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06/01/2014 – Our solicitor agreed to act for us
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10/01/2014 – Barclays proposed a mortgage offer
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13/01/2014 – We signed up to the Barclays proposal
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24/01/2014 – Barclays said offer would be made ‘in the next week’
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31/01/2014 – Agreed the offer to be put to the seller
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03/02/2014 – Seller has agreed in principle to the offer price, provided we complete by end-February
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12/02/2014 – Formal offer for purchase submitted to seller
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14/02/2014 – Discovered Barclays still have a charge on our current property from our previous mortgage, this must be removed before the re-mortgage can be agreed
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16/02/2014 – Formal mortgage offer from Barclays
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19/02/2014 – Barclays say 5-6 days to remove charge on our current property
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20/02/2014 – My solicitor thinks end-February is not on to complete sale
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26/02/2014 – Charge removed on my current property
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10/03/2014 – Barclays handed over the money
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11/03/2014 – First mortgage payment went out of my bank account
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18/03/2014 – Qualified acceptance of our purchase offer
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29/04/2014 – Visited our solicitor to see what was happening
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03/06/2014 – I was contacted by the seller to complain about the lack of progress, saying it could be grounds for them withdrawing the offer
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11/06/2014 – Follow up call from the seller saying nothing has happened
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18/07/2016 – My solicitor aims to submit the final offer by 25th July
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07/08/2014 – Final offer submitted to seller
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08/08/2014 – Transferred part of the purchase price to my solicitor
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11/08/2014 – Transferred remaining money
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29/08/2014 – Phoned by my solicitor saying purchase had been completed
Tag Archives: Buying
The 2012 Planning Permission
East Byreleask steading has planning permission, reference APP/2012/3074, submitted by the estate and due to expire late in 2015. For the purposes of understanding the layout, we mentally chopped the main building into the three sides of a rectangle that make up the ‘U’ shape around a central courtyard. Because the courtyard faces south the ‘wings’ or legs are on the western, northern & eastern sides of the rectangle.
Here are my own copies of the Approved Site Plan, Approved Ground Floor, Approved Upper Floor, Approved Elevations Sections 1, Approved Elevations Sections 2.
The Steading: The western leg of the steading is 1.5 storey and is shown as having the gable-end wall demolished and rebuilt so as to shorten the leg. It was to be a garage and store, not making use of the upper storey. It has no internal access from the rest of the steading.
The northern leg is single storey, with a narrow lie-in down both sides. The master bedroom/en-suite is against the garage, with a corridor along the southern side past two more bedrooms and a bathroom. The ‘front’ door is towards the east end on the north side into a vestibule. The ‘back’ door is almost opposite. There is a stairway running from the hallway to the upper storey of the east leg. There are a number of other external doors.
The eastern leg is also 1.5 storey, with an open-plan kitchen/diner/lounge on the ground. Above is a bedroom with en-suite and a gallery overlooking the lounge. The large opening in the south wall is retained as window. It is taller than the first floor level, hence the gallery.
So the plan is for a 4-bedroom, moderately spacious and well-appointed, dwelling. It is to be finished very much in the vernacular – granite walls re-pointed, slate roof, no external ‘decoration’. Most existing openings are to be retained as-is, with some new openings. The roof lights, which are rather small, will expand to standard 50cm x 90cm velux-style windows. PVC is a no-no, windows frames are to be stained wood. generally all fine by us. The external details are very much constrained by the usual planning considerations. For example on the visual impact from the nearest public road. It is 300m away – binoculars anyone?
We were particularly taken with the bedroom in the upper storey, it is effectively a good-sized private suite. We wondered why the west leg had been shortened and did not like the idea of the corridor on the southern side of the north leg, effectively blocking summer sun from the bedrooms. We also wondered whether we needed quite so many external doors.
The rest of the site: The small building immediately south of the steading is planned to be retained. The shed at the bottom of the plot and all the concrete is to be removed. No problems here. The foul-water drainage is a bit more challenging. The porosity testing had shown that most of the plot is clay and not suitable for a conventional soakaway from the septic tank. Instead, the architect had designed an enormous raised soakaway that dominated a chunk of the property. Hmm.
