- Claire Segeren and her boyfriend bought a Victorian house in the Scottish Highlands by accident.
- They bid on the wrong property in an auction and spent four years renovating the derelict house.
This is an as-told-to article based on a conversation with Claire Segeren, a 29-year-old neuroscience graduate from Canada who bought and renovated a derelict Victorian villa in Scotland with her partner, Cal Hunter. It has been edited for length and clarity.
My partner and I are builders who plan to work on property projects after restoring our crumbling Victorian villa in the Scottish countryside.
We accidentally bought a crumbling Victorian villa at an auction
In 2018, I was a 24-year-old neuroscience graduate from Canada and had my sights set on studying medicine. I planned on moving to the UK after receiving an offer from the University of Glasgow School of Medicine.
My boyfriend, Cal, was a 26-year-old carpenter from Hull, England. We'd met working in the French Alps. Buying a property in Glasgow was originally going to be a project for him to work on while I studied.
I decided against medical school because of the high tuition, but we still wanted to buy an affordable property to fix up and sell. We settled on a fire-damaged apartment in Glasgow.
I was in Canada recovering from shoulder surgery when Cal returned to the UK and traveled to Scotland to put a bid in on the apartment.
Cal was following the bids with an auction booklet. Unbeknownst to him, a new property was added just before the Glasgow apartment that wasn't in the booklet.
He bid on the new property thinking it was the Glasgow one. We expected a lot of competition, so when nobody else bid against him, he knew something was up.
Cal realized we had just bought an apartment in Jameswood Villa: a four-apartment property in the coastal village of Sandbank, just north of Dunoon in the Scottish Highlands. We bid £10,000, or about $12,000.
He left the auction in a panic and called me. I said: "What's the worst that can happen? We just got a property for £10,000. It's not the end of the world." The property in the brochure didn't look that bad.
The property was derelict and nothing like the pictures
Cal went to look at Jameswood Villa the next week in person, and the real worry set in.
The pictures on the brochure were 10 years old and hid a partially collapsing front wall.
The roof had been leaking for 20 to 25 years. Rot, water damage, and mold were everywhere. We'd have to build a new house inside the old walls.
We had to ask ourselves whether we would cut our losses or pour everything into this as a passion project. What encouraged us to take the leap was that we both fell in love with the gorgeous surroundings.
We set out to buy the remaining apartments. It took us six months to find the original owners of the three other apartments and buy them.
It was our best chance to get on the property ladder, and the size of the house meant we could live in it while renting out the other apartments. This income could help cover the renovation costs.
Costs of the renovation project
It cost £40,000 altogether to buy the whole property.
We had some savings but initially borrowed money from my parents to help buy the apartments and start our renovations.
We proposed a plan of the costs, timescale, and estimated final value and wrote up an agreement. My parents didn't need persuading — they knew Cal and I were both hard-working and could be held accountable. We will pay it back through our building work, as well as income from renting out two of the apartments.
We estimated it would take two years to renovate and cost between £100,000 and £120,000 to get it to a liveable standard.
The renovation ended up taking four years. It cost about £120,000 in the end, but that's cheap for a project this size.
We did everything ourselves to keep costs down. We paid for only one week of professional help, reclaimed as many materials as possible from the site, found deals on eBay and Gumtree, and collaborated with brands using our Instagram account.
We lived out of a $610 camper van on the project site for 4 years to keep our costs down
Cal and I weren't employed when we bought Jameswood Villa. He was freelancing and taking on projects as they came up, and I started working at a restaurant in the area.
We knew we couldn't afford to renovate the villa and rent another property, so we bought a tiny camper for £500, parked it at the villa, and lived there for four years.
It was tough, but it kept our living costs down. During the build, I worked on the property full time during the day and as a bartender in the evenings. Cal would take months off from the project for paid carpentry contracts.
We lived frugally over the past few years to keep overhead low. It meant saying no to a lot of fun things, including traveling, going to festivals, and even just going to bars.
We made our own fun, inviting our friends over and exploring the area. It was an amazing part of our lives — just different from what we were doing before.
We opened up part of the house as vacation rentals
Renting out the other apartments made sense because the villa was too big for two people.
However, long-term tenants wouldn't give us the flexibility to invite friends and family over during the holidays, so we settled on making it a holiday rental.
It's a beautiful area and a great location for a holiday. The income from a short-term rental was a great way to pay off some of the project's costs.
We started letting it out in September. We charge £125 a night for a two-bedroom apartment that sleeps four. We were nervous about opening offseason, but because of the success of our social-media channels, we've had a lot of support from fans booking in.
Our experience is not some 'get rich quick' scheme
Cal could have made more as a carpenter, and I could've started a job with my neuroscience degree. But once we saw this house, we wanted to turn it into our home because we knew we could make something special.
We worked six days a week on this project for four years. Now we have this amazing space to share with our friends and family, but I would never recommend this to anybody.
This hasn't been profitable in a business sense, but we've learned so many skills. From this experience, we could go on to do traditionally "profitable" restorations.
Cal and I are passionate about creating high-quality, sustainably built housing by restoring buildings like these. We plan on continuing with this type of building work. I plan on getting my project-management certificate in the near future.
If you're interested in an adventure like this, it's an incredibly rewarding journey.