Im interested in this basically

But its grade 2 listed, part converted without planning and at the top of our budget, but its in a location to die for and the sort of place that rarely makes the open market.

Am i mad to go for it and worry about the money for renovation and PP later? I know people in the trade so could do a lot myself or cheap, or just live in squalor as the 80yr old did who lived there previously……

What doesn’t it have planning consent for?

I nearly bought a grade 2 listed house, but the things that had been done to it had not had any approval so I said no.

It got approved and got sold about 6 months later.

I’d do everything above board; ask for the approval paperwork and if it’s not there ask for either a massive discount or for them to get it done.

I wouldn’t be scared of the listing, but you can come a cropper if the council decide to get arsey.

Where is it? It is strikingly similar to ours which is in Calderdale.

Ours is so vast that I have been trying to sell it for years. Although when the bf moved in it became a bit more cluttered with mountain bikes and therefore slightly less of an embarrassment. If it is structurally sound and big you can do a bit at a time (from experience). But it will cost double what you expect. No. Treble.

If the roof needs doing avoid. Stone slates are mandatory for listed buildings and eye wateringly expensive.

Planning may not be too bad as our council has started to realise that lived in buildings get maintained better. Listed building demands add to cost of building work.

Yes. The people I’ve just been doing work for. Cost £800k and it needs at least another £100k spent on it. They have no idea what a money pit they’ve bought.

Amazingly (at that price) it’s their first house – oh man are they naive. I have tried to advise but they have a romantic dream that everything will work out in the end.

As for listed properties – just walk away – ££££

Looks great.
Buy it.

Even DIYing and living cheap you’ll still need a stack of cash. If you’ve got that then go for it. If by top of your budget you mean it’ll cost every penny just to buy it then you can’t really afford it.

Listed and part converted without PP? Sounds like potential trouble to me….I wonder why the owner is selling it?

We bought a Grade 2 listed cottage after having looked through the window and putting an offer in, six hours later it was ours. Then the fun started: the chimney needed rebuilding, bath taps were live (infact the shower was live as well) the fitted wardrobes were causing damp (they came out the day that we moved in), the front door needed replacing (listed building consent required), the windows needed replacing (listed building consent required)
It’s been expensive but it’s been worth it

Caveat emptor

The barn has no planning consent on it to my knowledge but its half used downstairs and knocked through upstairs.

Price would have to reflect that fact and it does.

Structurally its sound i think. I just feel its worth the pain for the location alone, let alone what you could do to it

Patio is a bit scruffy and grass needs cutting, other tan that what’s not to like 😉

Am i mad to go for it and worry about the money for renovation and PP later?

Quite possibly.

I bought an oldish (110+ yrs) renovation property cos I fell in love with it in 2005. Finally sold in 2011 at a sizeable loss and I consider myself lucky to have got off that lightly. To cut a very, very long story short it was a horrible, horrible mistake and whilst experience is cheap at any price I definitely think I could have got a better rate on those particular bits of knowledge. Planning and money weren’t even that much of an issue for us at the start, either. All I now want from a house is working services, no leaks, and a bit of space to stick my bikes in. I have had the Grand Designs tendencies thoroughly beaten out of me. **** that.

Granted, you may well not encounter the problems we had, but go in with your eyes open, do your research properly, and then do it again. Look for things that are wrong with it, not things that are right. There are plenty of other picturesque piles of rotting rock in need of renovation out there if that’s your thing, so it’s not the end of the world if this one doesn’t work out.

If it’s grade 2, you’ll quite likely have to replace windows and doors on that converted bit, they stand out like a sore thumb in the photo, which is a whole lot of money (can’t remember what ours were, woman before us did them, but it was in the thousands for 3 windows, and more again for the 2 big doors).

And I bet they didn’t maintain the roof if the rest of it looks like that – that’d be much money to do – ours being in a world heritage site, last owner managed to get a grant to do it, but it was still an awful lot of money.

It looks pretty shonky, the barn bit in particular. If you had to redo much of the extension, do the roof, windows and doors, sort out the walls, that could cost a mass of money. Listed stuff is not cheap to do – for example the rebuild cost on our house is estimated at something like £500,000, for a house costing less than half that money, and that is for something probably not massively bigger than your great big barn.

Oh, and the reason it is cheap is probably because it is massive and shonky. Selling massive old houses even in good condition is silly hard and takes forever. Be aware of that, if circumstances change and you need to move expect a long time to wait before it sells.