The puzzling challenge of a low priced home

Kirsty Mcluckie on the fatal flaws of potential bargains

hat is the first thing you look for when you see an unfeasibly reasonably priced property advertised?

It might be the cynic in me, but if I come across an ad depicting a property that I would like to live in, at a price I can afford, I immediately go into detective mode, to try to find out what is wrong with it.

Does it have a bedroom only accessible through the kitchen?

Has it had a botch job attic conversion, making it essentially unsaleable to anyone who requires a mortgage?

Or does the pretty period home overlook the exercise yard of a maximum security prison?

I suspect that most other people do the same and possibly, like me, enjoy the challenge of finding the crucial fault which knocks thousands off the asking price.

I’m pretty sure that those trying to sell such properties know exactly what the problem is when their homes stick on the market for months.

Although some problems are obvious to others, but not the householder themselves.

A friend recalls trying to sell her mother’s modest bungalow in Glasgow some years back. She and her siblings had all grown up in it and loved it as a family home.

Viewers recoiled in horror however, at the sight of an electricity pylon dominating the garden.

It was something the family had never worried about, playing around it as children and using it to tie up one end of the washing line.

The place eventually sold, but at a dramatically reduced price.

Other problems aren’t so obvious. A neighbouring house was on the market for literally years, which seemed strange as it was a lovely place, in a beautiful rural position and immaculately upgraded and presented.

But its elevated position required a heave up about 30 steps to get to the front door – and it only had two bedrooms.

The size meant it wouldn’t appeal to a young nimble family able to lug shopping up to the house, while the steps seemed to put off the downsizers with an eye on long-term fitness, who otherwise would have been fighting over such a property.

While nosing in an estate agent’s window on a recent visit to Berwickon-tweed, I was amazed at how affordable even the best properties in the town appear to be.

Beautiful, spacious Georgian townhouses with views of the harbour seem very underpriced and I went so far as to pop in and ask the estate agent for the reason.

She seemed bemused and could only extol the virtues of the town – commutable to both Edinburgh and Newcastle for example – to bamboozle me even more.

It was only days later when I think I managed to puzzle it out.

Set just across the border from Scotland, residents of Berwick-ontweed do not have access to some benefits of living here, namely free elderly care and university tuition.

If you were either approaching old age, or had school-aged children likely to go on to further education, it might be that would-be buyers in the area choose to buy a home a few miles north and reap the benefits, meaning a shortage of these buyers just south of the border.

If that is the case, when my kids leave university, I might consider a move to Berwick for a few years – just until I begin to feel infirm.