Saturday

On Saturday morning when I opened the back door, I realised that the garden no longer looks dry and brown. Of course, compared to luscious British gardens it's still very bare, but the overall effect is now much closer to green than it was even a week ago. Most of the green is weed or moss, but still... it's one of the good things about Autumn.



At 9.30am we went to look at another possible house, courtesy of buysellcyprus.com. The agent
told us the house was massive, and in a good area near St Lazarus church with some garden at the back. He also told us it was a listed building, in need of some renovation, but that we would get a government grant of £350 per square metre to do the refurbishment, so long as we left the original structure in place.

It was certainly massive. Four bedrooms upstairs - all huge - and part of an ex-shop downstairs. There was also a bit we couldn't see downstairs, where an old lady is living. Apparently she will move out when someone buys the property. The back garden was rather a jungle but not too bad a size. I suppose the place did have great potential...

However we didn't like the location, or the fact that the property was right on the street - no front yard at all. We also didn't l ike the fact that it wasn't just a bit run-down, it was in terrible condition - nowhere was really livable. Plaster was falling off walls, the roof would need replacing, some walls would need knocking down or rebuilding, all the windows and shutters would need replacing. Besides, it didn't feel like a good place, somehow.

Then the owner said that the government subsidy wasn't a grant, precisely; we would have to employ architects and then get approval, and the government would give us 40% of the costs, up to a maximum of £350 per square metre. In other words, we would have to have found 60% of the costs. At least, that's what we think he was saying. But by that stage we'd all decided this definitely wasn't for us anyway.

Still, it was an interesting experience.

We decided to walk back as it was a nice day. On the way we looked at another house - just the outside - which we had been told was for sale. It looked in quite good condition, but was much too close to the town centre, and would have been very noisy.

We did pass an estate agent with a lot of interesting looking houses at good prices advertised in the window. We went in to enquire, but were told they had been sold... oh well. We gave our name and phone number, and told the lady there what approximate size, location and price we're looking for, and she said she'd do some research.

Unfortunately it was quite warm on Saturday and by the time we got home I was far too hot. I don't do well in heat and sunshine. So I didn't do the gardening I was planning to do. Maybe later this week.