Cosy Nook, bought at auction

The guide price was £68,000. I paid £81,000, and that is not a mistake.

Auction guides are set low to pull bidders into the room. They are a marketing number, not a valuation, and anyone quoting a purchase against guide price is telling you very little. What matters is what the thing was worth and what it earned, and on both counts £81,000 was the right price. I would rather show you a purchase above guide and explain it than only show you the deals that flatter me.

Most of the income did not come from weekend breaks. A contractor took it Monday to Friday for nearly two years at £1,500 a month, and tourists filled the weekends on top.

That £1,500 covered the £582 of fixed costs more than twice over before a single holiday booking. It also meant no midweek changeovers and no empty nights in February. The weekend guests were upside, not the business.

That was not the plan when I bought it. I had imagined couples by the sea. What actually paid the mortgage was a man working on a long project up the coast who wanted somewhere clean and quiet with a washing machine, and who booked the same flat every week without being chased. Mid week contractor demand is invisible until you have it, and it is steadier than tourism because it does not care what the weather is doing in February.

£11,000 of work on an £81,000 auction purchase is a small spend. It did not need a new layout, it needed to be clean, warm, well equipped and reliable. That is most of what a guest is paying for, and it is why operations matter more than interiors once you are open.