May 5 2008

Why not rural??

Well my best friend got married and it was a fantastic day. It has actually been absolutely freezing while I have been here but yesterday – the actually wedding day – was absolutely amazing.

It was about 24 degrees which is pretty good for England. The wedding was held in am amazing property and that’s what I want to talk to you about today.

The property is located about an hour from London by train. It is classified as being “the country” out near Sussex.

The property is located on about 50 acres and was bought by a man in the 60s. He called an agent in England and said he wanted some country land. He was told that an Indian Maharajah was selling some land that had on it a large Manor. The price was 10,000 pound. He bought it site unseen.

The value of the land turned out to be 50,000 pound back then. So he bought it at 1/5 of the price. Why? Probably because it was in the middle of nowhere and the demand was not as high.

I often here people say “don’t buy rural” and I just think “why not???”. In fact I think that there is a market for just about any type of property – you just have to go into the deal knowing what you are doing and understanding that particular property and the potential purpose.

This property is still in the same hands and is now worth almost 10 million pounds!

An interesting part of the story is this; the owner wanted to build a large building on the property but he could not get council approval. However he found a loophole. In England there is an Old Law that can not be overturned. Any man can build on his land a castle. So this man built his large building the style of a castle!

And now on the land is a 15,000 sqm castle and of course the original manor. Not bad thinking!

I think that there are two important points to remember here.

1. Be persistent with your intentions and find the way it CAN BE DONE. Find the loophole that will make it happen and don’t take no for an answer.
2. Rural doesn’t always mean a bad property. In fact there are diamonds sitting the rural area of our countries and many others. Rural can be good for landbanking and it can also be good for buying undervalued property that you can then sell to someone else.

I have attached a couple of pics of us on the wedding day on the property.

Cheers,

Carly