Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Property/DIY

Join our Property forum for renovation, DIY, and house selling advice.

Is this house too remote?

127 replies

HungryHouseHunter · 17/06/2024 16:21

Name change. We are considering putting an offer on this house. It's exactly the style we want with more land than we wanted but I'm worried it's too far from Winchester where we started looking. To get the train station I'll need to drive, to get to the shops I'll need to drive! Does anyone do this ? Do you end up resenting the inconvenience? Also value for money?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/145236887

Check out this 6 bedroom detached house for sale on Rightmove

6 bedroom detached house for sale in Shepherds Lane, Compton, Winchester, Hampshire, SO21 for £2,450,000. Marketed by Savills, Winchester

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/145236887

OP posts:
LindaDawn · 17/06/2024 18:34

Not for me! Haven’t looked at the house cos I could never live where I had to drive everywhere!

OneForTheToad · 17/06/2024 18:48

Not for me either. For that money I don’t want to listen to the drone of the M3 all night, nor be <500m from an HGV training center.
Also, EPC F.

HungryHouseHunter · 17/06/2024 18:53

OneForTheToad · 17/06/2024 18:48

Not for me either. For that money I don’t want to listen to the drone of the M3 all night, nor be <500m from an HGV training center.
Also, EPC F.

We Couldn't hear the M3. Think the trees absorb the sound.

OP posts:
spriots · 17/06/2024 18:54

HungryHouseHunter · 17/06/2024 18:32

This one in particular just looks a bit weird and also needs some renovation in my opinion. There are a few more central that are really good though, jusy less land.

What would you do with the land?

WeAreNeverEver · 17/06/2024 18:55

HungryHouseHunter · 17/06/2024 18:53

We Couldn't hear the M3. Think the trees absorb the sound.

You need to be there with wind blowing in various directions to be sure

Hopealong · 17/06/2024 19:01

Know the area well. I don't consider it remote as so quick to get into the city centre/motorway network/train station, a massive plus point but yes you would need transport to do so.
It depends what your needs/wants are. My children are grown up and I now live abroad but if I was in that area with your budget think I'd look at Sleepers Hill area and being able to walk into the city centre. If my children were young though and large garden would be a big plus I might go for the one you're looking at.
Good luck. It is a lovely area.

KievLoverTwo · 17/06/2024 19:03

We moved rural and regretted it, mostly because we're woken up far, far too often.

I see you have something close to that property and I can't tell what it is; sileage, milk, water towers? Anyway, countryside living:

Farmers are bloody inconsiderate; if it rains and rains they don't care if their tractors are out til 3.30am, if their dogs are waking you up at 4.45am, or if they're literally startling you awake at 6.30am with a pump that sounds like a helicopter.

They don't care about angle grinders at 9pm on a Sunday night.

The council? Lol. If you moved there after the business was already in existence, they basically don't care.

Someone near me lodged a complaint about a building application we received and I only found out about it after delving through reports; they didn't bother uploading it under 'comments.'

Crop spraying, smells: sometimes it's bearable, sometimes I reel back and close the window in disgust. I'd say it's at the very least noticeable 25% of the time.

Planning: farmers apply for planning, start building the next day, and get permission a year later.

It doesn't matter that there will be a source of light pollution 50m from your house.

It doesn't matter if there's a sileage (shit) pit 100 metres away.

Countryside irks:

It is never, ever, ever as quiet as you think it's going to be. If it's not machinery noise, it's wildlife (luckily we don't get much of that) - if someone in our village complains about the cockerel going off at 5am the rest of the village lynch mob them.

We also get a hecking load of planes too.

Cliquey

Oh so cliquey. They're nasty to each other too.

Internet

We've got full fibre 500mbps right to the house, but Openreach keep breaking it. We've had 5 outages in 9 months including: 27 days, 16 days, 6 days. They will send someone inexperienced out to make sure you have it plugged in, every single time. Then you'll be told: oh, it was someone being ham-fisted in the cabinet. They send townies to do countryside work, you see. And the first thing they say when they arrive is 'I'm not trained to look at this sort of network, I don't know why they keep sending me on jobs like this.'

Don't consider anything other than Starlink, is my very serious advice.

