The bid

Deciding to “take it” isn’t very simple due to the stupid Scottish bidding system. In England you decide, make an offer and, if it meets the sellers asking price, it’s yours. In Scotland the ‘offers over system’ makes the decision to 'take it' much less important (most people will make this decision 3 or 4 times before actually owning somewhere) you have to win in a sealed bid system.

The way it works seems to be like this: the seller decides what they want for their house/land, they then knock off 10-20% and say offers over this price. Then people seem to bid 20-30% (perhaps the average as of 2006) over that price. It is a bidding system rather than a first come first offer system like in England.

The good thing is that the seller gets 'market value' the bad thing is that the process can overinflate house prices, cause delays and a great deal of dissapointment and frustration.

The bid was made on the bid deadline of 31st March 2006.

It was accepted and we won. We were delighted.

Jackie and Dave are buying the whole thing; it is being sold as a package and not as two separate entities, then they will sell the land to us. The completion date is 15th August 2006.

There is an interesting aspect of this transaction. My sister Clare and her American husband Paul live in Edinburgh but have been looking for a house with a garden in Portobello too. They have been long term admirers of Jackie and Dave’s existing place – a beautiful ground floor Victoria garden flat – and so when it came up for sale they made an offer and won! Again in the crazy offers over system. So now I am in a chain with my whole family!

I will be next door neighbours with my cousin and within 5 minutes walk of my sister. Weird? Maybe.

(Paul is a well known tatooist with his own shop, Red Hot and Blue Tatoo, in Edinburgh)

* edited March 2009 to remove the costs

The trip to the UK

On Wednesday March 15^th we drove down to Tokyo, Narita Airport and flew to Edinburgh via London Heathrow. The grueling 13 hours flying and 3 hours changeover with 2 young children (1 and 2 years old) was exhausting but we made it.

We spent a week at my Uncle’s cottage in Crinan relaxing and getting over the Jet Lag. We also figured out that living in such a rural place as the Western Highlands wouldn’t be possible for both economic and social reasons.

We went back to my mum’s house in Livingston and visited a plot of land just outside West Calder. This made us quickly realise that we did not want to live in a small town like this in Scotland – which tend to be a bit depressing and run down.

We were invited to lunch at my cousin’ Jackie’s house in Portobello, near Edinburgh. We had an appointment with a financial advisor, to discuss financing the house, in Edinburgh at 12, so took a bus down to Portobello afterwards. This meeting would turn up our plot.

Jackie and her husband Dave had been looking to move from their 3 bed flat to a house but stay in the same area – a small seaside town of Portobello on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

They had put in a number of offers which didn’t win on houses over the past year. They had just been to see a Victorian terraced cottage which needed work but which fitted their requirements. The problem was the House included a plot of land at the bottom of the garden which had planning permission to build 2 No. 2 bedroom flats. This would inflate the price above what they were willing to pay. They were also not delighted about the idea of flats at the bottom of their garden.

So they mentioned casually “You don’t want to buy a plot of land do you?” I replied Yes, we do actually. We looked online at the planning applications (Edinburgh City Council logs all their planning applications with drawings online – a very useful service). And then Jackie took me to see it, Makiko was putting the girls in bed for their afternoon nap. As soon as I saw it I thought this is right for us.

On the way, a 5 minute walk from their house, Jackie was waving hello to other people and stopped to talk to another mum whose son was friends with her daughters. The walk along the beachfront was beautiful and the one could see the potential of this area – lots of Victorian and Georgian houses, tenements and terraces with a big sky and the north sea and a sandy beach right there. There was a good primary school and lots of child care we heard. The area was good for new families. It was a dull, cloudy March day and it still felt very nice.

The plot is at the rear of 11 Bellfield Lane. Here is a location plan (and here it's location on multimap EH15 2BL). The red line delinates the existing house and the proposed 2 No. 2 bed flats at the rear. North is UP. The street at the bottom of the image is the Portobello High Street with shops and transport to Edinburgh.

The plot itself was tiny, 194 square meters (2088 square feet or 0.048 acres). I had previously worked out a minimum plot size for what we wanted as 0.1acres so this was less than half. However it was a town location rather than semi-rural and when we thought about it the plot was very similar to Japanese plot dimensions. 194 square meters is almost exactly 59 tsubo (a Japanese unit of area equal to 2 tatami mats or about 3.3 square meters) and compares with many of the houses and gardens where we live now.

The plot also had a 2m high stone wall all the way around and while the rundown garages made it look ugly I could see the potential for both privacy and a nice, cozy garden.

It has a good aspect (the long dimension orientated to the south) with no overshadowing. To the north was a nice mature sycamore tree which while it’s root system might need some care provided nice ready made mature foliage over the garden – maybe even a branch for a rope swing?

I went straight back to get Makiko and we did the same walk on our own with time to think and discuss the options. We actually weren’t able to get on the site but with land that is less important, we just walked around and peered over the walls. Makiko liked it too and we decided there and then to take it! On Friday 24^th March 2006.

Background

In London for nearly 10 years my wife and I bought and refurbished ourselves a 1 bedroom flat in Borough’s Leroy Street. (Makiko is a designer). It took a year and conicided with the birth of our first daughter but was something we both enjoyed.

When we sold the flat to come to Japan we initially considered buying some land here and building a house. However the economics of this wouldn’t have worked out; houses lose their value in Japan with only the land that it stands on sustaining itself - unlike th situation in the UK. We also had only planned to stay three years. But our desire to build our own house has been very strong for a long time but my continued exile from architecture practice makes it all the worse. (I am working as an assistant language teacher in my local high school).

Matsushima where we live is a small town (10,000) although it is fairly rural it is also within easy reach of a decent size city, Sendai (pop 1 million). Having come from London (and Tokyo) this was the first time living out of a big city for both of us but it seems to suit us very much. It’s nice to have a city nearby although as time passes we go in to the city less and less.

So in returning to the UK we felt comfortable with this kind of living – in a small town but maybe close to a decent size city.

What we weren’t agreed upon was where in the UK to live (and actually even if we should go back to the UK – Makiko was and remains nervous about leaving Japan). Options seemed to be Scotland, Brighton (where Makiko studied and has many friends) and London. We eventually ruled out London because we don’t want to live in a big city anymore.

So we planned a trip back to the UK to visit friends and family and to look for land. Our plan was to spend two weeks in Scotland and Brighton sizing up our options and to look at some plots, hopefully to buy one but at least figure out where we wanted to live.

I had read many reviews and reports online about the difficulty and problems of finding building plots in the UK so we weren’t expecting too much...

Hello world!

I am an architect currently living in Japan.
This blog is about a self build project that I have just started.
More to follow.