Retirement places in south east for moving from scotland

[purpletrees16]

Where is a cheap place (200k max for. 2 bed house) 2-3 hrs to London (SE postcode) that is ok to retire to?

My parents live 12 hours drive from me in Scotland and are visiting and want to check out some towns they could retire to in 2 years time. They’d like to retire to ideally day or at least weekend trip distance to me in S.E London as a lot of their friends are also retiring elsewhere and we really only see them 3 x a year.

However, the Scottish house is worth 180k at the moment, they don’t want to take a mortgage as pensioners. Nor will they accept help. I am for the sake of ease assuming house prices rise and fall in tandem.

Is there anywhere ok that they can live or is this a pipe dream? Dover? Gosport? Isle of wight? Anywhere that I am missing? They love the sea. Current location isn’t exactly amazing so they aren’t expecting the Rivera but your money does go a lot further in Scotland.

They won’t do a flat - need a garden for the dog and had a bad experience with neighbours ( and a fire caused by them) if it’s a flat or nothing they might stay put.

Thinking of where to put in for a road trip! (This is in a few months so hopefully after COVID is lower.)

@DGFB

Eastbourne is nice, on the sea, and you could get a terrace for that price, might need a bit of work. Hastings but it can be a dump. Other places on the coast are too expensive.. Worthing etc.

You'd struggle to get a 2 bed terrace in a nice area in Eastbourne for £200k. You could get a lovely flat for that but if they're set against that their money won't go far.

Truly we can hope that this trend to move to the sea continues to Scotland! (All house prices don’t necessarily last for ever - with this you can guess the city but in 2015 a neighbour sold their identical house for £250k. The 180k is based of the sale of same house being resold by the person who bought it.. so perhaps it can rise relative to other places again).

Some good places to have a look at - I went to Lincoln for a long weekend once and it had a lot of nice cafes. Good cathedral.

Mum is excited about choirs so probably looking at places bigger than villages anyway so she can line up her music taste. She has asked me what the “choir scene” is like in these suggestions… one for a deeper post COVID google.

Is Ipswich nice? (Though I should probably go by the house price and suggest not so much.)

Hadn’t really considered that the train to Wales was so short!

Have you looked chichester? A nice town, and about 20 minutes to west wittering which is a lovely area? May get something outskirts of Chichester for 200k.

Ipswich is a Port town

Like Dover, not the best place to live to be honest, but houses prices are cheaper

The villages around Sittingbourne or the Isle is Sheppey.

We've just been to Dumfries on holiday and spent 2 weeks looking a how cheap house prices are there and how we'd like to retire there from the East Midlands. I doubt they'll get much I'm afraid because there's such a marked difference in house prices between the SE and Scotland.

You'd be very very pushed to find anything in that price range around Chichester. The race for space has pushed the prices up there...and it was already a premium priced area.

It’s partly to do with how you buy houses - the home report value is the max mortgageable
Value so anything over you have to have in cash on top of your deposit. So homereport says 180k, you offer 200k. That means to have a 25% mortgage you need cash of 45k in deposit, 20k to pay the over value, and then Stamp duty and fees of 2-3k.

But in England you can take your 65k and either get a 260k house on a 25% mortgage, or pay even lower interest .

But in England you can take your 65k and either get a 260k house on a 25% mortgage, or pay even lower interest .

I'm interested in what you say here...I'm in Scotland.

Do the mortgage companies operate differently in England? Don't they also offer mortgages based on valuation surveys?

They do but they generally always see the price you offer as the price the market will tolerate… unless there’s a problem (like proximity to a restaurant (?!) or supermarket or a structural issue) that they think you over offer.

The Scottish hot market thing where 10 people all put in bids over the asking would mean in practise the valuation would probably match what you paid or if it doesn’t then the home owner often agrees to adjust the price down at that stage knowing everyone will have that issue.

So it’s either that banks are more likely to use the sold price since It comes first or houses are less likely to sell over home report value… or a bit of both!

But what it amounts to is that most people only pay what the mortgage company agrees to so you don’t need any extra money.

In slow times it’s the same in Scotland - it’s just when it goes mad there it always seems to be a person rather than bank’s risk!

Westgate, near Margate is nice and very reasonable.

I have say Norfolk to various parts of the SE will be more than a 2-3 hour drive due to traffic, it can be an utter nightmare!

Finishing my rant… this is why house prices will rise faster in England - if you need to offer more you’re still only paying 25% of what you offer but in Scotland you pay 100% and psychologically you have a piece of paper from a bank that says what the house is worth.

I had 2 houses fall through (post my DIP mortgage approval) so shall 3 valuations last year. All had my offer price in the box as valuation and one I’d offered 15k over asking.

2-3 hours to London could be Bristol! I'd look around the SW if they are happy with the train. Far more likely to get something in budget there than the SE

My thoughts are anything is better than 8-12 hours. I need to make sure that they can easily get a bus or taxi to the station at an ok journey time/price but in general they prefer public transport.

(This is because neither thinks the other one can drive particularly well and long journeys are the only but inevitable cause of arguments recently in their 35 year marriage. They long ago decided that if there’s a train that works then it’s better for everyone’s holiday.)

Westgate-on-sea

Where do you actually live? That makes a huge difference.

Central London - look along the west and east main rail lines. You can be in Euston from Lancaster in 3 hours, Darlington to Kings X under 3 hours! Lots of places along those lines.

Charlton - so SE makes most sense for driving. London Bridge, Waterloo, Charing Cross work. Can make Kings cross work with one change or there’s an irregular direct train once in a while.

Avoiding having to go over the Blackwell tunnel was a thought behind all my original suggestions… I’m not opposed to driving to them on occasion!

Does it have to be the south east? I live in Somerset which is lovely, much cheaper and three hours from London max. I go to London all the time.

Weeks Road, Ryde, Isle of Wight
www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/109799129

Isle of Wight is good value and wouldn't be too bad a trip from Charlton. There are also lots of terraced houses in Portsmouth/Southampton within this budget but they're a bit run down/poky. Would they consider a Park home as that might open up options too.

The Dover area is also cheap but quite run down.

Southampton or Portsmouth - I assume there are some cheaper areas a taxi ride away from the station.

The budget is small for the SE.

How much is an Uber from Kings Cross?

How about smaller towns along the coast from dover - Walmer, Deal, Sandwich, Ramsgate

I think the budget is too low for Deal & Walmer.

Ashford in Kent?

Wisbech in Cambridgeshire? Certainly fits the budget. 2.5 hours to Kings Cross.