This evening I went for a walk and in so doing I passed the de-consecrated church around the corner. I noticed that it was for sale. This church was built in 1635. Out of curiosity I went to the ESPC website to see how much they are selling it for: offers over £410,000*. Do have a look at its Property Details (click on the 'View Full Details' link). It is a listed building and therefore they are constrained by building restrictions, and are not permitted to change the structure of the building (so they can't put any external windows in, for example). But do have a look at how they've made it into a fabulous home - it is lovely - 5 bedrooms, each being very unique. If I could afford it I'd love to buy it - it's lovely. [Our house is on the east-facing side of the graveyard.]
*[In Scotland we have Blind Auctions... whereby potential buyers put in a bid for the property, without knowing what fellow bidders are offering. The seller chooses the highest bid. In this instance the offers must be over £410,000. The 'offers over' price is generally slightly lower than the value of the property. So we can guess that this property might be worth ~£450,000. The selling price (of the top bidder) will generally be 20% over the 'offers over' price - hence this place will probably go for around £500,000. Not bad - especially since they bought it for £40,000 in 2000 - however they will have spent a fair amount of money making it habitable. Good for them.]
[My flat is only worth about £150,000 - so as much as I would like to there is no way on Earth I could afford to buy a £500,000 5-bedroom de-consecrated church!]
Man - that would be exactly like living in a church - and I have to say I don't think much of the garden!!
People are mental about property these days...
Posted by: CBQ | May 25, 2007 at 11:22 PM
Doh! It'd be like living in a church because it is a church...
I reflected that night about the selling price of this property. Whilst it is very nice - it certainly isn't worth half a million pounds (which, with the strong pound would be one million US dollars or 1.2 million Australian dollars). I think that a more reasonable figure for something like that would be around £300,000. But, that'd mean that my place should only be worth £90,000... which, of course, wouldn't make me happy at all.
The property prices will crash. They have to. If the sellers get their half-a-million we can place bets on the new owners not recouping that sum when they eventually sell.
Posted by: lodgerlow | May 29, 2007 at 10:58 PM
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Posted by: Criticismapplication | December 23, 2009 at 12:02 PM