Someone find me a house?!

[moonbows]

I spend far too long messing about on Rightmove, and never seem to find anything that's right.

We are looking for a cottage - a holiday home, I guess, though I think we'd move there once the children are through school. Ideally it'd be a 4 bed stone cottage, in wild mountains, near a station, and no more than 2 hours from London. This is evidently impossible, and so I go round and round in circles, trying to find somewhere that appeals.

Things that matter:
Not much of a garden (have a garden already, don't need another!) but a bit of outside space
No traffic noise
Possible to get to without a car - probably means a station needs to be within 10-15 miles
Ideally would have a view and be remote (not in a village, or if in a hamlet, ideally not attached)
Lovely outdoor walks, bike rides and swimming (river, sea) nearby

Where should I look, what can anyone see?

Moonbows there's a difference between occasionally using holiday accommodation and taking yet another house out of circulation for a second home, however much you think you and your friends might use it. Second home owners contribute virtually nothing to the community here, financially or in terms of time and effort, and to answer your question, many here in Cornwall would very happily forgo a large chunk of the tourism as we are now in a ridiculous situation. The NHS and schools as well as pubs and restaurants can't find staff because local people can't find affordable rent down here anymore; there's a massive labour shortage to service the tourism industry so it's not even true that it creates workable jobs. There is a very well supported call for limiting/licensing Airbnb and holiday lets because whole towns have been hollowed out. St Ives is like a theme park - almost nobody living there. Same with Fowey and many other coastal spots. And that means that the post office, school, bus service, local shop are unsustainable and just shut. People drive down from up country in range rovers, order in a supermarket delivery, add to the parking/road overcrowding issue and feel like they are giving back because they go out for one meal in the local pub.

Meanwhile as I said, families at the end of their tenancies are finding NOTHING at all available to rent. Not 'no ideal property' - literally nothing. Any rental house that comes on has hundreds of people competing for it. I'm not exaggerating about families living in caravans and awnings on scraps of land. It's dire and it needs to stop.

However you try to rationalise it, if you have a second home, you have two homes. There is a massive national housing shortage and you are depriving someone else of a first home.

And sorry, it's a massive ethical short cut to say 'well something needs to be done on a national policy level and individuals can't change anything'. Of course individual consumer behaviour matters!! Especially on a purchase as big as a house. I guess it's a matter of do you want to have principles or do you want to have nice things?

If you are going to move to X area in 10 years, buy a property in 10 years and in the mean time leave one more useable home in circulation.

Cornwall and London aren’t so dissimilar, you know. Worse here really - there is no way any local kids can stay. It’s a total given. And actually that’s just as grim in London as it is elsewhere.

I don’t have a car or fly because climate change. But you know, I’m pissing in the wind and denying my family things we would love and could afford, to serve my principles. It serves nobody, frankly: the world spirals into a worse state, and we have much less fun than we might. Perhaps I should encourage friends to jet off to Mexico and let Cornwall alone?!

I know all the ethical arguments, and sympathise w many of them. As I say, they apply equally to me, my kids, my neighbours. But I already feel I’m a fool to hold to my environmental principles, in many ways, and I sure as hell can’t carry everyone’s ethical objections to everything!

More and more I think we have to live as most of us did in Covid times: stick to the rules, but don’t gold plate them, or demand that others do. Demand changes to the rules instead, even if they disadvantage you personally.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/129153440#/?channel=RES_BUY

This area is stunning - coastal paths and lots of countryside, a very popular bike route along the sea, not too far from a city…4hrs from London though

Moonbows I fully understand the London pressures - I was born in London, worked, lived and had my children there before leaving the city - yes, partly because we would never be able to afford a family-size home there despite that being where my roots are. I rented there for 15 yrs and owned for 7. But I didn't understand the difference in the housing pressures until I lived in Cornwall. In London housing pressures are indeed acute and I know exactly what it's like operating in a housing market where there are 30+ people chasing every place. And I know there are loads of flats sitting empty and used as eg Chinese investment vehicles. But with the density of the housing stock and the transport networks there is always another possible place to look, another flat coming onto the market next week. Here there are more often than not NO houses for rent at all in the entire country within an hour's drive of people's workplace or kids schools, because so many people have bought up air bnbs since COVID, and before that, second homes. It makes people so so angry when we have - literally - employed people living in tents on scraps of land while their children live with friends or grandparents while whole streets of houses are empty with key boxes on the doorframe.

It's the naivety and unawareness in your initial post that I think I find difficult. Imagine the reverse;

'I am looking for a lovely second home in London, for us to use occasionally over the next decade and then perhaps we will move there. We want 3-4 bedrooms, zone 2 or 3, good transport links, near excellent shops/pubs/a park and in a great school catchment area on the off chance we change our mind and want to school the kids there. We've got £3 million...'

re taxis - not £12 for 4 miles, £35
yes, £70 for a night out.

£12 is nothing, and is what you pay for the 2 miles home from the station in town. Not what you pay for 4 miles in a village.

@steppemum dont understand you! £12 is my experience (station to village or v v) sometimes can be cheaper.

@Babamamananarama im not going to defend the horrendous housing situation we have in this country - it stinks in a million ways. But we have kids endlessly plucked from school, because their family has been forced to move and yes it may only be 8 miles, but that an easily be an hour or more each way on a bus. And as for your last example, well, those folks do exist. Mostly older folk, who have a big house in London AND a big house in the country. And who are enraged by any suggestion that this could or should change. But I can think of quite a number of families who have kept their options open, w a family sized ‘pied à terre’ being used for once a week trips by one parent.

Seriously tho, what’s wrong is policy, it really is. And if you want change, that’s where you have to put effort. Focusing on (any) individual just serves entrenched vested interests as you will exhaust yourself and bring about no change.

moonbows- well that's great that you can get a taxi that cheap where you are.
But 2 of us posted that the cost was more like £35 one way.
My parents moved from village into town as they got older. One reason was that the worked out if they stopped driving a car, then taxi from their village into town to go shopping was £35 one way, £70 return, that was 10 years ago.
They lived 4 miles from the town.

It costs me £10 to get home from the station, literally less than 2 miles within the town I live in. Upthread someone else posted about a trip to the hospital:

YY to pp about taxi costs. A round trip to our local hospital (7 miles away, no public transport) is £80.

I am in Southern England, not South East. I think you are being massively optimistic about costs.