the daydream fund challenge thread

lostinrates

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

City no-goods look further afield now I think. :mad:
.

TBF I think local to us the no-goods are probably local born and raised as much as shipped in.

They never take any of the wretched heads of mess and rubble though......we have literally hundreds of tonnes of the stuff in various places.

rhiwfield

CTC, that must have felt awful! Hope the police catch the b******s.

Alfie, Lir, CTC, thanks for your ideas, will be giving it a rest for a few days tho, the grass is so sodden that I really must stop dithering and get the hen's winter run built.

Had gd3 around yesterday and we were saving seed from runner beans and borlotti beans. So she counts out 2 runners for mum and dad, then 3 borlottis for her and her sisters to make her bean family which went in an old marge tub. Very cute Then she went on to also make her nursery class (in another tub) and her teachers (who had a staffroom tub to themselves!)

Lotus-eater

rhiwfield wrote: »

Had gd3 around yesterday and we were saving seed from runner beans and borlotti beans. So she counts out 2 runners for mum and dad, then 3 borlottis for her and her sisters to make her bean family which went in an old marge tub. Very cute Then she went on to also make her nursery class (in another tub) and her teachers (who had a staffroom tub to themselves!)

I don't mean to preach and I'm sure you know it, but just in case, do be very careful with kids and dried beans. Especially if you have toddlers around, who are in the "put anything in my mouth stage" and a bean may fall on the floor
They can be extremely poisonous when raw.

Davesnave

we just came home now for lunch ( we havent done this in ages) and found somone pinching our scrap it isnt really scrap, as its bits for a trike and bikes etc

A very nasty experience, which I hope the police will follow -through on now you've asked them to. They may do a check on the people to see if they can find anything else in their possession which has gone 'missing.' You could end up doing some other unfortunate person a favour too.

Meanwhile, commiserations for having such an unpleasant homecoming.

Rosee, I don't think anyone knows how smallholding prices will hold up in West Wales, or anywhere else, though personally, I feel that the softening of prices will continue for some time. Along with lostinrates and her DH, we found that the hard bit was finding something that worked on many levels, monetary and emotional. At least the stagnant market allows you the time to do that too.

Too tired this morning to say much, as our fencing guys made us work a ten hour day yesterday! The best part was knowing that half of the cost was being offset by the creation of logs for 2012.:)
Two largish trees had to come down, but that has left more space for the oaks and other valuable wildlife/landscape trees.

rozeepozee

alfie_1 wrote: »

http://www.smallholding-wales.co.uk/index.php/#forsale try this site [am i allowed to do this?]

Thanks, Alfie. yes I think you can put a link in a post but not in a signature.

And thanks for the link. I have seen that site before and there's another in Wales too that also specializes in smallholdings but I was wondering if anyone had any insights into the market. For example, I am seeing prices reduced but I've no idea what they are actually selling for and what would be a realistic offer to submit (how much under the asking price). I have done some research into what some of the properties have sold for in the past but many haven't been sold since the records began so that doesn't really help and it's not like buying a house in the city, where there will be many similar properties in the same street, so it's not possible to compare like that...

Does anyone know if the country cottage/house market is holding up better than the rest of the market? And who buys these properties? They are "niche" purchases I suspect and maybe being a cash buyer isn't that unusual and doesn't give me the advantage that I hope it will.

Questions and dilemmas....

This is crunch time now. We need to do a proper [business] plan and budget (how did those who have done it work this out/plan?) and see if we can do this without placing scarey financial pressure on ourselves. If we can find a suitable property, do we buy and move or do we stay where we are in a very secure financial position with no worries but little challenge? The perspective is somewhat different now we have 3 kids...

[we cross posted Dave - all my posts take ages to do as I get interrupted all the time ) thanks for your views. Do you have any gems of wisdom on the planning/budgeting side of things please? (when you're not so tired)

lostinrates

rozeepozee wrote: »

Does anyone know if the country cottage/house market is holding up better than the rest of the market? And who buys these properties? They are "niche" purchases I suspect and maybe being a cash buyer isn't that unusual and doesn't give me the advantage that I hope it will.

