I’m a fantasy house buyer – are you?
Our summer holidays might be over, if they ever got going, but there’s still one bit of escapism available to us. I speak of fantasy house shopping and the growing number of people who, anecdotally, are spending their spare time scouring property apps.
Not that we have any intention of actually moving, you understand. Couldn’t afford it if we wanted to. No, the game is
I am a sucker for an oast house. A colleague swoons over rectories
twofold: either “What can I buy for the same price as a one-bed flat in London?” or “If I won the lottery, where would I live?”
I confess, there’s also a certain voyeuristic pleasure in it. When you’ve spent months in your own home noticing every bit of flaking paint and hairline crack, it’s nice to know other people’s interiors could also use some sprucing up. Or totally gutting.
I’m a sucker for anything involving an oast house, while a colleague admitted to swooning over rectories. Currently, I have my eye on a bookshop in Hay-on-wye, a £5million Dulwich town house with a maze, a 16th-century castle in Northumberland (a snip at £2 million) and a brutalist masterpiece in Norfolk with a private lake and a writer’s studio – where I could presumably get some work done, rather than browsing Rightmove.