Why one advisor wouldn’t buy a castle

After posting an online article earlier this week, Advisor.ca received some interesting feedback.

Read: 3 castles cheaper than apartments

Despite the fact that these castles are bargains, Richard Knowles, an advisor at Customplan Financial Advisors in BC, still wouldn’t fork over the cash. Here’s why.

I’ve been looking for years and the problems with cheap castles are:

1. Too many ghosts. Hauntings are too frequent, which makes for troubled sleep. And if it’s a castle that housed a variety of monarchs with a penchant to murder, this is even more problematic.

2. Like most buildings with heritage designation in North America — they invented this in Europe of course — changing building codes without the right level of municipal kick back leads to hidden costs (see ghosts above).

3. Property taxes and upkeep for heating costs in large, airy, west wing castles. Most of these castles get sold off in tax auctions where the owners gave up because the tax bill exceeded the cost to sell. The upshot is their wine cellars are the real thing and original — a dank, cold, humid, musty basement deep under the castle. But at least it makes for great Bordeaux wines.

4. I saw a castle for sale in Belgium with a big moat. Very impressive. Great to show off — “Come by, I’ll drop the drawbridge.” But the cost is almost too reasonable. I could only surmise that with amazing location in the center of the city, a park-like setting and a moat, the two major impediments would be the high property taxes and water damage. After all, how many people have experience managing a moat? We have endless problems just with the in-ground backyard pools we maintain in Canada.

I enjoy the online magazine.

Best,

Richard

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Staff

The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.