IMO the best and only way to get a picture is to start monitoring comprehensively the market in the area you are interested in and check every sale price. We did this for around three years!

My family have something on the market in SW and have been told that as summer progressed into auntum its the over £3 million ish properties that are really doing well in their area, late spring summer it was the £1.5 millionish properties that did well, with other more traditional smallholding/country properties languishing a bit. That is obviously very specific to their area. Its also worth noting that some of the small holdings round there have languished on the market since before Credit crunch. Our considerably humbler purchase had dallied for over a year, in fact it had been UO or exchanged a few times, but fell through everytime.

We changed our offer twice, going up and down, and feel we got something with wriggle room in the current market for drops.

In my very humble opinion I would be surprised if largish smallholdings shot up, and expect smaller smallholdings to do OK as some people downsize to stabilise outgoings. But who knows what the pattern is where you a looking

Cash is always good, and I have seen a lot of forced sales of smallholdings and some types of farm in the last couple of years. But yes, there are other cash buyers.

At times monitoring prices etc seemed like a huge job. This sort of sale is often outside of the normal indices for checking ''house prices'', so you need to phone up the auction houses etc. There is no one pattern across the market It changes in tiny areas across regions (at one point it seemed we were looking across most of southern England and it was weirdly erratic).

Being ready to move quickly (having surveyors etc to contact in the area, having a lawyer ready to go) was key for us. We ending up in a situation we had 2 weeks ...9 working days, to exchange, then 28 days to complete. For us it was more complicated as there was financing involved, but still, its a bit of a head long rush and our sellers tried to use the panic to move our offer upwards. Being confident in the background I had done on the area, the specific area and finally the property itself made me stay strong, (before the final offer we had negotiated somewhat over parcel of land and price) and resist the urge to be caught up in a panic and run with them.

choille

Sorry to hear of your scumbag visitors CTC. Seems to be more of that sort of thing going on everywhere - price of scrap an all that.
Haven't been keeping up with everyone's posts - hope every one's fine.

Haven't been doing much as weather has been pretty disgusting.

Have to spend another Winter in the caravan which I'm not too thrilled about.

All the best all.

lostinrates

choille wrote: »

Have to spend another Winter in the caravan which I'm not too thrilled about.

All the best all.

I hope the winter is milder for your sake.

choille

I hope so too - last one was a cracker.......

alfie_1

rozeepozee wrote: »

Thanks, Alfie. yes I think you can put a link in a post but not in a signature.

And thanks for the link. I have seen that site before and there's another in Wales too that also specializes in smallholdings but I was wondering if anyone had any insights into the market. For example, I am seeing prices reduced but I've no idea what they are actually selling for and what would be a realistic offer to submit (how much under the asking price). I have done some research into what some of the properties have sold for in the past but many haven't been sold since the records began so that doesn't really help and it's not like buying a house in the city, where there will be many similar properties in the same street, so it's not possible to compare like that...

Does anyone know if the country cottage/house market is holding up better than the rest of the market? And who buys these properties? They are "niche" purchases I suspect and maybe being a cash buyer isn't that unusual and doesn't give me the advantage that I hope it will.

Questions and dilemmas....

This is crunch time now. We need to do a proper [business] plan and budget (how did those who have done it work this out/plan?) and see if we can do this without placing scarey financial pressure on ourselves. If we can find a suitable property, do we buy and move or do we stay where we are in a very secure financial position with no worries but little challenge? The perspective is somewhat different now we have 3 kids...

[we cross posted Dave - all my posts take ages to do as I get interrupted all the time ) thanks for your views. Do you have any gems of wisdom on the planning/budgeting side of things please? (when you're not so tired)

http://www.mouseprice.com/ this site , if you know post code will tell you what price was paid for recent/past sold houses. hope this helps!! [ im a mind of useless information ,until someone needs it anyway!!]