If you had £60,000 to buy a property…..

[blublub]

…..anywhere in the country, where would you buy? It’s not a lot but it’s an opportunity I have been given, but I have no idea. Where would you buy?

Because @soupyspoon you’re coming across as defensive and over invested, oddly implying some of us think the north is a shit place to live and the south isn’t. I don’t want to derail the thread so I won’t be responding to you again.

Check out Carlisle. Not many properties meet your criteria but considered to be a great place by the guy who produces the Turdtown videos.

V small is an understatement. It’s literally that one room and the shower room. The room is the size of a small double room. That’s it. That’s where you live, eat, sleep. No guests, no entertaining, no furniture beyond a sofa bed and a small table.

This is part of the problem though. I'm north Scotland. Property is cheap but building work is expensive.

And if you spend 20k on a kitchen or 60k on an extension it's doubtful you'd see it back..

Under budget in the Scottish Borders. Quite a few nice ones on this site in old stone buildings. https://www.cullenkilshaw.com/residential-property/properties-for-sale/property-details/?prop=263788

I don’t think people are slagging off the north in general but the properties that have been posted have either been in bad condition, with short leases or they have been in very remote areas of Scotland and some possibly have been in run-down areas that many people would not want to live in. Trust me, we have lots of them in the South too! I just think that suggesting those sorts of places to a first time buyer is a recipe for disaster. Unless she’s very handy she will also struggle with a doer upper. For instance your suggestion to buy a kitchen from eBay and install it yourself. That’s fine if you’re a builder or DIY enthusiast but I can hold my hands up and say I wouldn’t have a clue how to install a kitchen and would need to pay someone. And then it all adds up.

Not correct on a fully residential park - sites fees are around 200 to 250 a month (no different to a lot of leasehold flats) and cannot go up above retail price index- your lodge is yours in perpetuity till it drops to bits if necessary! and many have piped in gas etc - although that varies - what you say is very true about buying on ‘holiday parks’ - ( many of which hard marketed as12 months but technically can’t be your address) it’s a big difference, one is regulated, one isn’t - that’s why many brand new ones on fully residential parks are over £200k - I totally get you about the ones that are on holiday parks

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/152709764#/?channel=RES_BUY

Handy if you need to post a letter…

I'm disabled, not handy at all and my doer up was fine. All the main work was done by tradesmen (which compared to London is a LOT cheaper here).

The areas also aren't 'bad' at all (yes their are 'bad' areas but those are insanely cheap and mostly bad due to the pit closures then southern landlord who bought cheap and let them go to rack and ruin).

We also are a 1000 year old beautiful historic part of the country (yet with all the modern amenities) and when I say 'north' I have lived in Durham County and Tyne and Wear, hardly's the Australian outback or Loch Ness.

Its like a thread a while ago where a Londoner said she would never live anywhere else and then listed all the things she can get to within 30 minutes of her house. A list of wildly unique things like historic theaters, museums, art galleries, ornamental gardens and pleasure parks... as if those thing aren't a fucking dime a dozen up here lol.

A caravan
or pay of my mortgage and stay where I am

I've dropped the price of my one bedroomed cottage in Dumfriesshire to 65K.

It depends.

If you buy the right property it will increase in value which gives you options later on; if your salary increases substantially in 5 or 10 years, would you want to sell and buy bigger / better location?

Do you intend for this to be your forever home? Or might you want, in the future, to move to somewhere on the ground floor for old age, or buy with a partner? In which case you do not want your £60k to have lost value.

A rental? You move out you have nothing. A mortgage? You sell up and have your equity: what you paid plus increase in value.

If you can buy for £60k somewhere that you can live forever, or can be sure it won’t lose value: great!

But if mortgage free buys you a short lease / a declining area etc then it could be a better investment to buy ‘better’ with a mortgage..

Look at the economics of paying service charge and ground rent v a mortgage.

You can see from this thread that many inattentive pp have posted places that are auction/ tenanted / retirement / shared ownership etc and the genuinely affordable ones are few and far between.

