Herefordshire or bust?

In recent times some focus in the RIT household has now switched from A Place in the Sun to what about Herefordshire?  As with any of our crazy ideas our approach is always plenty of desk research and then boots on the ground.  All I can say is that Herefordshire is everything we remember from previous visits.  An absolutely beautiful part of the world but then again at this time of year in the UK, with the leaves yellow to red and starting to fall, ugly parts are probably the exception so some care is needed.

Click to enlarge, Kingsland, Herefordshire (source)

Of course our trips have not been all about roaming around country paths, lanes and villages  although we’ve done some of that.  They’ve also initially focused on looking at the possibility of building a modest warm home.  Don’t get me wrong, we love an old historic grade II listed home like the next man or woman, but as a FIRE’ee we don’t very much like the energy performance or maintenance costs that go with them.

Click to enlarge, There are plenty of Herefordshire homes that are just beautiful

This great country has some pretty draconian planning laws that really favour the NIMBY’s of the world so our first priority was to see if any land was around and what it might cost.  There are plenty of ‘building plots’ but we have no intention of seeing out our days on a plot that is about as large as the home floor plan so we had to be more creative.  By talking to the local agents and particularly the locals, who without exception were all fabulously friendly and helpful, we did turn up a few plots and one in particular.  It was quite attractive as it’s about a third of an acre, south facing, has some established fruit trees already present and already has planning permission in place for ‘a home’.  Some initial discussions suggest the price would be around £130,000.  So land looks to be possible with some effort.

The plot does however carry some problems which might be turning off the punters.  It’s located in a conservation area so any construction must respect the character, size, scale and design of homes in the area.  For us this isn’t a problem as we’re looking at a modest oak framed home and there are plenty of those in the area.  The other problem is they want an ecological survey done which could be a costly problem if they find something and so would need more investigation.

We’ve also met with some builders.  We only want modest and quite like something like this:

Click to enlarge, modest warm 115m^2 oak framed home

Looking at some plans, kicking some tyres and we’ve agreed a 3 bedroom 115m^2 or so oak framed home would have us grinning from ear to ear.  This is where the problem starts.  One builder we’ve talked to has indicated that by the time we pay for planning amendments, preliminaries, built the home and then fitted it out modestly we wouldn’t be seeing much change from £302,000.  That is £2,600 per square metre of living area which looks very expensive.

A modest garage that’s in keeping with the area would add a further £20,000.  All of a sudden some land, a modest oak framed home and a garage costs £452,000!

Two thoughts immediately come to mind.  By mid 2017 and provided Mr Market is favourable I should be able to have £350,000 or so in cash or cash like investments available for the home part of my FIRE journey.  So I’m a long way short and would need to be working at least One More Year (OMY) which I really don’t want to be doing.  The other thought is that £450,000 will buy this:

Click to enlarge, Much more land, bigger and more oaky

That’s already done, sits on 1.3 acres, has far more expensive oak present and is at least 50% bigger.  We have no interest in it for all of those reasons but it does demonstrate something is not right with our numbers.

More work to be done me thinks...