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maintaining a second home

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Surfer Joe

New Member
My wife and I need to keep living near work until she can retire in three years, but we want to buy a property in a cheaper part of the country and move there permanently after she retires.

We live in England near London where property prices are very high.
We would like to move somewhere in England or maybe Scotland when we retire.
We rent and have never owned a home and we have saved an amount of money to buy something for cash without a mortgage.
If we didn't have to pay rent, we could afford to pay other housing expenses, food and utilities with our small pensions.
I also have an additional small income (about £5000/year, currently unused) that I could use for home repairs/improvements if needed.
Beyond that, we have no other source of income unless we return to working.

Our options are to buy something now before prices keep getting higher and keep renting near our work for the next three years, or to try to buy something in three years when we finally retire and are able to move in wherever we buy and stop renting.
I am worried that we will get much smaller value for money in 3 years, but also worry about the costs of maintaining a home while renting somewhere else.

If we buy a property now and keep renting near where we work, I am trying to get a sense of how much it will cost to maintain the house with minimal utilities while we are living elsewhere.
I would prefer not to rent the property while we are not living there, but could that be an option that would pay for itself?

I would appreciate any advice that you could offer about my situation.
THANKS.
 
J

jamifids

New Member
Either rent or buy a house later. You can't save money any other way.
 
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Dora Wi

Active Member
This is just my personal opinion but I think buying a property now and letting it out would be your best bet financially, though I understand that you don't want to let it out. Have you calculated how high the maintenance costs of a new property would be if it is unused? Because in a lot of cases, if you don't use any utilities, it can be quite low, so it could still be a low-cost option.
 
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Surfer Joe

New Member
This is just my personal opinion but I think buying a property now and letting it out would be your best bet financially, though I understand that you don't want to let it out. Have you calculated how high the maintenance costs of a new property would be if it is unused? Because in a lot of cases, if you don't use any utilities, it can be quite low, so it could still be a low-cost option.
Thanks for your reply.
My plan would be to maintain the minimum utilities required while not yet living there and to hopefully visit to do work on the property or modernise any rooms I could DIY if needed.
Depending on how far away it is will determine how often I can get to the property.
If it's only an hour or so away, I could do day visits to work, but if it's several hours away, it would be harder and more expensive to go there to work on it. I suppose that only minimal gas, electric and water would apply since I could forego other services. Maybe do a pay as you go metering system if it exists. I imagine that some utilities, council tax and home insurance would be the the expected expenses.
I live in Surrey and the nearest areas that I can afford are at least 2 hours away, but the places and areas that I have seen in my budget that are most appealing are in Scotland, at least 8 hours away.
 
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