Buy a cottage for £1,000 - and move next door to the Marquess of Bath

The estate agent describes it as a hovel and the local wildlife is a bit alarming, but for a mere £1,000 you could own a house next door to the Marquess of Bath. The Longleat estate in Wiltshire – famous for its pride of lions and the eccentricities of its aristocratic owner - is selling a dilapidated cottage for that price in the village of Horsington, one mile from the Marquess’s stately Elizabethan home.

It may be the cheapest house in the country, but there is a catch. The owner must pay a further £1,000 every year for the duration of the 60-year lease, at which point the property must be surrendered again to the estate. There is no option to extend the lease. Any prospective owner must also satisfy the estate that they have the funds to convert the property into a smart one-bedroom home within 18 months, at an estimated cost of £150,000.



The deal is still good value, according to Humberts, the agents acting for the Longleat estate. The total outlay over 60 years, including the purchase price, the annual payments and the conversion cost, adds up to £211,000, or an annual payment of £3,517, which is half the going rental rate for a one-bedroom cottage in the area.

If you’re not deterred by the lions (the safari park is half a mile away) or the landlord (the Marquess has installed some of his 75 “wifelets” in other cottages on the Longleat estate), you’ll have to get in quick. Simon Powell, from Humberts’ Salisbury office that there was “absolutely no interest” in the property before Christmas, “yet suddenly we now have four or five interested parties”. It seems to have caught the imagination, particularly among the over50s.