Whatever you decide, good luck!

There are absolutely beautiful areas in the north. But for a terraced house, no matter where in the country, under 60k is “insanely cheap” and these are the ones the OP has been shown. Or they are in fine areas but are auction properties that will go for twice that.
Also these days materials and labour are so so expensive- probably double what they were when you did your house. It’s shocking how much it is.
I am definitely not someone who thinks that nothing functions outside of London and I live a long way from there myself. But I’d advise the OP to be very cautious about this.

@housethatbuiltme unless you bought very recently, the costs to do up a house would be much higher than years ago and out of reach for some. That’s another thing about searching online for houses of £60k or less - some are in OK areas but aren’t currently liveable because the whole place needs doing over completely, which would cost at least £50k.

Someone mentioned Grimsby. My twin used to work there and says don’t even think about it, there are nice areas but for £60k not a chance.

Watch out for storage heaters. Our last house had them, it was £300 a month on electric and it never got above 14 in winter.
that was before covid so I’d be expecting that to double and a bit now.

homes with them are significantly cheaper, so I wouldn’t rule it out. Just factor in getting them done as soon as you move in.

what an exciting opportunity!
now is a great time to be a buyer let alone a cash one, exciting stuff!

Rural fixer uppers. Leave something back for the future.

OP a few months ago we sold my late brother's house in Grimsby for £54000. It was valued over £90000, but needed updating. 3 bed, double glazing, front and back gardens, quiet area. Ex council house and very solidly built. The only bidders were developers (modern method of auction) . We could have got a higher price if we'd redecorated and put in a new kitchen, but we just wanted it sold. So it's worth looking there, or Cleethorpes of course.

However I do apologise , as both these are indeed the 12 month ‘holiday licence’ types - hence high service charges and having to have postal address elsewhere - checked around on ‘fully residential’ and hard to get under £85k

One thing I forgot to say @blublub is had you had a look at the Heylo scheme - this is regulated ( think more like housing association regulated) - it is shared ownership but on the ‘open market - has to be a freehold property and it’s a minimum of 25% cash deposit and can be up to 75% and you pay rent on the bit you don’t own - but you could in that case go up to say £100k or even a bit more - do a 50/50 and leave yourself a bit in bank for any small bits of moving in costs. You would end up with rent about 220 a month ( it’s 5% of the bit that’s not owned) - it’s fully yours and you split any future gains to proportion you own - also if you ever couldn’t earn the rental aspect can be claimed on benefits. Does have advantages !! And I think it may work out a better deal as may mean you get a place needing little work ( that’s one of the conditions of the scheme too). It’s well worth a look, and I’m mentioning for any other mumsnetters too who may be a bit stuck post divorce etc but have enough to put 25% down on somewhere and can’t get a sufficient mortgage but have regular income - you can actually go quite high if you have the cash deposit and income to pay the rental aspect aspect - up to £600k if I remember correctly

its called ‘Heylo your move’

I like Largs, on the Ayrshire coast.

Here’s one that could be within budget, and is in decent area.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/168541304#/media?activePlan=1&channel=RES_BUY

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/168990674

Decent area on the outskirts of Derby

This would give you an idea OP of the kind of thing you could buy under Heylo going up to £120 , 000 - so rent of around £240 a month- it’s a big difference in terms of quality -I’m a snob but do like Barnsley if you were looking ‘up north’ - it’s none too shabby, good shopping, handy for Leeds and M1 and handy for going south too - there are way worse places at the budget level of the market -

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/168540632

I agree with others that doubling your budget with a small mortgage would give you so many options. Unless your current monthly rent is astonishingly low, a £60k mortgage won’t be more in terms of outgoings. I just can’t see the point in restricting yourself so much, living somewhere that is, by definition, not a desirable location, when a small mortgage would change things massively. £120k won’t get you a palace but there are reasonable freehold houses available across lots of the north of England and Wales at that level. Areas change by individual streets, you can only judge that by spending time in the places.