My farmhouse nightmare

From the veranda of a small Irish farmhouse, I looked out over the sun-drenched West Cork peninsula. All I could hear was the clank of the boat yard below.

‘How much is the booking deposit on this one?’

After two days of viewing farms, I was tired of asking this question. Conveyancing is different in Ireland. As soon as you say you want to buy somewhere you have to transfer money to the estate agent to become ‘sale agreed’, and it’s often as much as 5 per cent.

I had found plenty of tantalising period farmhouses with 20, 30 or even 50 acres, but I couldn’t get too excited that they were ‘only’ £500,000, because that meant I had to come up with £25,000 to get under offer.

‘The booking deposit is fully refundable,’ the agents kept saying. But what good is that if you’re a normal person without a spare £25,000 hanging around in your bank account? Unless you sell your house, you don’t have any money to buy another house.