Suffolk Here We Come

We've finally started to get things moving with our planned move and have started to put our house in order. It's not in bad nick but there are a few flaws that need tidying up and we've arranged for a couple of tradesmen to come in and touch up the decorating, replace a few taps that have seen better days, fit a new seal to the washing machine and all those little cosmetic things that might put prospective buyers off.


With no ties we've got pretty much the whole country to go at but our extensive research keeps pointing us towards East Anglia and particularly the county of Suffolk which seems to score highly in a fair number of lifestyle surveys. So we've booked a cottage and we're off to do some research in a week or two. We hope to settle on a small town or village first before we start to look at property so the first couple of days will be spent driving around trying to get a feel for places and, if we find one or two places that we like and feel at home in, the last few days should give us time to visit some properties.

We've had an initial look at places and the north south divide is a bit of a pain. Our initial searches indicate that the sale proceeds of our detached house (above) with a super loft conversion, two conservatories and a big and well fitted kitchen will buy us something like this in one of the villages we're going to investigate. Granted this is in a popular holiday area but it's a significant reduction in space and privacy from what we've been used to for the past twenty years so we aren't going to rush into anything.




It's a bit of a catch 22. We can get something spacious if we want to live in the country but if we want to live close to facilities (which is essential as we want this to be where we spend our retirement and don't want to grow old in a remote location) we can't get much. I suppose we don't need much as there's only two of us but we do want the family to be able to come and stay. It's certainly an interesting project for us. I'll blog how we get on.