What would you do if you owned your house outright, but it was in terrible condition and you knew you didn't have the time, mental fortitude, organisational abilities or, most of all money, to sort it out?
And you had reached an age where there was little hope of you ever having much more money than your current meagre-ish life savings, which aren't enough to even begin to sort out all the things that need doing?
I've been in this place for twenty years now. It's a little two bedroom cottage in a lovely part of East London. The things that are wrong are a combination of lack of maintenance and suspected serious structural damage caused by the previous owner in the 1990s who knocked out walls, chimney breasts, stairs etc in an effort to make the place open plan... this would have been before regulations came in. There's loads more: rotting windows, sagging floors, possible asbestos, leaky plumbing, half the lights don't work, badly configured rooms... the list is endless. Really, probably it needs gutting and starting again.
I won't go into why I bought this dodgy property twenty years ago... I can only say it seemed to make sense at the time. Now it feels like the worst mistake I ever made. Since I did, I've faced the death of the relative who was going to help me sort out the place, redundancy, a scary medical diagnosis and umpteen recon surgeries. I'm now working part time and helping to look after very elderly parent who is an hour away by public transport (I don't drive).
I can't take this stress any longer. So...am I crazy to be considering selling my house off as a project for someone who knows what they are doing and has the money to do it? To buy a snug, affordable flat instead, where all I'll have to worry about is what colour to paint the walls? I don't think so, yet everyone I talk to (including aforementioned elderly parent) tells me "You're getting rid of a FREEHOLD property and buying a flat? You're a fool!!!
I'm not a fool, am I?