Friday, 25 July 2008
We now own the land!
I've just heard from our solicitor that the land is now ours! We exchanged contracts last Wednesday and completed today. The plan is to clear a few of the bushes and shrubs over the weekend so we can get a topographical survey done asap. With that we'll be able to finalise our design and then go and see the planners. Happy days!
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Site Photos
The front boundary of the site...
Looking straight up the slope...
The only flat bit...
A little path at the top of the site...
The view...
The story so far...
In December last year we decided that we'd had enough of living part-time in both of our houses, just 1 mile apart, and that we wanted to live together. Dom's flat was not suitable for Sophie the cat and both places are a little on the small side for 2 people, especially as Gill works from home. In January of this year we started looking for a new house for both of us and put Dom's flat up for sale. We spent many Friday's reading the property paper and trawling the internet for a house that matched our criteria: 3 bedrooms, garden, garage and within easy reach of Dom's work. We viewed a few good (and loads of not-so-good) candidates, but none quite ticked all the boxes. Dom's flat sold within 2 weeks of being on the market for the full asking price of £140,000, which given the current market was pretty good.
We were flicking through the property paper one Friday, as we had done many times before when we saw an advert for a building plot with outline planning permission in Totley, a suburb in the far south-west corner of Sheffield. We had not been looking in this area for houses as it's quite far from Dom's work and the city centre, but opportunities like this don't come along very often. We decided to go and have a look at the land anyway and liked what we saw. The plot has a 22m frontage and extends back from the road by about 35m. There is a very steep slope from the road at the front up to a flat area in the middle before another slope up to the rear. The slope provides excellent views towards the Peak District and Dore Moor. There are also 12 mature trees on the site, all of which have tree protection orders (TPO's) on them. All these factors make the site quite interesting, but also make it more difficult to develop. The asking price for the plot was £150,000 and we thought this seemed a very reasonable price and fully expected it to go way over this figure, so first thing on the Monday morning after viewing the plot we put in our offer of the full asking price. Unfortuantely 2 other people put in offers of the same amount and we were asked for our highest and final offers. We had previously agreed that we would not go above our initial offer of £150,000 so we re-made the same offer again, hoping (but not really expecting) that the other two interested parties would not raise their offers. As it turns out they didn't increase their offers either and we were told that it was ours that would be accepted! I think it might have helped that the vendor used to be a partner at the practice where Dom now works.
We are now in the process of sorting out the legals of the sale and the mortgage. Once these are in place we'll need to get the plot surveyed, come up with a design and submit it for full planning approval.
We'll try our best to keep this page up-to-date with any further news, drawings and photos as the project progresses.
We were flicking through the property paper one Friday, as we had done many times before when we saw an advert for a building plot with outline planning permission in Totley, a suburb in the far south-west corner of Sheffield. We had not been looking in this area for houses as it's quite far from Dom's work and the city centre, but opportunities like this don't come along very often. We decided to go and have a look at the land anyway and liked what we saw. The plot has a 22m frontage and extends back from the road by about 35m. There is a very steep slope from the road at the front up to a flat area in the middle before another slope up to the rear. The slope provides excellent views towards the Peak District and Dore Moor. There are also 12 mature trees on the site, all of which have tree protection orders (TPO's) on them. All these factors make the site quite interesting, but also make it more difficult to develop. The asking price for the plot was £150,000 and we thought this seemed a very reasonable price and fully expected it to go way over this figure, so first thing on the Monday morning after viewing the plot we put in our offer of the full asking price. Unfortuantely 2 other people put in offers of the same amount and we were asked for our highest and final offers. We had previously agreed that we would not go above our initial offer of £150,000 so we re-made the same offer again, hoping (but not really expecting) that the other two interested parties would not raise their offers. As it turns out they didn't increase their offers either and we were told that it was ours that would be accepted! I think it might have helped that the vendor used to be a partner at the practice where Dom now works.
We are now in the process of sorting out the legals of the sale and the mortgage. Once these are in place we'll need to get the plot surveyed, come up with a design and submit it for full planning approval.
We'll try our best to keep this page up-to-date with any further news, drawings and photos as the project progresses.
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