Cazmanian_minx's new MF diary

cazmanian_minx

Morning all.

A spreadbet loss to report this week - Homeserve didn't do what I thought it would and bit £38.90 out of my winnings. I'm leaving this market alone until it figures out what it's doing; if I was a braver soul there was a ton of money to be made shorting the FTSE this week, but I'm not quite there yet.

Net debt looking low due to cash balances only. There is, however, an extra £1,000 in the mortgage offset, which is nice to see, but that's business money which is just sitting there until it's needed for a big supplier payment in about six weeks' time. There should be another £3k joining it over the next few weeks.

Going to see the mill this afternoon. Never heard back from the auction house, despite a couple of emails, so we contacted the selling solicitor direct who told us that the owners are in dispute with the auctioneers and it's now listed with them at offers over £50k. I have a horrible feeling that my husband is going to fall as much in love with the place as I am...

TallGirl

Good luck with the mill and keep us updated I remember it from last time you looked at it.

cazmanian_minx

TallGirl wrote: »

Good luck with the mill and keep us updated I remember it from last time you looked at it.

It's just as lovely as I remembered (although now stuffed to the gunnels with junk) and Mr Minx is in love with it too. If we were considerably richer than we are, or didn't have the current mortgage/house and were going to live in a caravan on site and do it, we'd be there in a heartbeat. But with our current financial situation and the very small chance that Mr Minx may be made redundant in April next year, we're being a bit more cautious and having a good hard think about it.

cazmanian_minx

Happy Friday everyone!

Still no decision on the mill, which I think is telling in itself - if we really, really wanted to go for it, we would have been on the phone to lenders first thing Monday morning. If we had £50k in cash/shares and didn't have to borrow, we'd do it in a heartbeat, but we're a bit wary of borrowing another £30,000 on top of existing commitments.

Anyway, the Friday update is pretty positive - Tesco and Egg have both had payments this morning and cash balances are high thanks to tax bill savings, so the net debt is down to its lowest point for a while. Mortgage payment day on Monday, it'll be interesting to see what the effect of having the extra cash in the offset account is (there's actually £1k more in there than my sig says, I'll update on Monday), if any. It's all going to look a lot worse again after I pay the tax bill at the end of January though :eek:

GDB2222

Out of interest, in which part of the country can you buy a mill for £50k?

cazmanian_minx

GDB2222 wrote: »

Out of interest, in which part of the country can you buy a mill for £50k?

Caithness - most people have never heard of it, but it's the county John O'Groats is in.

http://www.dreverandheddle.co.uk/upload_images/AchingaleMillpartics.pdf

Edit to add: they were originally asking £179,000 for it when it first went back on the market in July 2009, but they were expecting to get the planning permission through. They withdrew the application a few months later, don't know why, and the price has been steadily dropping ever since. They paid £51,000.

GDB2222

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Caithness - most people have never heard of it, but it's the county John O'Groats is in.

http://www.dreverandheddle.co.uk/upload_images/AchingaleMillpartics.pdf

Edit to add: they were originally asking £179,000 for it when it first went back on the market in July 2009, but they were expecting to get the planning permission through. They withdrew the application a few months later, don't know why, and the price has been steadily dropping ever since. They paid £51,000.

Without planning, it's a bit of a white elephant, though.

I'm in London, so that location seems extraordinarily beautiful to me, whilst at the same time it's beyond "the back of beyond". I suspect it would take at least two days to drive there. I suppose that you are used to that sort of beauty if you live in the area.

cazmanian_minx

When we spoke to the planning officer and the listed buildings officer four years ago, they were both strongly in favour of granting permission and it did have permission 10 years ago to be converted into a tea room with residential living space above it. Having seen the plans in the auction's legal pack, it doesn't look like they were drawn up by an architect and to do something like this you really need not only a good architect but one who's trained and qualified to work on listed buildings - I seem to remember our surveyor said that the firm of architects he was attached to couldn't touch it because they didn't hold the necessary permits.

We used to live in south London - if you leave at 5am, go straight through central London to the M1 and don't stop except to change drivers, you can do it in about 14 hours! And yes, it's very, very beautiful here. Lovely as the mill is, it would be a project for us, I could never leave this view:


From the bottom field by Caro Jones, on Flickr

Sepa74

Wow, that is amazing. But the fact that no one has actually received the planning permission does indicate something else is going on - Maybe they've found a skeleton in the garden and you'll have to get Time Team in to do a dig to record the archaeology before they will grant planning permission!!

That would be cool!!!

GDB2222

The building is 5000 sq feet, which is huge. A large chunk of the roof needs to be rebuilt entirely - there's nothing there. Then you can start on the windows, the doors, the inside. All the work needs to be done to satisfy Scottish Heritage. It's incredibly romantic, but it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of Pounds. Whether there's going to be anyone around to buy it off you for say £300-500k, I can't say, as I don't know the area, but it will make it one of the most expensive buildings in the area.