Last week I found two potential new homes, but the initial euphoria turned to disillusionment within a very short space of time.
OK, the first one was not for her ladyship anyway, but I gave it the full looking-at as a way of establishing a process for review. We happened to travel by a back road between our place and Douglas, as I had seen it on the map, but it appeared to be closed at one end. Accordingly, I started from the other end and we rapidly found ourselves in billionaires-ville as there were lodges with gated drives where you couldn´t even see the house. but "offers over 30million". Holy (smoked) mackerel, that is serious Hollywood style loot.
Anyway, as we rounded one bend, there was a bungalow which looked quite good, so I chased it down online (hence value of others). Said bungalow had 5 bedrooms and 3 baths and a double garage, so was "too large" hence her dismissal. I progressed it based on the "you don´t have to use the rooms" philosophy.
The ´photos were a hoot, with the main lounge basically having two opposed desks and lots of computers, a very modern bathroom and a very old one with a large basket of smelly-soap stuff and a bedroom with young-girly things all over just half of the bouble bed and very little else. All sort of scenarios (scenaria?) presented themselves, but my basic hunch was that it had been bought in lockdown as a business-use escape from diseased mankind, and was now being disposed of as "not wanted on rest of voyage of life". Now this place was actually in the middle of nowhere, thus was VERY unlikely to have fibre-optic communications suitable for heavy business use, also it was not on any public transport route (unusual in itself in IoM) - then there was the large farm building within 100 yards (pigs?, hens? possibly other smelly or noisy beasts?). It is actually not that far from a beautiful bay where the steam train stops (but only in summer) but that could be a blessing or a curse tourist-wise. It was thus even ruled out by me at this point, but, and chasing the detail, it turned out to have been reduced by 70k within the past few months - and had been for sale for longer at an even higher price. Obviously something amiss. Turned out to be owned by a UK company. No ´photos of garage at all. No blurb about immediate neighbourhood (actually close to a small parish hall with a too-large car-park), no info about construction, insulation, nada de nada as the spanish might say. Oh, and it was nearly 100k over our "Top Limit", so out it went.
We did discover that you can find out all sorts of details from the google-style maps, also Manx websites where you can find out about the ownership and history - and how much it has sold for in the past. Useful to know for the future (and even better when you speak to someone who knows a bit more of its history).
The future turned out to be a couple of days later when another bungalow came on the market. We took a drive down to Port Erin to see from the outside and it just about passed that test enough for us to book a viewing. When I say just about, that was because it was on a min-estate of similar bungalows and on the fringe of a less salubrious area. two strikes and you are almost out. Almost, but we decided we needed to see something to give us a base-line and it did fit a lot of our requirements.
The owners had gone out and left the sales lady to show us around. We walked in and could have walked straight out. Obviously (badly) extended (cracks badly covered in ceiling, pipes outside walls) and floor creaking / moving slightly underfoot. Following up on a comment someone had made, I asked what the wall were made of, as I had been warned that lots of 70s era stuff was built with thin walls that wouldn´t take insulation. But then the answer of "wood-frame" came as a bigger shock (especially as the outside was covered in stone cladding). Quite a few more dodgy features, which rendered the agent´s comment about the owner "having been a builder"unnecessary. If she had said they were from Essex I would have just nodded, as I saw many places like this when we first moved down there. As the old adage goes, "we made our excuses and left", but I couldn´t resist telling her I thought that it was probably more that 100k overpriced - and she obviously agreed as she said the most recent of its type she had sold have been 200k less!!
Notes for file - Location, location, location true. Overpricing is the norm. Estate agent´s blurb is still the hype it always was. Photographs never tell the real story.
Good job we have somewhere to live while we continue our hunt!
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