May 2022
John: So, this was the second house - a cottage on the side of Loch Droma. Let's just set that in context. Loch Droma is a little bit 'north' - it's between Inverness and Ullapool. 'Between' is actually an hour's drive from Inverness and before you get to Inverness, you've probably driven quite a bit to even get to Scotland and then Inverness is about 250 miles (or 4 hours) from the England / Scotland border at Gretna Green. But on the face of it .... wow!
Set just off the main road (the only road) on an elevated position with its back to the hillside sitting snugly is Loch Droma Cottage, a traditionally built former deer stalker's cottage with uninterrupted views across the loch and to the hills beyond. It faces 'the right way', that is South West.
In addition to the main house, there is a separate barn which could be developed into a sleek, modern bothy for holiday let or for when extended family make 'the trip'.
We'd seen Loch Droma advertised (offers over - no fixed end date) for probably a week and, being complete virgins to the process, were thinking about scheduling a trip for a viewing sometime in the next 2-3 weeks at our convenience. Within about a week, the listing changed to 'closing date - get your offers in'. Ah, so if we want to see the house, get a bid in and have a chance, we've got to drop everything, drive 500 miles to view a house for about 20 minutes and then drive 500 miles back, all whilst working a Monday - Friday and not wanting to squander our precious holiday. Ok - doable - closing date next Tuesday 12noon, let's drive up through the night Friday (alternating driving and sleeping), see the house, come back Saturday and sleep Sunday.
Well it worked - but I wouldn't recommend it: 12 hours up, 12 hours down, 1000 miles within 24 hours, lots of coffee, several 'rumble strip' moments on the motorway - not good!
This was our first real introduction to the buying process in Scotland. Most properties are listed as 'offers over' a price and, once a bid that's half reasonable is made, the property is likely to move to a 'closing date' by which all best offers need to be submitted. The seller then considers the offers and the bidders are notified usually the same day.We'll discuss what makes a half reasonable offer later!
Anyway, the proposition. From my perspective, one word: scary. This is the reality of a remote property in Scotland - as amazing an opportunity as it may seem, my head was definitely in rational mode, unlike Liz;
It's remote .... like, remote. The nearest house (ok, there is 1 next door neighbour behind an unfriendly electric gate and a 'forest') is over 5 miles away.
It's on a high mountain pass 300m above sea level - in Northern Scotland. Not only does the road have snow poles at the side of the road (that's to tell the snow plough where to go because you probably get 6 foot drifts) but the cottage is beyond the snow gates, ie. you get locked in occasionally. We called in at the pub down the road (5 miles) for a bacon sandwich and I asked the barmaid 'what's it like in the winter?' 'You wrap up warm or you die - it's cold and windy,' was her reply.
The house needed work doing to it to ensure the weather didn't cause further damage and managing a house project from 500 miles away was a daunting prospect.
There was something a bit 'Silence of the Lambs' to the place. The windows had bars on them (why?) and the barn was a fully equipped abattoir for deer hunters, complete with a white board detailing the most recent killing.
More about the buying process in another post, but in summary: get a solicitor (a Scottish one specialising in property transactions), get them to validate who you are (passports, anti money laundering etc), clarify their fees (including a cost to place a bid even if it fails) and get your bid in to them so they can place it just before the closing date.
Oh and try to work out what 'offers over' means in that location, for that particular house at that particular point in time.
I didn't want to bid - it was too scary, but Liz ignored me and bid anyhow. I was praying we didn't get it and hallelujah we didn't. I'm sure it will make a fantastic proposition for someone, but it was way too much, way to far away, way too soon. The whole process probably aged me a year.
Liz: Hmmm, that's not quite how it went...
We were away for a long weekend again, at the Frogmill in Tewkesbury, and in the pub one evening we did a little property research. The search was still sporadic at this point, occasional forays, no real structure. Loch Droma Cottage was described in the particulars as a charming traditional cottage set in the midst of beautiful Highland scenery with spectacular south-facing views to Loch Droma and the Fannichs mountain range. I don't think you can argue that this view is not spectacular! There is a viewing point at the end of the loch and if you Google it the photos are truly magical. I was instantly smitten - something about this house called to my very soul! I could feel the pull of the loch view and the promise of 13.12 acres of your own land surrounding the house and down to the waters edge was an amazing prospect. The addition of the extra stone barn offered the idea of a little AirBnB business to keep us busy and stop John getting lonely, was just perfect. Price was offers over £270,000.
