Renting in Central London & Buying Property Elsewhere

[felicityspink]

We currently rent in Central London. We enjoy living here. As mortgage rates are going higher, it makes even less sense to buy property here. Not only because prices are falling.

We are considering a long term decision of staying in rented accommodation with the idea of buying outside of London. We would ideally buy an old cottage to do up, but we can dream on. My parents live in a very popular seaside town, so could buy a property there for them to rent out (they have their own already). Or we would buy a project an hour or so from London and spend the weekend doing that up.

Has anyone made this sort of strategy work for them?

Most of the old properties such as you are describing that you could just do up at weekends is a bit of an outdated view of doer-uppers, I'm afraid.

What's currently on the market in that bracket is often homes owned by folks retiring, going into care and in probate, and the ball park average for doing these houses up is about 80k a pop. Rewiring, replastering, old double glazing, roofs, new kitchens, bathrooms, gutters, removing old folk showers (/stairlifts) in and putting baths/modern showers in, landscaping. Most of them haven't been touched in 40 years and, at present, none of the people owning these homes are realistically reducing them for the amount of work that needs doing. They're just sitting there. Getting offers that they never accept.

There aren't really any affordable bargains to be had outside London that don't involve spending less than 50kish; those ones simply aren't coming to the market right now.

The idea that you could do it over the weekends; well, okay, if you're exceptionally great at DIY, plumbing, electricals etc. But allow yourself two years and complete mental burnout!