What things about a rural property do I need to consider?

[Jinglebellsarenearlyhere]

So after 30 years of city life we are moving to the country. I am househunting this weekend and want to think of all the questions I need to ask / invesitage that are specific to rural life.

So far I have - time of last bus, location of taxi firm, check type of farmland that surrounds property, what type of heating / sewage / power, what is the mobile phone signal like / what are the internet facilities.

Can you think of any others?

Cost of heating. Our house is very large and rural. It is freezing.
Access issues, particularly in winter. We have to have two 4 wheel drive cars.
Rights of way etc that might annoy you
Other property specific issues such as obligations to contribute to upkeep of unadopted roads etc.
Covenants which might prevent you from working at home.

Snow!! Worth knowing what the gritting is like in the area - we live on county borders and one side is great, and one is utterly hopeless.

Broadband - it's terrible in our village and we have fairly regular phone line stoppages.

Broadband is definitely a good one to check! we moved from London 3 years ago, renovated for 12 months and finally moved in and the broadband is absolutely dire.

Also, our village has a really busy events schedule so it was really easy to meet people but it's a good idea to go to the local coffee morning if you can - seeing the odd familiar face can be a relief as it can sometimes feel a bit isolating -- esp, moving from london. But my only extra piece of advice would be - be careful what you share about yourselves, I am really open naturally and I was shocked at the number of people who knew our business and also the number of "rumours" which started as fact and then morphed into something else entirely - definitely a case of chinese whispers!

Our broadband is crap and mobile signal is appalling.

How often do they have power cuts?

Are there any chicken farms nearby (smell from those is awful when the wind is blowing in the wrong direction and/or on foggy days)?

Don't underestimate the cost of heating.

Plans to build on any of the fields around the area?

School transport (if relevant) - availability, cost, spaces on it.

Vermin - rats, mice, particularly if near arable fields (harvest = mouse season)

Sounds terrible listed like that but I love rural living!

Not just the last bus but the bus service in general including length of time to travel and cost.

Absolutely the cost to heat (and to run the aga ) especially if oil. If oil check for a village co-op scheme for buying and set one up if not.

Schooling?

Everyone will know who you are - we had welcome cards posted through our doors from the day we moved in addressed to us each by name ...

Where can you get emergency milk/chocolate - are you going to have to use your car for everything and have you factored in the petrol costs?

Mobile phone providers - only one is useable where we are.

Is there more than one walk to do locally?

Do drive through the village like nutters making you wary of when to let your children out to cycle?

How much time and effort does it take to maintain the garden?

On balance we would still have made the move ... but I am looking forward to when I can move back to a city centre.

Are they on mains gas? Lots of rural properties have oil heating which is a bit more expensive.

Power cuts

Broadband

Also, look at the land around and potential for building. We're battling housing developers in an area of Green Belt and AONB. Sigh...

Thing I wish I had known to ask about when moving from Big City to Very Rural.

Is it on the sewer network.

Does it have foundations.

Can gas be piped down here.

Is the phone/internet line of this century.

Will the post person actually deliver down here.

Does anybody move the seven tonnes of snow between me and civilisation before starvation is imminent.

Does something wierd happen to weather making it more extreme due to lack of lots of houses. Or something.

Is the electricity reliable.

Do huge flocks of sheep appear from nowhere and squat for a while. Driving all local dogs INSANE and eating all reachable plants. With some spectacular acrobatics involved.

Where does the rainfall run off go.

Is there a magic fake holy healing water guru/salesperson intent on exciting half of the nation to drive down here, and fall (with car) into the fields, in their thousands. Thus blocking residents in their houses for days at a time. While being driven bonkers.

Things like that. Which may, or may not, apply to the area you have your eye on.

Water. Not been connected to the mains water system is a bit of a pain, if your water is drawn from a well, you'll need to know when the pump was last serviced or replaced and when the quality of the water was last tested. You also need to be aware that wells can dry up and boring a new one involved lots of luck, guess work and massive expense.

Don't do unless you are minted!

oil heating is currently the cheapest form of heating, the price has dropped more than mains gas. Obviously that can change but do not make the usual assumption that oil is always more expensive. A rural property doesn't have to be old, it could be a new house with good insulation. Agas are not compulsory either.

a lot of the issues mentioned are to do with the property, rather than the area.

septic tank isn't a problem if you look after it, but I'd question no mains water.

yes, think broadband. No mobile coverage is quite a bonus, just have a landline.

you'll probably have overhead power lines. Check tree trimming (the power companies do it).

think about:

• village facilities: a shop in walking distance is brilliant, ditto a pub and a school if you need one. Think twice and three times about real isolation.
• access; minor roads don't get gritted. It does snow occasionally. Learn to use a grit bin.
• local planning; get hold of the area plan and ask about development boundaries etc. Wind farms will probably get canned after the election but think about roads, development plans; you don't want your peaceful idyll to have a huge estate of little boxes appear at the end of the garden. Especially as this will overload all local facilities.
• does everyone nearby keep a sodding dog that barks for an hour daily, plus every time someone walks past... (of course you can get this in towns too)

Yes but at other times oil has been astronomical. I filled up yesterday at less than 35p per litre but at times over the past 5 years it has been more than double that.