The planning permission required that the larger trees on the site are to retained. Again, no problem here, although they do need quite a bit of tlc. At present the site is a bit of a jungle, due to the nettles and perennial weeds and with most of the trees branching out just above ground level. There are quite a few sick-looking elder trees which are not protected and could usefully be removed.
The emphasis is still on the vernacular, with post and wire fencing.
What we might want to change: The wider family played ‘design a steading’ for us, with the western leg being kept its original size and used for accommodation and the upstairs to just about mirror that in the east leg. We experimented with moving the corridor to the other side of the north leg.
It was our daughter Mairi who suggested moving the public rooms to the north leg and doing away with the corridor. With the two bedrooms upstairs, she fitted one in the west leg and two in the east leg. This is pretty much what we decided we wanted, so the game turned into ‘tweaking the design’. An email to Aberdeenshire council got us the reply that keeping the west leg at the current length and re-designing the interior should not be a problem planning-wise, but would require new planning permission.
The raised soakaway is a bit of an issue, we noted that a mini sewage treatment plant producing cleaner effluent might allow us a more discrete soakaway.
Meeting the architect: It was easy to track down the architect who handled the planning permission, Stephen Browne; his name is all over the plans. He lives locally so we emailed, phoned him and arranged to see him, with our list of questions. Our visit was useful. He trained and specialises in designing steading conversions and could be the person for us to work with.
He had designed the western leg to be shortened so as to not overlook the farmhouse on the adjacent property. Since the farmhouse has been demolished and the new house built well away from the steading, that issue no longer applies. He saw no issues with putting bedrooms in the east and west legs and public roomn in the north leg. He did argue for keeping the internal garage. He also saw no issues around getting new planning permission. He thought ‘something’ could be done about the soakaway for the septic tank.
So that was that. Now it was just the little matter of buying the property.
Still buying…
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06/01/2014 – Our solicitor agreed to act for us
-
10/01/2014 – Barclays proposed a mortgage offer
-
13/01/2014 – We signed up to the Barclays proposal
-
24/01/2014 – Barclays said offer would be made ‘in the next week’
-
31/01/2014 – Agreed the offer to be put to the seller
-
03/02/2014 – Seller has agreed in principle to the offer price, provided we complete by end-February
-
12/02/2014 – Formal offer for purchase submitted to seller
-
14/02/2014 – Discovered Barclays still have a charge on our current property from our previous mortgage, this must be removed before the re-mortgage can be agreed
-
16/02/2014 – Formal mortgage offer from Barclays
-
19/02/2014 – Barclays say 5-6 days to remove charge on our current property
-
20/02/2014 – My solicitor thinks end-February is not on to complete sale!
-
26/02/2014 – Charge removed on my current property
-
10/03/2014 – Barclays handed over the money
-
11/03/2014 – First mortgage payment went out of my bank account
-
18/03/2014 – Qualified acceptance of our purchase offer
-
29/04/2014 – Visited our solicitor to see what was happening
Buying a steading
Being ‘normal’ people, we are not sitting on a stash of money. So we would need finance to buy East Byreleask steading. We had a big advantage over most self-builders in that we own our current property outright. We wanted to follow the plan we worked out in 2013 when we were thinking about buying Mill of Leask steading; to raise the money to buy the property by re-mortgaging our current house. We would do limited work on the steading until Andy retired (31st March 2019). By that point we would have sold our current property to pay off the mortgage, and would rent locally to cover the gap. We could then move north, into a caravan, and complete the steading conversion.
That is still pretty much the master plan.
We have a Scottish solicitor on hand to do the legal bit for us; our current property had been valued, so we knew how much we could raise and afford; Barclays (Woolwich, our former mortgage provider) agreed in principle that they could hand over a wad of money.
So we pressed the button to buy. As so often, the process started slowly and took on a life of its own – at present it appears to have no obvious end in sight…
- 06/01/2014 – Our solicitor agreed to act for us
- 10/01/2014 – Barclays proposed a mortgage offer
- 13/01/2014 – We signed up to the Barclays proposal
- 24/01/2014 – Barclays said offer would be made ‘in the next week’
- 31/01/2014 – Agreed the offer to be put to the seller
- 03/02/2014 – Seller has agreed in principle to the offer price, provided we complete by end-February
- 12/02/2014 – Formal offer for purchase submitted to seller
- 14/02/2014 – Discovered Barclays still have a charge on our current property from our previous mortgage, this must be removed before the re-mortgage can be agreed
- 16/02/2014 – Formal mortgage offer from Barclays
- 19/02/2014 – Barclays say 5-6 days to remove charge on our current property
- 20/02/2014 – My solicitor thinks end-February is not on to complete sale!
