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Buy a cottage for £1,000 - and move next door to the Marquess of Bath |
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HOME >> NEWS >> Buy a cottage for £1,000 - and move next door to the Marquess of Bath |
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 The estate agent describes it as a hovel and the local wildlife is a bit alarming, but for a mere £1,000 you could own a house next door to the Marquess of Bath. The Longleat estate in Wiltshire – famous for its pride of lions and the eccentricities of its aristocratic owner - is selling a dilapidated cottage for that price in the village of Horsington, one mile from the Marquess’s stately Elizabethan home.
It may be the cheapest house in the country, but there is a catch. The owner must pay a further £1,000 every year for the duration of the 60-year lease, at which point the property must be surrendered again to the estate. There is no option to extend the lease. Any prospective owner must also satisfy the estate that they have the funds to convert the property into a smart one-bedroom home within 18 months, at an estimated cost of £150,000.
The deal is still good value, according to Humberts, the agents acting for the Longleat estate. The total outlay over 60 years, including the purchase price, the annual payments and the conversion cost, adds up to £211,000, or an annual payment of £3,517, which is half the going rental rate for a one-bedroom cottage in the area.
Simon Powell, from Humberts’ Salisbury office, said that the property “was probably originally a forge, as it has a chimney, and would have been used as a hovel for an estate worker. Today it’s just four stone walls, an earth floor and a chimney.”
The new owner will have to install electricity, plumbing, flooring and walls into the 584sq ft space. The only existing amenity is a septic tank.
If you’re not deterred by the lions (the safari park is half a mile away) or the landlord (the Marquess has installed some of his 75 “wifelets” in other cottages on the Longleat estate), you’ll have to get in quick. Mr Powell said that there was “absolutely no interest” in the property before Christmas, “yet suddenly we now have four or five interested parties”. It seems to have caught the imagination, particularly among the over50s.
He added that there had been “four or five interested parties” since Christmas. “It’s ideal for someone looking for a project, who would like to realise their capital from another property and retire to one of the nicest parts of Wiltshire. It’s likely to go to bidding process some time within the next eight weeks,” he added.
Edward Sugden of Property Vision, the upmarket property consultancy, said that such a low guide price for a property on one of Britain’s oldest and most beautiful estates was “a real one-off. It’s very rare for one of the great landed estates to sell property. A lot of our clients say they would love to buy a house within these estates, but very rarely do they come up.”
However, he advised anyone interested to “check the terms and conditions very carefully. These cottages attract interest only if they are a secluded hideaway, not if they’re overrun by tourists or within a banana’s throw of the orangutan enclosure.”
Source: http://property.timesonline.co.uk/ |
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