Empty Nester Dilemmas

The turkey has had its last hurrah and the first wave of visiting “children” and partners have scampered off back to the city. Thoughts start to turn towards plans for the new year. Will this be the year we take the plunge, put the house on the market and find a new project?

We’re now classic empty nesters. The four fledglings are most definitely fledged and flown. Grandparenthood beckons. The question is now whether to stay put in the family home which we built and wrote about in the mid 90’s; or to move from the semi isolated rural idyll back towards civilisation and be closer to the children and with luck grandchildren (plural). While the 80’s zeitgeist was encouraging ‘greed is good’ acquisitive materiality we were busy growing vegetables and rearing sheep and children in a search of the bucolic good life. Always ahead of our time.

Sticking to the property rather than lifestyle aspects of this calculation it’s a tricky one. Will the house, which we like and which ticks most of our chosen boxes, be worth enough money to buy something reasonable if smaller in our chosen high value search area? Will we be swapping a lovely, charming, characterful and quite substantial home in beautiful rural Monmouthshire for a glorified rabbit hutch (anyone looking for such a gem please feel free to contact me incidentally)? Will we be able to sell? Why do estate agents seem to lack any appreciation of the value of high quality materials?

Like most people contemplating putting their house on the market the valuation doesn’t match the aspiration. If we decide to sell should we follow current
orthodoxy and ask a relatively low guide price so the house gets picked up by more people who are searching Rightmove. Tactics for selling a house in the Rightmove era would be a good subject to tackle. I might give it a try once I know a little more! The agents seems to grumble like crazy about having to shell out £400 a month to Rightmove for each of their branches. They can’t even drop out during the quiet months as they’ll be charged at a higher level when they return. Poor dears!