Swansea House Hunting
I’m in Swansea in the south of Wales. The ocean is beautiful – and warm enough to swim in without a wetsuit. I’m here till mid-August, but probably longer. I’m house hunting.
Go on any property website like Zoopla or Rightmove and search for the whole of the UK sorted by lowest price first. Put a max price of say £100k. You should see some clusters of hot spots where houses are very cheap. One of those areas is the south of Wales – mainly around the valleys of Rhondda but Swansea also has a few houses for quite cheap.
I’ve thought about owning my own place for a while. Initially I wanted to buy land, or a forest, and build a tiny cabin on it. It was likely to be illegal, but I figured given how minimalist I wanted to live, the nearest neighbours wouldn’t complain.
Then I grew older. Encountered some health problems, which led to prioritising my health, and having more creature comforts.
I figured if you could buy a freehold two bed terrace house for under £50k, the benefits of having a legal right of residence with central heating and hot showers probably outweigh buying 2-3 acres of forest and building an illegal cabin with no running water. Haha. It made more sense to do the latter in the bubble of London houses. I didn’t know how cheap houses in other parts of the UK could be.
The other hotspot is in the northeast. Around County Durham there are a few. Some only a few miles outside of the lovely Durham city. A semi-detach for £65k, 4 miles away from Durham city. Deeper into Durham County there is an abundance of options under £50k.
Mumsnet is a useful forum for checking out areas you’ve never been before. Gives you local knowledge for why an area is so cheap and what to expect.
Buying a Church?
I met an architect in Swansea. He buys churches for crazy cheap and converts them into flats. One church he bought for £55k. Another massive one that will convert to 10+ flats for £120k.
I love the idea of living in a church. I have to do a bit more research on the D1 use class and what’s actually possible. It’s just an idea for now. Check out these churches in Scotland though:
- Whittingham Church £65k
- Collessie Church £85k
- Borthwick Church £50k
Sublime! Imagine living in a church with beautiful windows and these super high ceilings.
Coding
I’m making another attempt to learn to code. First attempt I only wanted to know just enough to be able to host my website and make small changes using an already existing wordpress theme. This time I’d like to actually learn enough to build some cool things. The main reason is so I can create something on Bitcoin. Whether it’s something simple like hosting my website using Bitcoin or creating an email autoresponder that is triggered by a Bitcoin transaction. Or a “proof-of-reading” app where you do a quiz after finishing a non-fiction book, and if you get 80%+ a percentage of what you paid for the book returns to you.
Whatever I end up building, coding feels like a very useful skill to know. It’ll help with understanding the various Bitcoin startups emerging too. Their challenges and their uniqueness. To understand Bitcoin and what Dr. Craig Wright says, I have to study computer science, economics, game theory, law and a bunch of other subjects to make sense of it all. My generalist leanings loves this.
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