Life in a big city, especially in Kyiv, has many advantages and disadvantages. Developed infrastructure, convenient transportation to the workplace, central communications: hot water and heating. All this makes it possible to live relaxed and not to be distracted by small household problems.
If you look from the other side. Traffic jams, gas pollution, a lot of people, cars on the sidewalks, muddy gray dirt on the roads in winter and incredible heat from asphalt in summer. Many people have the desire to move to a completely or at least have the opportunity to periodically go to their own house in nature. And here comes the question on what to stop your choice: at the house in the village or at the cottage.
In this article we will pay attention to some features of the choice of home, which at first glance are not obvious. And on which few people pay attention at the initial stage in the selection of real estate. And, meanwhile, the differences are significant. After all, even the largest real estate search sites often show ads for the sale of houses and cotteges in different sections.
Дом в селе
We will not dwell on the question about residential evaluation or summer houses evaluation as a building. Often houses in the village and dacha differ in the applied technologies (if this word is relevant in this context 🙂 of construction, wall material and architectural planning solutions. These questions are obvious and everyone will choose the accommodation to their liking.
Land in the village
In most cases, the house in the village is located on a land plot with the purpose of «individual construction», to which often a larger «piece» of land for the garden («for private agriculture»).
In addition to the large total size of the plot, it is necessary to pay attention to its shape. As it is, the plots for the garden are located behind the house and have a strongly elongated shape. On such a site will not be comfortable to put a table under a tree and sit for tea. It’ll look like you’re sitting in a field or in the desert.
Thus, for those who like to closely deal with the garden, the land in the village is more attractive, because it has a larger size. At the same time, given the target purpose (under the garden), the price of the acre of such area (valuation of lands) will be lower in comparison with the suburban areas (under gardening). However, for those who are not engaged in personal agriculture, from such a large stretched area will not be of much use.
Surroundings (neighbours and their houses) in rural areas
It should be understood that the contingent that has houses in the village and cottages in cooperatives are often completely different. Most likely, your neighbors in the village will be people who grew up there, used to work on the ground and lead a classic «rural» lifestyle. Get up early and go to bed, work the garden, keep the bird and sometimes the pigs. You will be uncomfortable inviting friends to stay late at the barbecue, as the neighbors will be nearby for a long time to sleep. And vice versa, you should be prepared that on the weekend at six o’clock in the morning the neighbors will have a tractor and there is no question of any sleep.
You need to decide in advance for yourself whether it will be comfortable for you to live in the rural rhythm. Pay attention to the neighbors, whether you will be comfortable with them. If you are used to a completely different style and rhythm of life, you may not be comfortable living next to each other.
Communications in the village. Electricity and gas.
Very important and for many at first glance not obvious question with the evaluation of engineering communications in the village. In most villages there is no central water supply and sewerage, water supply comes from its own well, and special septic tanks are equipped for draining. So we need to look at the gas and electricity. The gas is obvious, either there is gas or there isn’t. Given current gas prices, more and more people are turning down housing in favor of electric and solid fuel boilers. But without electricity you will not be able to do anything.
A distinctive feature of a rural house from the point of view of communication is that the contract for the supply of electricity for a cottage is concluded with a cooperative, and in a rural house – directly with a regional energy company. In most cases, a direct contract is a big advantage. You pay for the amount of energy consumed and do not worry either for the current transformer repairs or for the fact that someone from neighboring residents did not pay in time and from the electrician disconnected the entire cooperative.
Perhaps the only possible disadvantage of a direct contract with an energy provider may be a ban on bringing three-phase voltage to the house, instead of single-phase. This option is not allowed everywhere, while in the cottage cooperative this issue can be solved more easily. The three-phase connection makes it possible to first use more electricity, for example, to connect a powerful electric boiler (of course, this makes sense when installing a two-tariff counter). Secondly, it is possible to use inexpensive devices of automatic phase switching, which will always «keep your hand on the pulse». And switch the house to the phase where the current voltage is closest to rated. Such a device is often a cheap alternative to an expensive stabilizer, as it costs several times less (and sometimes 10 times).
