees or something else innocuous?
 
WorkingGSD said:
I married a shepherd who lives and works on a 15,000 acre Scottish Estate :D Not sure that would work for you given you already have an OH! ;)
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Close, I'm originally from Surrey, but I married a Cumbrian farmer 15 years ago, currently in the process of selling that farm to buy a smaller one in Northumberland.
 
I was lucky OH was as keen to move out of suburbia as I was, but Cheshire was and is a very expensive area. We found a single storey cottage that did not make its reserve at auction over in North Staffs just outside Peak Park area. It was in a really bad state, but had land we could keep ponies on. We sold our house and moved with my sister whilst we got the basics in like plumbing and electrics installled. We both had longer journeys to work but they were under an hour.

We have slowly over the years extended as we can afford to get the house we are now very happy with. Early costs were stables, fencing and storage and the house came second to that, but if you are living in a place where you feel happy and settled it is surpring what you can manage without.
 
Try and move somewhere completely outside the box. I'm a southerner who moved to Northumberland a year ago and I've never looked back. Property is cheap, land is plentiful and the people are lovely.
The south east is getting more and more unaffordable.
 
Thanks so much for all the replies. Really glad I started this thread as I often wonder if we'd be mad to do it and now I'm even more fired up!

We currently live in a suburban area right on the edge of glorious countryside. Couldn't in a million years afford to buy in the countryside down here though. Property prices are some of the highest outside of London and land prices have rocketed as their isn't much left that hasn't been developed now.

I must say I love the look of Northumberland. The landscape just really appeals to me.

Can I ask a slightly sensitive question? For those that have moved to Ireland / Scotland / Wales from England....did you ever encounter any anti-english sentiments?
 
southerncomfort said:
Off to read Laura's blog! :)
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I'm afraid I can't recommend it, you'll just be left with a vague sense of being rather envious and unsatisfied with your current life. Then you'll spend the morning trying to work out how you could also move to Ireland but also retain a moderately well paying job. By lunchtime you'll be feeling despair and all out jealousy. Aside from all those unfortunate side effects, it's a very good blog....! I've probably read too much of it now and should go and concentrate on some work.
 
southerncomfort said:
Thanks so much for all the replies. Really glad I started this thread as I often wonder if we'd be mad to do it and now I'm even more fired up!

We currently live in a suburban area right on the edge of glorious countryside. Couldn't in a million years afford to buy in the countryside down here though. Property prices are some of the highest outside of London and land prices have rocketed as their isn't much left that hasn't been developed now.

I must say I love the look of Northumberland. The landscape just really appeals to me.

Can I ask a slightly sensitive question? For those that have moved to Ireland / Scotland / Wales from England....did you ever encounter any anti-english sentiments?
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I am Cumbrian and moved to the Scottish Borders ten years ago and I own a cottage in Glen Etive in the Highlands to which I hope to eventually retire. I can honestly say I have never come across an anti-English sentiment in the people I have met in person. Anti-english comments were rife all over FB (and other areas of the internet) when we had the Indyref but they were not supported by anyone I know personally.
 
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