Depends on the house you like and if these are issues, but

don't take connections to mains water, sewerage (might be septic tank), drainage (private drains = nightmare) gas (might not be accessible, so oil fired central heating and deliveries ofCalor Gas might be a reality) for granted

Private roads and private rights of way across your land, also bridle paths etc. can be a nightmare. For instance, do you have to pay to maintain a private road to your house (or try to force anyone else to pay their share)?

Check if cows go past regularly to be milked as it can be very inconvenient and they make a mess

My biggest one is footpaths - I would never, ever buy a property with a footpath passing through again. Walkers are forever getting lost/straying from the footpath, leaving rubbish, being antisocial, allowing their dogs to go where ever they want, allowing their dogs to c**p everywhere, allowing their dogs to kill my chickens :(

Walkers are the bain of my life!

Yes, to power cuts, mobile and broadband. Also getting cut off in winter. Also ask about deliveries, not all companies use RM and some of their rivals don't deliver to rural areas.

How long it takes the emergency services to get there.

Oh, and ask about how local government works - it's likely not everything will be run by the council in the nearest large town, a lot of stuff will be done by the parish council.

We're in a village so not completely rural but issues that have come up -
Mobile signal - ours cuts out after the living room so walking to the kitchen mid call is s no no.
Broadband ours is fab but only half the village is connected.
Driveway ownership - we looked at a gorgeous house but it's mile long driveway was owned by next door. There was a right to access but the maintenance was next doors responsibility and they weren't into spending money on it, we would have had to replace both cars with 4x4 and in winter snow clearance would have to be done by is or the neighbours.
Additional costs - we drive a lot more to access things we used to walk or get the metro for. What happens if one car breaks down? We have to drive to school/shopping/work/healthcare etc.
if you need to have work done on the house where do you get them from? We're ok here but my dads rural property it's really hard to find anybody to come out at all let alone more than one quote.

I was going to add - what bus? Never mind a last bus! We drive everywhere and it is expensive. We have no mains drainage. It didn't work so we replaced it. Villagers will want to know all about you and what they don't know, they will make up. We have no gas. You cannot get it piped. Broadband is rarely over 2mb. No chance of that improving as our settlement is too small yet only 35 miles from Central London. No mobile phone signal.

Everybody is a busybody over planning applications. We have a Village Preservation Society which is really a complaints forum when people step out of line. The road here is full of potholes. We have no street lighting. We run a 4x4 because we have steep hills in and out. At one time, the children in this village attended 15 schools!! The local one was not good enough even though it was outstanding!

We have a great house and a great garden. We are surrounded by fabulous woods and the dog loves it. However, we even have to pay to be members of the village hall : it is run as a sort of club! Some villages are great. They are no doubt friendly and have a lot going on, especially if they have a village hall where everyone is welcome and a school. I have lived here for 28 years and I have seen how some villagers have treated their neighbours. It can be a very unfriendly place.

Can you cope with the increased population of flies, spiders, mice, rats, bats etc - they got to live there first, and you can bank on some of them paying you a visit! My brother relocated to the country, planted a wonderful vegetable garden. The wild rabbits cleared absolutely everything one night!

I'm a bit vague about this but it looks like septic tanks are (rightfully) about to become a bit more regulated:

www.gov.uk/permits-you-need-for-septic-tanks

Just what everyone else says, but I still love the country life.

Re the pp and potholes. Have you used the fixmystreet.com website ?

I did for the huge pothole that appeared on the pavement outside my drive. Basically, it's an independant site that directs complaints to your particular local authority. Problem range from litter, illegal tipping, to potholes and the like.

you can load up pics of the problem, add a description, and keep up with the progress of your report.

From uploading my pothole problem to it being fixed was eight days.

Brilliant!

www.fixmystreet.com

We're quite rural, most of mine have been suggested already

Mobile phone/broadband coverage

Will you be on mains gas supply?

Is it a touristy area? We're swamped in the summer - we're coastal-rural

Snow? It only snows here once in a blue moon but it does make it difficult and I'm at the end of a track which is hard to get out of in the winter when it's a mud bath

School transport - what are the rules? Our area won't provide free home to school transport if you move into an area once they've already started school. If there's no local school can you drive them?

Bus/taxis/etc - especially with older kids, how much running around are you prepared to do picking up/dropping off.

Increase in petrol/maintenance - bumping up and down our potholed muddy track does our cars no good

Muck spreading stinks!!

Local shop? Is there somewhere you can walk to when you run out of bread/milk/wine.

Power cuts

Drainage? We share a cess pit

Think about how rural you really want to be. I'm quite an introvert so am mostly quite happy not to deal with 'people' all the time, but even I crave company now and then, it's quite easy to shut yourself and not make the extra effort to get out and about and become quite isolated

I live in a really rural area, just me, neighbours a little distance away. I've got the electricity, broadband etc, all that is fine, but my big fear about living so rurally is if there is a house fire we haven't got neighbours to save us. Therefore I have loads of smoke alarms around the house.

The other thing about being rural is we've got to drive everywhere, my house was perfect when my DCs were little, no traffic, huge garden loads of places to play. Now it's the most boring place on earth for them, school, friends, clubs are all eight miles away. I do a lot of taxi-ing.