In first part of the article we drew attention to the features of living in a house in the village. Noted the features of valuation of lands under the garden, namely their elongated form. Also mentioned the difference between the urban and rural rhythm of life. Well, we also touched on the issue about communication evaluation, particularly the supply of electricity to the house.
If in the first part the main focus was on the house in the village, in this material we will focus our attention on the features of living in cotteges. Especially, if a few years ago in most cases cottages were used exclusively as summer houses, now more and more people consider this type of property as permanent housing all year round.
Even a few years ago, the fundamental difference between a cottage and a rural one was that it was impossible to register at the cottege («to register») with all the inconveniences that this entails. Let’s not go into details, let’s just say that now «residence permit» is not something problematic or rare.
By the way, if you are looking for a cottage near to Kyiv, we recommend to pay attention to the sites where there are so-called «proven cottages» – that is, ads about the sale of real estate with guaranteed correct information and photos, terms of sale and so on.
Electricity is the problem number one!
All the inconveniences of living in cottage cooperative as a rule are somehow connected with electricity. First, it is often of poor quality: the voltage is out of bounds; there are power outages. Secondly, the tariff on power supply is objectively higher for summer residents than for rural residents. This is due to the fact that for the operation of the power supply system, summer cottages need to maintain the capacity of engineering communications (transformer and power lines)to pay for electrician services and to compensate the time of the members of the board of the garden association, which they spend on public work.
Transformer
If you plan to buy a suburban area, be sure to check out the situation with the transformer. If the cottage is relatively modern, problems may not be. But if we are talking about the villages of the 1980s and 1990s, you need to be especially attentive!
- We need to find out what maximum power is allocated to one house. This can be indirectly seen by looking at the value of the circuit breakers that are installed near the energy meter. If the connection is single-phase, the automaton value is multiplied by 220V to understand the maximum power. For example, if there is a 20 amp input machine, the maximum power will be 220*20=4.4 kW. This capacity should be enough to use household appliances, but clearly not enough to heat the house more than 100 sq.m. electricity in winter.
- It is also necessary to clarify whether a three-phase connection is allowed in a cooperative. If so, this is a great advantage. Firstly, with the same parameters of the input switches can get three times more power. For example, to install the same heating electric boiler. Secondly, it is possible to use automatic phase switches so that consumers in the home remain always connected to the phase, the parameters of which are currently closest to the nominal.
- For permanent residence is very convenient, if the accounting of electricity costs is carried out with the help of a double tariff meter. Since the night tariff (from 23:00 to 07:00) is half the daily rate, at the current cost of kilowatt with the help of such a meter can be seriously saved. It is enough even to turn on the same boilers only at night with the simplest timer – and the savings will be immediately, as they say, «on the face». Unfortunately, not all gardening partnerships allow the installation of double-rate meters.
Horticultural partnership («cottage cooperative»)
Since the transformer is not on the balance of the regional power plant, but is the property of the cooperative, summer residents have to maintain it on their own and at their own expense. In addition, payment for electricity in summer villages is not directly on the account of the electricity supplier, but on the account of the garden partnership with progressive summer cottages, or cash who is more «retrograded».
Therefore, electricity for each gardener is more expensive than for a rural resident. Here and the cost of electricity, and administration of the cooperative. In addition, there are objective losses of electricity in the lines, as well as cases of theft of energy. Of course, all of the above costs go to the cottager through membership fees and higher than the rural tariffs per kilowatt.
What is the result?
Based on the above, you can come to the following conclusion. Both options of living (village and cottage) have both advantages and disadvantages. And in each given locality, conditions can be radically different. Somewhere is clearly more comfortable to live in the village, and somewhere, on the contrary, more pleasant and more fun – in the cottage. Try to communicate more with locals before making a decision to buy real estate. This will make the most correct and most appropriate choice especially for you!