Getting warmer…
With our top four choices of property for conversion ruled out, we figured there were really only three other likely prospects. We visited them in order of our ranking:
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Hillhead of Turnerhall, north of Ellon, was high up, in the middle of a working farm, with the smallish garden separated from the steading by a farm track. The best views were blocked by farm buildings. The steading was large, but was not for us and we did not spend too long there.
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We had bad vibes ahead of time about East Byreleask Steading. The steading building was huge and ‘U’ shaped, but one chunk of it was to be shortened and left as a garage/storage area, making it non-symmetric. We were not keen on the planned internal layout, with a hotel-corridor-like row of bedrooms squashed into one length of the building. Plus, I was less keen on living closer to Peterhead than Aberdeen.
Our first visit was challenging – the satnav route took us from the Ellon by-pass to a bridge that had been washed away. We backtracked and, without an OS map, struggled to find a route that actually took us where we wanted. But we got there.
It was certainly a bit of a trek over a not-brilliant farm track and the site was scruffy. But after a while we had a good feeling about it. The steading is a proper ‘U’ shape and the courtyard faces south. We were heartened, although everything looked enormous.
The adjacent property was the former farmhouse, it was close to the steading, but had been demolished. The upside was that a new house was being built down the far end of their property, well away from the steading. A downside was a vast ‘garage’ they were about to build, that would be staring us in the face across a post & wire fence. -
Finally a look at Kinellar Church, which had actually gone off the market at that point. It was large, had a smallish bit of land and was surrounded by graveyard that would not belong to us. It was also quite high up (altitude-wise) so I would expect it to be colder and windier. Other than that the building had loads of potential. Probably not what we wanted, though.
So East Byreleask went from being an also-ran to our most favoured opportunity. We went back two days later to check we still felt the same, this time with Jill’s parents, a daughter and two nieces. We went back again three days later, with Jills sister and her husband for another check out.
We were convinced and we got family backing!
More photos:
Serious Planning
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Find a property
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Raise a mortgage on our current property, a mere four years after paying off the last one.
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Buy our bit of Scotland and start converting, using savings and what time we could, until Andy retired in 2019.
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Sell up and move north permanently, paying off the mortgage and have enough capital to complete the conversion.
Right at the Beginning (first post)
To set the scene
We were in Aberdeen in August 2013 and were idly looking through the property section of the local paper, the Aberdeen Press & Journal, eyeing up rural properties. We very casually wondered whether perhaps we should think about moving back to the area. To be affordable – we currently live near Lowestoft, Suffolk, which is a low-cost area to buy/sell a house, whilst Aberdeen is very expensive – we could buy a derelict property and restore or convert it.
The thought quickly took hold, we decided we might actually want to do it, so we made the effort to look for opportunities.
We discovered the ASPC website (Aberdeen Solictors Property Centre) and searched for properties for conversion or restoration.
Having checked out most of the available properties, we concluded:
- There was a wide variety of types of properties up for sale – mills, churches, crofts, farm steadings, even a surplus-to-requirements ex-Scottish Water storage tank.
- There were few opportunities in or immediately around Aberdeen and they were relatively expensive.
- There was a range of possibilities around the three satellite towns to Aberdeen – Stonehaven to the south, Inverurie to the west and Ellon to the north.
- There are plenty of (much) more remote opportunities, affordable and often with large plots of land but not in easy reach of family.
- Most have one or more obvious, fatal, disadvantages, apart from cost!
We were most interested in large-ish farm steadings with a decent plot of land attached, within 30 minutes of Aberdeen. One, Mill of Leask Steading (AKA Foxwood House,) caught our eye. It was a good size, in a lovely sheltered location off the A90 between Ellon and Peterhead and had the potential to be a dream home. At this point we were not organised, so although we acquired a solicitor and registered an interest in the property, we were not able to move fast enough when it came to putting in an offer.
So we lost the option of buying. In retrospect the ‘offers over’ price of £170k would probably have killed us financially and we would have been unable to finish the conversion.
We licked our wounds and started planning…