Mobile

Good luck getting a reliable mobile signal in most places

Dirt and insects

It gets in through the trickle vents, yesterday I took my bed apart for my 5th room move to get away from the noise, there were spiders nesting in my bed. Flies crawl in through the extractor outlets, the loft, the sash windows. Our house is a beautiful array of fly nets taped over extractor fans, plasticine wedged into windows and now looks like a student gaff. Ofc, if you own it, you can do something about it - but be mindful that they can get in in the most unexpected places.

The trickle vent dirt from farming + the rain + the wind = top of windows smothered in muck.

Contractors

Every single contractor we've tried to get fix something here (probably 7 in total) have done an absolutely dreadful job/and/or just not fixed the thing, yet locals rave about them on Facebook. We're of the view that they don't need to be good where we are because there are so few of them that there's no choice. And maybe we've got better standards? I.e. fix that drip mean the thing stops dripping straight away, and not after 2 minutes? And hiring a regular window cleaner not meaning coming home after a day out and suddenly he's back for the first time in 7 months. We had one contractor actually fix a thing: he drove in from a town 15 miles away.

Getting stuff delivered

Most people don't want to come where we are because the roads are crap, so getting furniture and stuff delivered is nigh on impossible, let alone delivery of local goods. I gave up trying after 9 months.

Roads

Potholed from tractors, motor homes, farm machinery. Run off from farms causing flooding. Puddles like I've never seen before on rural roads for months upon months upon months at a time. Someone put a cone in a massive puddle once. It sat there for 2 months until the water evaporated.

Animals

Escapees, quite often. Think cows on your front lawn, people's dogs hopping fences.

Future building

Whenever I look at a farmer's field, I think: they could build a housing estate on that.

They don't around me because it's proper farming country and there's nothing here, but in another area I was considering moving a few roads away from, I looked up planning and did a bunch of googling, and lo and behold, 550 houses due to be built.

Trouble is, that messes with the water table and causes flooding.

Your potential property is beautiful, but you asked the question: do you resent the inconvenience?

I absolutely bloody do - because nothing goes right here, ever, and it's very draining.

HungryHouseHunter · 17/06/2024 19:09

KievLoverTwo · 17/06/2024 19:03

We moved rural and regretted it, mostly because we're woken up far, far too often.

I see you have something close to that property and I can't tell what it is; sileage, milk, water towers? Anyway, countryside living:

Farmers are bloody inconsiderate; if it rains and rains they don't care if their tractors are out til 3.30am, if their dogs are waking you up at 4.45am, or if they're literally startling you awake at 6.30am with a pump that sounds like a helicopter.

They don't care about angle grinders at 9pm on a Sunday night.

The council? Lol. If you moved there after the business was already in existence, they basically don't care.

Someone near me lodged a complaint about a building application we received and I only found out about it after delving through reports; they didn't bother uploading it under 'comments.'

Crop spraying, smells: sometimes it's bearable, sometimes I reel back and close the window in disgust. I'd say it's at the very least noticeable 25% of the time.

Planning: farmers apply for planning, start building the next day, and get permission a year later.

It doesn't matter that there will be a source of light pollution 50m from your house.

It doesn't matter if there's a sileage (shit) pit 100 metres away.

Countryside irks:

It is never, ever, ever as quiet as you think it's going to be. If it's not machinery noise, it's wildlife (luckily we don't get much of that) - if someone in our village complains about the cockerel going off at 5am the rest of the village lynch mob them.

We also get a hecking load of planes too.

Cliquey

Oh so cliquey. They're nasty to each other too.

Internet

We've got full fibre 500mbps right to the house, but Openreach keep breaking it. We've had 5 outages in 9 months including: 27 days, 16 days, 6 days. They will send someone inexperienced out to make sure you have it plugged in, every single time. Then you'll be told: oh, it was someone being ham-fisted in the cabinet. They send townies to do countryside work, you see. And the first thing they say when they arrive is 'I'm not trained to look at this sort of network, I don't know why they keep sending me on jobs like this.'

Don't consider anything other than Starlink, is my very serious advice.

Mobile

Good luck getting a reliable mobile signal in most places

Dirt and insects

It gets in through the trickle vents, yesterday I took my bed apart for my 5th room move to get away from the noise, there were spiders nesting in my bed. Flies crawl in through the extractor outlets, the loft, the sash windows. Our house is a beautiful array of fly nets taped over extractor fans, plasticine wedged into windows and now looks like a student gaff. Ofc, if you own it, you can do something about it - but be mindful that they can get in in the most unexpected places.

