holiday homes: lower mill estate

silvercar

Anyone any opinion on lower mill estate in the cotswolds?

I've seen it advertised in the sunday papers and a friend asked me what I thought, but I don't know anything about second homes.

http://www.lowermillestate.com/

Doozergirl

My sister in law went to see them. Said they were lovely but very small/extremely overpriced (delete as applicable!)

I just wish I'd had that idea, lol!

They were in the market btw, they bought a place down in Devon instead.

Welshwoofs

Silvercar - don't bother

Do a search for the area 'ashton keynes' on RM and you'll see what the issue is. Lower Mill is part of the bigger complex of old gravel pits which make up Somerford Keynes, Ashton Keynes and South Cerney. Most of those lakes are populated with New England style luxury holiday homes....and nobody can offload them because there were simply too many built.

They're all beautiful houses, but I very much doubt you'd ever get your money back on them. I come from that area and was renting a cottage down there last week...even last minute the holiday cottage sites were bursting with spare occupany on places like that, whereas the old stone built Cotswold cottages were booked up until October.

silvercar

Welshwoofs wrote: »

Silvercar - don't bother

Do a search for the area 'ashton keynes' on RM and you'll see what the issue is. Lower Mill is part of the bigger complex of old gravel pits which make up Somerford Keynes, Ashton Keynes and South Cerney. Most of those lakes are populated with New England style luxury holiday homes....and nobody can offload them because there were simply too many built.

They're all beautiful houses, but I very much doubt you'd ever get your money back on them. I come from that area and was renting a cottage down there last week...even last minute the holiday cottage sites were bursting with spare occupany on places like that, whereas the old stone built Cotswold cottages were booked up until October.

Interesting. It was the lake that was the attraction.

Welshwoofs

silvercar wrote: »

Interesting. It was the lake that was the attraction.

The lakes are an attraction, but there's 140 lakes in Cotswold Water Park (which Lower Mill is part of) spread over a 40 square mile area so these holiday homes on the lakes are, unfortunately, far from unique. You can download the two maps of the entire site from here

The Cotswold Water Park site has lots of information about the entire lakes area, including the Lower Mill Estate.

I guess it depends on what you want a holiday home for - if you want it for your own use alone and you're not planning on selling it for a profit it may be a good idea as there are certainly lots of facilities on these various complexes and water based sports. If your plan was to rent it out then you're competing against literally dozens upon dozens of identical holiday homes in the same area (and you're all getting your collective butts whupped by the chocolate box Cotswold stone cottages in the area) and if you plan to sell it you may have it on the market a very long time and again, have prices driven down by buyers who have many hundreds of holiday homes on those lakes to choose from.

silvercar

The plan was simply as a bolt hole; I don't think the idea was to get involved in the hassle of renting or to turn a profit. Thanks for the link, I can see on rightmove that there are smaller properties on the lake from 160k - that may be a bettter bet.