House Buying Design Questionnaire

Vision

To buy a house with a garden and wonderful views in my home town of Richmond, North Yorkshire.
Overview

A very useful method of gathering information in the preliminary phases of any permaculture design is to perform a client interview. This is where the designer will ask a set of predetermined questions to the client to understand what their requirements are for the design. The client interview will also provide information relating to the kinds of resources that are available. From this point, onwards the available resources will act as the foundation of the design.

For this design, I will be playing both the role of the client and the interviewer by following a collection are questions that can be viewed in the appendix section. I present only the summaries here that will now become the foundation of the design and will be built upon in the coming phases of the design process.  

 

Basics

To have bought and moved into a house come June 2017, (it is currently 2nd February 2017). We have no experience with house buying, no experience with mortgages, no experience with estate agents. There is limited money available for buying a house in a town with such high house prices. No house searches have yet been carried out. There is no house to sell.

 
Wants/Needs

Two-bedroom house with a separate kitchen and living room. Double glazed with access to gas, electric, water, and, fibre internet. A driveway would be a bonus. A south-facing garden large enough to grow food, and where it is possible to sit and watch the sunset of an evening in summer. Excellent views from the garden and house. The area to be quiet, a short walk into town and to my parent's house avoiding having to drive.     

 
Resources

There is money saved for a deposit on a mortgage, leaving a little extra for any essential renovations. We have access to the internet for house searches, I have good knowledge of the local area.    

 

General

Ideally, the house will need minimal work doing to it, somewhere that we can move into without much hassle. We do not need the house to be fancy with all the latest fashions preferring something simple and cost-efficient. Having a garden is very important.