Before buying a Listed Building, check your blood pressure and your bank balance, and reckon on the former rocketing up, and the latter plummeting down by the time you complete your project.  Unfortunately there is no cardio-vascular overdraft facility when your blood pressure spirals into the red.

There will be times when the owner of a listed building will wonder as to whom the building belongs, such are the occasional unreasonable demands of the Heritage departments to which the owner must conform before picking up so much as a paint brush.

Should you pay off your mortgage, your only contractual obligations to your Lender will have been to make your repayments and reduce their interest in your property.  Other than obvious obligations, your only responsibility has been to live in it, raise a family perhaps, and make a home for yourself.   Though the Lender has taken a legal charge on the property for six-figure sums outstanding for decades, and you have honoured, they do not impose on you the mantle of Custodian either during the period of your contract nor, especially, once the deeds are handed back…

Your Listing is in perpetuity, to use a legal term. You now own exclusively the right and obligation to maintain the property.  You become a Custodian.  You are free from debt, but not obligations.

The Custodian is expected to finance his/her own labour & materials required under their custodianship.  A custodianship liable for considerable fees from it’s own arse pocket to the Heritage & Planning Departments so that the Custodian (sorry! Owner) may apply to maintain the building.   A Listed Building roof replacement will require a Permission and hefty fees before work starts.  It’s non-listed neighbour will not.  While your neighbour has had the scaffold up, down and is weatherproof, the Listed Building Owner will be awaiting approval of samples, or consultation from the part-time Conservation Officer while running round with saucepans.

There used to be grants for the repair of Listed Buildings.   There were concessions:  projects could be V A T free.  This ended in 2012.  A Listed Building owner?  You’re on your own & lonesome, accept that from the start.

Oh, you will have helpful Associates.  An Architect, perhaps.  A Structural Engineer.  Maybe an Archaeologist, or most likely an Ecologist, for when your non-listed neighbour is booking his roofer you’ll be checking for bats, newts, roman pottery, whatever.

Each specialist at an hourly cost equivalent to a good divorce lawyer .  Your experts will be your best friends for the duration.

Cynical?  No.  Just get real.  Experts cost.

“And in the blue corner!”…    The Conservation Officer appointed to my case is around 24 years old with a nose-stud, stretch pants and a clip-board.

Her online CV shows her as a student for seven years, an internee with some Ecclesiastical Diocese Records Office for a further two, and a twelve-month volunteer behind Reception at a museum of note.  This is her first paid job and she has held the post of Conservation Officer for two years and four months.

Our Conservation Officer works part-time Tuesday through Thursday.

Not many Listed Building Owners would be fortunate to have my experience of old and ancient buildings, but what we have in common is love and ambition for our properties. We mortgage and re-mortgage in the knowledge that our homes are precious in our hearts, never mind the Nation’s.

Busby