The trickle vent dirt from farming + the rain + the wind = top of windows smothered in muck.

Contractors

Every single contractor we've tried to get fix something here (probably 7 in total) have done an absolutely dreadful job/and/or just not fixed the thing, yet locals rave about them on Facebook. We're of the view that they don't need to be good where we are because there are so few of them that there's no choice. And maybe we've got better standards? I.e. fix that drip mean the thing stops dripping straight away, and not after 2 minutes? And hiring a regular window cleaner not meaning coming home after a day out and suddenly he's back for the first time in 7 months. We had one contractor actually fix a thing: he drove in from a town 15 miles away.

Getting stuff delivered

Most people don't want to come where we are because the roads are crap, so getting furniture and stuff delivered is nigh on impossible, let alone delivery of local goods. I gave up trying after 9 months.

Roads

Potholed from tractors, motor homes, farm machinery. Run off from farms causing flooding. Puddles like I've never seen before on rural roads for months upon months upon months at a time. Someone put a cone in a massive puddle once. It sat there for 2 months until the water evaporated.

Animals

Escapees, quite often. Think cows on your front lawn, people's dogs hopping fences.

Future building

Whenever I look at a farmer's field, I think: they could build a housing estate on that.

They don't around me because it's proper farming country and there's nothing here, but in another area I was considering moving a few roads away from, I looked up planning and did a bunch of googling, and lo and behold, 550 houses due to be built.

Trouble is, that messes with the water table and causes flooding.

Your potential property is beautiful, but you asked the question: do you resent the inconvenience?

I absolutely bloody do - because nothing goes right here, ever, and it's very draining.

I appreciate the detail and experience you have in you reply. It really is food for thought

OP posts:
BeachRide · 17/06/2024 19:11

Just ask Jeeves to bring the car round when needed?

Justhereforaibu1 · 17/06/2024 19:12

I thought you were going to say it was at least half an hour from anywhere 😅

KievLoverTwo · 17/06/2024 19:23

HungryHouseHunter · 17/06/2024 19:09

I appreciate the detail and experience you have in you reply. It really is food for thought

No worries. I appreciate I might have a somewhat bitter and twisted view of the countryside because we were basically forced to take this house because we have cats and we have farmers who just dgosh so I'm sleep-deprived and manic half the time.

My experience isn't necessarily everyone else's experience.

Re: getting stuff like food and the like, yeah, that's not great fun either. We've done about 5000 miles in the car over the last year, a lot of that is going from one place to the next to the next because the quality of the produce has plummeted/expires the next day/they don't have what you need.

But because everything's so far away (sorry, idk your location) you actually end up doing everything at once: I need x from B&Q, I have to take Y back to D, you need new shoes. So it's never a straightforward shopping trip, it's four hours on a Saturday afternoon, because you need to go to six places at once, as it's a ballache to get to any of them.

And yeah. I resent having to use our weekends for that. Because of the rest of it.

Viewfrommyhouse · 17/06/2024 19:24

I live rurally/remotely in an old farmhouse - single track road, no neighbours for at least half a mile in any direction, no shops/pubs etc for a couple of miles, nearest city is 8 miles away (no town nearer) sat in 4 acres. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. Lots of land sounds great but in reality, what will you do with it? We don't use half an acre of ours, and upkeep takes time in the growing months.

Pros - no building will ever happen near us, no unexpected guests, no noisy neighbours, no neighbours to care if we're noisy, no need to close any curtains (our drive from the road to the house is 200m long). Surrounded by farmland (but no resident farmers). My cats don't annoy anybody. Plenty of off road parking.

Cons - driving everywhere, although tbh, I don't mind that. Expense of maintaining the grounds - we have a commercial cylinder mower and an old tractor with a flail attachement - your bog standard sit on Mountfield is not enough. Shit broadband (max 6Mbps 🙄). Dust (old house). Mud. Resale - your demographic of potential buyers is much smaller for the property, land and value, so if you ever did want to sell, you'd have to be realistic about how long it could take to sell and the limited potential buyers.

On lovely sunny evenings like this, I feel so lucky to live where I do. Winter, no so much! We also have a school age child, so we're resigned to being the taxi of mum and dad for a few years yet.

