Personal Archives - Page 75 of 103

A house for less than £100K

Posted on November 20, 2008March 8, 2017

Today’s little walk was from Cley to Sheringham. A bit of a late start due to us taking the long way from Kings Lynn 🙁 However it was a lovely clear day with the tide in, the pebble beach makes the walking a bit harder but very rewarding with the sea sounds.

The big surprise of the day is that you can buy a cottage in the centre of Sheringham for £99,000 my first glimpse of a sub £100K property in these parts and of cause Sheringham does have a rail connection 🙂

Norfolk Coastal Walk

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Sally has done a post with more photos over on her blog 🙂

The Property business

Posted on November 12, 2008April 8, 2021

Having sold my old offices to Studio24 on Monday. I’m now looking at places to invest my gains ( Pretty low by the way , the property has roughly doubled in price over 20 years) although when fully let it was yielding 9%.

I called up the Kings Street Housing Association. They offer a private sector leasing scheme that guarantees you a rent for a period of 2 years on houses offered to them. The rent offered is based on the local housing allowance which, apparently, is £450/500 per month for a 2 bedroom property rising to £550/600 for a 3 bedroom house.

So, to even get a 6% return the house can only cost £120,000. Certainly impossible to buy a three bedroom house for that in Cambridge and for that matter even in places like St. Ives, Soham, Ely and St. Neot’s maybe.

The houses have to have the 3 C’s as well – carpets, curtains & cooker.

So back to the drawing board I think! All ideas welcome 🙂

Glasnost

Posted on November 9, 2008March 8, 2017

In the best spirit of Anglo / Russian co-operation. Here I am holding Colin and Maria’s one month old baby ДАНИЛКА. (that’s Danilka or Daniel in English). Maria is a Russian born tennis coach who teaches at the David Lloyd tennis centre and was one of my lodgers a few years ago. Colin was one of my first employees straight from the local technical college and now runs his own business fitting out operating theatres with A/V kit..

We had a great evening with them and Maria’s mother plus Svetlana (my latest Russian lodger). Fascinating to hear of the Russian approach to education – you pick a sport,then you just do that and no other sport 6 days a week. Maria started her tennis at 7 years old!

Chance or Fate

Posted on November 5, 2008March 8, 2017

Having attended many talks about chance and randomness it is still amazing when certain chance events occur.

When Sally and I were walking the Camino Via de la Plata from Seville a few weeks ago we bumped into two German lads, Manuel & Michael. Manuel was walking all the way to Santiago and in fact when Sally left in Los Santos, I walked with them from Villafranca to Merida. However, due to the office sale in Cambridge we parted company in Merida.

In the meantime Em and Mark were walking from Roncesvalle to Santiago…

Now get this when Em and Mark were collecting their Compostellas in Santiago who should they meet at the office? Yep Manuel. Now what is the chances of that happening?