The Great House Hunt...

The last week has seen me drag my troops round a variety of houses in my bid to see if there's another one out there I fancy moving to.

I've got a bit mad as we're looking much further afield than I would have a few years back. Once upon a time I thought this wee village of mine was in a land far, far away...well 6 miles from Edinburgh when you've been raised in the Big City and know nothing else seemed like far away! Now though we're looking a bit further off. Since we moved out here in 2000 the house prices have rocketed. Ours is now worth double what we paid paid for it, although I have to say anyone who pays the money required nowadays for a house like mine has more money than sense quite frankly! The prices have risen mainly due to location (and low intrest rates in recent times of course!) as we're slap bang between Edinburgh and Livingston and in the last 5 years Livingston has become a far more desirable neck of the woods and now has some of the best shopping facilities in Scotland.

Still to get the most out our money it's wiser to look further afield. To show the difference...a 4 bed detached house here about 10 years old would cost us about £270,000 where as in somewhere like Falkirk or the outskirts of Glasgow it would cost about £200,000 for a bigger, newer house. It's all about commuting distance to Edinburgh. The nearer you are the more expensive the housing. Glasgow doesn't seem to be growing quite as fast but probably due to there being a shit load more wee towns and villages on the outskirts over that way. Demand for housing won't be quite as high.

So we've looked in Lanark and a few wee villages nearby, Lesmahagow down the M74 from Glasgow and Newarthill just outside Motherwell. So far I've seen 3 I really liked but the locations have been wrong. We even looked at a townhouse in a converted church. It was beautifully done with high ceilings and original features mixed with very modern touches but it felt wrong. Kind of empty and it would be hard to make it a family home.

We've mainly focused on older properties as they are always much bigger. In fact we agreed we'd only look at older houses...until last night that is! There are so many new homes being built round the area that we decided to have a look online at the various developments nearer our current location. Two have caught our eye...they're new builds but much bigger than average and we'd gain an extra bedroom, en suite, family room, dining room and garage. So today since it's Geoff's day off I will be dragging him round a few showhouses!

In order to do that I need to go and drag the lazy sod out his bed...10.06am and he's still snoring. He's hiding up there till he hears the dishwasher start and the hoover stop which signals the all clear in the housework duties!

Jenny xx