Trewa · 17/06/2024 19:27

Moving next to a farm and then calling farmers inconsiderate because they do farming always makes me laugh.

norfolkbroadd · 17/06/2024 19:35

BeachRide · 17/06/2024 19:11

Just ask Jeeves to bring the car round when needed?

Be nice, they probably didn't have Sky tv growing up...

KievLoverTwo · 17/06/2024 19:39

Trewa · 17/06/2024 19:27

Moving next to a farm and then calling farmers inconsiderate because they do farming always makes me laugh.

That’d make perfect sense if the advert didn’t say it was quiet and idyllic and didn’t actually say it was on a farm. Sensible people advertise such properties as “being on a busy working farm.”

Glad you got a laugh out of my insane levels of sleep deprivation though. I assume you refer to me.

IbizaToTheNorfolkBroads · 17/06/2024 19:43

Do you have children? They'll really resent being so remote as they get older, and before they are able to drive. You will really resent the taxiing!

Trewa · 17/06/2024 19:43

KievLoverTwo · 17/06/2024 19:39

That’d make perfect sense if the advert didn’t say it was quiet and idyllic and didn’t actually say it was on a farm. Sensible people advertise such properties as “being on a busy working farm.”

Glad you got a laugh out of my insane levels of sleep deprivation though. I assume you refer to me.

I would assume you had visited it and noticed the farm, regardless of what the estate agent said? Yes was referring to your post, have heard all sorts of variety of those complaints from people who move up next to a working croft and then complain that there’s croft work going on and it does always give me a laugh, sorry you had bad sleep, but I’d research an area before buying or renting in future.

WonderingWanda · 17/06/2024 19:57

A quick look on some maps show the road to the village is a public footpath and its just under 3k from the house to the nearest pub and slightly less to the Nisa local. 0.2k to the nearest house and then continuous housig along the road from to the village. It's not really remote. Its 2 km (27min) walk to the nearest railway station. Just over 1km to the nearest bus stop.

KievLoverTwo · 17/06/2024 20:01

Trewa · 17/06/2024 19:43

I would assume you had visited it and noticed the farm, regardless of what the estate agent said? Yes was referring to your post, have heard all sorts of variety of those complaints from people who move up next to a working croft and then complain that there’s croft work going on and it does always give me a laugh, sorry you had bad sleep, but I’d research an area before buying or renting in future.

Yes, I did. I also took advice from someone who has been a farmer for 30 years, showed him the location, showed him the farm buildings, said I was worried about noise, and he said “it’ll be absolutely fine.”

I think farmers themselves who are raised around it are blissfully unaware. Also they do a very manual job and could probably sleep through anything.

I also think flat land with almost no trees make it far, far worse.

Irrespective there are dozens of houses at the end of the road to have to listen to thumping tractors all night and I am sure they didn’t sign up for that, as the farm grew and grew and grew.

They have a job to do and they do it when it needs doing.

Which is “nice.”

TakeMeToTheSunshine · 17/06/2024 20:17

Agreed with other responses, I know that area well and I really wouldn't consider that really rural?

sicilianpizza · 17/06/2024 20:34

Check Winchester Council's planning page for the Strategic Housing Land Assessment 2021. The neighbouring landowner has offered the adjacent site for development and the council has said 31 new homes could be built.

DullFanFiction · 17/06/2024 20:34

Do you have children, in particular children who are or close being teenagers?

From experience, it’s when they want to have some independence that things start to get tricky - harder to see friends, go put fir the day etc etc

Roserunner · 17/06/2024 20:38

I know the area and it's not remote at all. If you walk to Otterbourne road (runs parallelish with M3), which should only take 10 mins there's a bus that goes into Winchester one side of the road or into Southampton on the other. You shouldn't have any issues with taxi's/ deliveries etc.

The M3 is actually a lot lower, the road to the house goes over it so I'd doubt you'll hear it much at all. There are some lovely houses and walks in the area. I reckon the old forge in Otterbourne and the bridge in shawford would be walkable within around 30mins and both are lovely pubs.

DullFanFiction · 17/06/2024 20:39

@KievLoverTwo I don’t think you are built to live in the countryside.

llamadrama16 · 17/06/2024 20:42

Do you have children? I couldn't imagine living like this with multiple children and playing taxi for them. I'd also hate the idea of them driving as soon as they can get their license because they want some independence.

Swipe left for the next trending thread