Have your house preferences changed with age?

[Mercdriver]

In 2000 we bought a new build bungalow in a small village, we both worked and the commuting was OK.

Village pub was the hub and we made a lot of friends, life was good. The pub closed due to lack of support unfortunately and we saw the writing on the wall. Not helped by bus service which stopped at 18:00 hrs, nothing on Sunday. You needed car and a licence to drive, meals out involved expensive taxis as we will not drink and drive.

By now retired in 2012 we realised that country life not for us, no pub, friends dying poor bus service and far from hospitals.

Moved to suburb of Dundee, plenty of shops, restaurants and a great bus service every eight minutes.

So country sounds ideal but there are problems, depends what you want/need

[rdjohn]

gangzoom said:

How hard was it to build in Europe? The language barrier cannot be easy to manage when it comes to builders and planning etc.

In Aug 1999, we stayed in a Gite nearby and the French couple there were very friendly.

We went back there Easter 2002 having told them of our plans. They had done a lot of research for us and identified 13 sites that met our criteria. One by one we eliminated them for being too close to the trunk road, septic foss, too far from village, or potentially difficult to build on.

We bought our vineyard site of 2.5acres for twice the price for half the size for about £25k. The general rule in France is that you can develop 50m either side of a designated village road, so planning was very easy.

Our friend then researched a local building manager. He would charge us about €30k - way less than I could earn during the build. I did all the drawings down to light switch positions in CAD and sent dxf files to his designer. No language issues, we jest got on. At that time translation software was pants - everything is so much easier now.

The company then created a technical specification for each of about 11 trades. There quotations came in very close to his estimate. Construction was started in October 2003 and completed Jan 2005. I either flew or drove down for monthly meetings. We only had 3 big issues where he thought he would know what I wanted. Actually, we were building, 3 holiday rentals, our house, pool and 4 car garage. I learned technical terms very quickly, but still cannot hold a proper casual conversation and with tax authorities still rely heavily on Google Translate, as I also now do in Spanish, but it works.

Sadly the friend who helped me, died last year, but he was very proud of what he helped us create. He was C-3PO tomy R-2D2, We could not have done it without him. His wife remains a very dear friend.

[Calite]

Not for me through my 20s into my early 30s.

Still want my dream little forest plot, relatively close to amenities, with an offgrid ~1 or 1.5 bed flat build over a big 3 or 4 car garage/workshop.

Oak frame & clad construction, totally offgrid with solar/wind, a deep bore ground source heat pump, well & septic system.

Sadly seeming more and more impossible under UK planning as time goes on.