Firstly, John's aversion to being so far north baffles me - it all depends where you are coming from, and once we are living in Scotland we won't be travelling from anywhere. So, basing travel time to the house from where we live now is meaningless.
The brochure also said: The area is an ideal base for the outdoor enthusiast, from a wide range of walks and mountain bike trails, to challenging mountain climbs and fishing for salmon and trout on local rivers. John loves the outdoors and I thought this would really tempt him - lots of opportunity to get out in the fresh air, keep fit, explore, and generally get him out of my hair for hours at a time!
We requested the Home Buyers Report and read the glum news of the damp problems in various places, the damage to the render, the rotten window frames...and with every problem we added a little to the budget to put it right, should we be the winning bidder. But, I was optimistic - I thought this extra work might put people off, and that each problem could easily be rectified by fixing the guttering, the bathroom tiles, the dormer roof. John was not convinced but was totally up for the trip, the petrol money, the loss of the weekend, the lack of sleep - it was an adventure!
The house moved to a closing date on Wednesday and we were suddenly left with one week to get our act together. The estate agent at Galbraith had called us to warn us, and when we tried fishing for a ball park figure for offers she said someone had made an offer 'starting with a 3'. Wow - £30k over the asking price, at least. Where do you pitch an offer, for a house that needs a fair bit of modernising? What price do you put on that view, and that amount of land, and the potential of the barn? Were we even in with a chance?
I asked the estate agent for the names of some Scottish solicitors they would recommend and called the top one on the list. They told me what we needed to send them in order to be validated. We did that, and then called our mortgage company to see how much we could borrow against our existing house and the terms of that loan. They told us that we would need to also be validated again at the branch, despite having our mortgage with them for the last 20 years. We scrambled for an appointment on the Friday to go in with proof of ID, so that we were all set for the closing date the following week.
The trip was terrible! Neither of us really slept more than a few hours, and we arrived very early in the morning. After admiring the breathtaking loch views and crystal clear air for a while, we decided to drive down to Ullapool to scope it out, seeing as we had time. We got back to the house and were still an hour early for our 9am viewing. At 8.30am the viewing agent called to say her car battery was flat but that we could access the house alone using the key safe instead. We let ourselves in and began a series of extra surprises. The first was the extra room in the loft space that would easily become a third bedroom, but was not mentioned in the brochure. The next was how wet the ground round the house was. Then, there was the slaughter house! We opened the door to find, white tiles, metal hooks, some kind of butchering cradle and a hose on a bungy cord for swilling down! But - the up side is that the barn already had water, electrics and drainage connected, thus making any conversion much simpler and more cost effective.
Finally, the biggest surprise of all - you got to own your own waterfall, lake and tumbling stream running down to the loch side. This was not mentioned in the brochure at all. For me, this was just the icing on the cake, and I really thought this was a one time opportunity. I wanted this house!
On the way home, we called in at the pub, which was only 5 minutes down the road, and John asked the waitress a very leading question along the lines of 'So, you get snowed in here right, what's it like? Really windy?' She did not say anything about dying from exposure.
We then spent the next hour discussing what was needed to make the house habitable, how we might go about it (my parents said they would happily help), how much it might cost, how that affected the budget, and what we could realistically offer. John oscillated between allowing me to put an offer in, and telling me how terrified he was. I was so in love with the house that I optimistically believed him when he said I could make an offer and he would throw himself into it if we won it. We decided our offer could be £320,000 based on the fact that the barn would cost us approximately £50k to do up and then be worth about £100k once complete, thus adding to the value of the property overall. The bonus was that the estate agent also said we could rent the property out in its current state for about £850 a month, and it came fully furnished. This would cover the mortgage repayments and keep the house warm and occupied. The maths really worked.
Sunday night, we were tired and irritable and an argument ensued, but on Monday morning when I needed to provide the solicitor with documents proving the amount we have in savings in order to make a bid, John provided them without question, so I chose to believe he was on-board with the offer. But, in my heart-of-hearts I knew he was not keen (and I was a little bit scared too), and so I deliberately sabotaged our chances by dropping the offer to £305,000, knowing that we would not win it at that amount. But I still said a pretty strong prayer in the hope.
Tuesday at 12noon came and went, and later that day we got a call from the solicitor to say that we had been unsuccessful and that there had only been one other bidder, and that there had been 'quite a bit in it'. Three months later the website still shows the house as 'under offer' and we expect it to be another month before we find out what it sold for.
I am still devastated and, should the sale fall through with the current buyer, I would snap it up in a heartbeat. I am still praying for a miracle...
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