What we did…

We started off having decided that we wanted to live in Herefordshire whilst living in London.  The distance between the two places and very young children made searching for a house difficult and eliminated the local knowledge that can speed the whole process up.

We knew that we wanted a very particular set of criteria both for the house (see Design) and for the location (see Site Criteria).  This really eliminated buying an existing house without requiring some considerable enhancements.  As such we started to look at the self build option.

Initially we approached local estate agents, started buying self build magazines and searching through the local papers, using their web sites to keep abreast of any new properties.

We did see a few sets of details and looked at a few properties but the suitable options seemed very few and far between.  There were some barns which came up for conversion but these tended to be sold at auction and we didn't feel brave enough to follow that route as we felt we needed time to make sure the site we were going to buy was right for us.  Those that we saw fell into a couple of categories:

• too expensive and too well maintained which meant it would not have been financially viable to renovate to our requirements
• too large a project and hence too expensive
• ideal properties but dire locations
• ideal properties which either sold or were taken off the market before we could get our acts together.

Feeling rather frustrated we decided to use one of the plot hunting services, Landbank.  This provided a few extra leads but didn't deliver what we were after.

Eventually we found our site through a local agent.  It consists of 12 acres in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty near the river Wye, close to Ross-on-Wye.  On the site there is an old cottage, a breeze block milking shed, a stone build cider press and mill and a derelict stone barn.  An odd twist of events was that we had previously seen the site on the market 18 months earlier and had had an unofficial look at the plot and discounted it due to the steep slopes and the price.  Obviously the price had come down to make it of interest but also I think the reality of what was going to be available had dawned on us and our requirements had modified accordingly.

What would we do with hindsight….

If we were to approach a land search again these are the steps we would follow:

• Get a clear idea from local estate agents of what types of property or sites do come on the market and how frequently.
• Decide what is really important to you and what would be nice – try to build up a scoring sheet so any places you see can be scored and the overall compared evenly.
• Get your finances sorted so that you can use auctions and move as soon as you see the right place.
• Visit the area and the local agents every couple of weeks.
• Subscribe to the local papers.
• Try to develop some local contacts who may be more 'in the know' – builders merchants, builders and those people who tend to be deeply involved in the local community.
• Try not to enter into the process with a deadline to find somewhere.
• Try to move to the area if at all possible in advance.
• Be open minded and creative with the possibilities of each site you view.
• Don't limit yourself to virgin plots, keep your mind open to conversions, replacements, brownfield sites and so on.

And above all keep going... you will get there in the end if you really want to.