I bought a house in the Lake District in cash for £48,000 after selling a house in Sussex for £700,000.

When Kerry Jordan, 46, got divorced in 2021, she couldn’t afford to stay in West Sussex. For 10 years she lived with her ex-husband in a “new” three-bedroom house in Fernhurst, near Haslemere.

“I separated from my husband and found that I couldn’t afford anything without getting a full-time corporate job, and that wasn’t what I wanted anymore.”

Instead, she hired a van for a month and traveled around the UK. “I went to the western Lake District and saw that a house could be bought for between £70,000 and £75,000, so I started looking there.”

She came across a three-bedroom terrace with garden in Frizington, Cumbria, for sale for £48,000. “It was probably cheap because of where it is. It is in a farming village, close to the tourist spots but 20 minutes from the Lake District National Park…. I thought, “I can’t get any better than this.”

However, the property was cheap because it required a significant amount of work. Luckily, she was able to afford the renovations.

The property she owned with her ex-husband sold for around £700,000 and although they had a mortgage, as its value had risen significantly, Kerry was able to buy her home in West Cumbria with cash.

This was critical as she wanted to have the financial flexibility to focus on her business as a commercial photographer in the pet industry.

“I wanted to try the freedom of being self-employed… Not being tied to a large mortgage is very liberating.”

Kerry, originally from Manchester, moved here in September 2021. “I slept on a mattress for two months because the bedroom floor was covered with MDF to hide woodworms… This house is over 100 years old and there was a leak in the upstairs hallway because the chimney wasn’t laid properly.”

There was also woodworm and damp downstairs and she had to replace the entire staircase. Luckily, she found a place to build it based on a few measurements: “The staircase was delivered and the carpenter put it in, so I saved a lot of money.”

Where she could, Kerry tried to do things herself. “I did most of the basic finishing and DIY work, although I never picked up a drill and hardly used a screwdriver or paintbrush.”

The garden was a big selling point for the property as Kerry has dogs, but it took her a year to remove the family of slugs that had made the property their home, as well as deal with the “knee-high grass”. She also had to call a plumber to redirect the kitchen sink because water was leaking directly into the yard.

Kerry estimates she spent just over £10,000 on renovations she couldn’t do herself, with new floors and door frames being the biggest expenses.

“It took me two years to save up money for new floors. They were concrete or bare wood floorboards and I put rugs on them. I didn’t want to skimp on them, and they took three weeks to install, so it was a big expense.”

Kerry says she never planned to move north again and it took some adjustment. “I found the move north quite difficult… I knew I didn’t want to go back to Manchester.”

As well as repairs, she also had to contend with the weather, especially the wind in Cumbria. She is also far from friends and family.

“I might get lonely because my friends are seven hours away, but I would make the same decision again… I’m getting used to traveling, seven hours of driving is not a chore, I just turn on a podcast. In business, I prefer to go to clients rather than them to me.”

Even though she doesn’t know anyone here, people seem friendlier to her. “It took some getting used to. I don’t have children and my partner lives on Skye… I live in a small village and I’ve only met a few people, but you feel looked after – it’s a close-knit community.”

Kerry said she would definitely recommend this to others. “If you want to be free of a large mortgage and can deal with not being in a certain place or having a clear idea of ​​where you live, it’s very liberating to not have that hanging over you… This is exactly the reason I did the solution – not having a mortgage meant more flexibility in what I did with my business.”