Have I lost the plot or is this manageable?

[UpSticks9]

We have fallen in love with a property in the countryside (not far from where we are now) which has land. It’s our dream so I need to know if that is currently clouding my judgement.

Property would triple our current mortgage costs and would need £200k to extend and renovate.

Once bills are paid, we would be left with £1600 a month. We don’t have children but plan to have them in the next 3-5 years. It seems very doable right now but we I am happy to be told otherwise by people who have similar disposable income.

That £1600 would need to cover savings/ investments, anything child related (in the future), holidays, new cars, etc.

Are you both in jobs that if you were laid off could walk into the same type easily?

Depending on any animals you may want to keep remember they can incure vet bills, so a handful of chickens fine.

Fencing/tree pollarding needs keeping on top of and you can quite easily do yourself as with other maintenance, you'll learn along the way, but remember sometimes hidden costs will be inevitable.

The years really do fly by and if you can see it as a forever home I'd say if you can, and you're willing to knucle down and be prepared to do some of the harder work yourselves and get through those days where you shake your head and wonder what the heck you're doing go for it, you'll learn to tighten your belts if need be where it's needed.

If it's something you really want
don't look back in years to come and wonder if you could have done it.

This. The time you'll need just isn't there and you havent got enough spare to pay a nanny (if youd go down that road anyway). Have kids first, find out what a huge amount of additional work it is then plan to move when they're in school?

Just in perspective @UpSticks9. Back in 1994 when ds was born, we stretched, but not ridiculously and factored in one of us not working in the forseeable. No land, just a 100ft garden.

By the time ds was 15 months, I had given up work because he was a chronic asthmatic. I can't begin to explain how tights things were in that first year. Every single penny mattered. Life happens.

I think you need to talk to your parents about the farming side (and if they quit why they did) to get what it is you are buying because you need to make sure you do not have rose coloured glasses on

then if it is what you want commit but get the sacrifices that it is likely to be campervan holidays and keeping cars

I also think uou need to have a honest chat with grandparents about childcare as well because if they aren’t on board either

It’s only 8 acres (which I should have clarified because “land” might sound like a full blown farm) but we have access to tractors without buying one for now and we would need to get to grips with what we felt we needed.

We both work 40 hours a week but that will condense to 4 days in 3-5 years when we decide to have a family. It will be a team effort I guess! We live in a farming community so 8 acres seems very very doable considering I have friends who have 100s acres of land and did just fine.

How are you going to do all the work yourselves when you have children? They are pretty time consuming.

What is the acreage?

Luckily, yes! DH could work for himself (trade) and I could walk into a role fairly easily albeit not as easily as DH.

Op, I don't think it's the money that's the issue here. I think the problem will be time. I say this as a single parent of two older kids who works full time from home but can't even find the time to plant up and maintain a greenhouse! Children- especially little ones- take up SO much time and energy. I don't think you can look after 8 acres, work full time jobs and bring up small children. You will exhausted yourselves x

My brother has 6 acres. I think you're going to struggle like heck condensing to 4 days and having a family, with this on top.

I don't think a smallholding is proportionally 'easier' than a working farm - you won't have the infrastructure, and every time you need to do something you'll need to go borrow that tractor (plus whatever else you need)? I mean, it's not as if 8 acres takes 100 times less time/effort than 800.

I would think about 8 acres less like a tiny, easy version of a farm and more like a huge, difficult version of a garden - then you get a sense of how much of a pain it might be. If you're happy to let it go to rack and ruin for 5-10 years while the children are little (and if you have neighbours who won't go ape shit about unmaintained fences/hedges) maybe it's fine, and you will happily pull it back into order once your kids are in secondary school. But if you are thinking about actively using the land, then it feels as if you don't really have the time - you might if you ended up working part-time or in a different line of work, but then that'll have an impact on budget? Worth thinking what it is you really want.

(I do absolutely get the lure of the dream property, btw!)

Do it OP. Just be sure to save plenty when you’re pregnant before you go on mat leave to go towards your half of the bills etc.

Life’s too short to constantly worry about what ifs!

Rent out the land.

8 acres is not a smallholding. It's barely more than a paddock.

Would anyone want it?!

Grandparents on one side got a divorce and the farm was sold as part of the divorce, and the other side sold when my mum’s father passed away. Neither would have sold the farms had they not had to.

They had proper farms. What we are looking at is a “small holding” of 8 acres so it’s apples and pears really.

Grandparents have all offered to help with childcare but I won’t base life decisions on an offer of help!

Yes.

It must vary from place to place - I've never happened to live in a part of the UK where 8 acres of farm land, on a short-term rental, would appeal to anyone. But perhaps there are places where someone would want it. Struggling to imagine what someone would do with it, though - if rented out for a paddock the OP would surely still need to maintain boundaries, which defeats the object rather.

You’ll be permanently skint but if it provides the lifestyle you want you might consider that an acceptable scenario.

I wouldn’t go near it based on the numbers you are quoting. Not even close.

Where are you in your careers? We stretched ourselves to buy the house we are in now, with the hope that we would both progress in our careers up the ladder and earn more, which we did. These days we can easily afford the house + some luxuries, but it was very tight during the nursery years.

I would be less keen to take on something which would be a similar stretch these days because we are both now at the peak of our earning capacity, there are no further promotion opportunities for either of us. If you're at a stage in your career where you could see further development and there is a path you could follow than I'd go for it.

£1600 will barely cover you childcare bill. At £80 per day you'll be about £1k a month for 3 days pw.

Then you've got... car, food, fuel, gas, electric, insurances, WiFi, haircuts, clothes, Xmas, birthdays, social/leisure, phones, council tax.
Also anything for an emergency such as a car repair or the washing machine packs in. It would just be too tight for me, you'd have a nice house but life would not be fun.

could you rent out the land easily? It wouldn’t bring in much but this could relieve you of the obligation to work it and help pay for its upkeep

What do you want the land for?

It depends on what you want your lifestyle to be really. For comparison, me and DH have £1k each after all bills are paid (including overpaying the mortgage and also including nursery and wraparound fees) and after food for the month. We live fairly comfortably on that, we save for ourselves and DCs, have one abroad holiday and a couple of UK long weekends each year, family days out and our DCs do extracurricular activities. We have enough that we coud afford a tutor for them if needed when they are older. I wouldn't want less than that as I wouldn't want to compromise on lifestyle for DCs or their opportunities/futures.

It's your dream place so I would say go for it. Budget wise it sounds fine. Time wise you will have an issue if you want to do something with the land but you could rent it out or just let it be and do little with it until you have time in the future.

Go for it! If it's your dream property and you have £1600 pcm available and you're young and fit, then just do it. If you spend your lives being so risk-averse that you never follow your dreams, then your lives might be safe but also dull as ditch water and small and tight and smothering.

On a more prosaic level, check out the cess pit/drainage situation properly: it’s quite unusual to have a cess pit, and they need regular, expensive emptying. If it’s a septic tank, you may be required to replace it under new regulations. We inherited a failing septic tank when we moved into our current (ex-farm)house, and not only did the replacement treatment plant cost the best part of £20k, the negotiation with planning/environment regarding the output was painful and protracted.

How remote is it? On the days you are both working compressed hours ( 8-6?) is there a nursery nearby that will let you drop off before 8, pick up after 6 and still have time to do your ten hours of work?