A British family left the UK for Bulgaria after realising they would never be able to buy a home - and saved £293k by snapping up a farm abroad for just £7k.
Lewis Vye, and his wife, Jordan, both 31, left their two-bed rental house in Bournemouth, Dorset, and moved 1,788 miles to Haskovo Province, Bulgaria, in June 2022 - with their two children, Leo, 11, and Fae, two.
Jordan got the idea off a friend of a friend, who told her she had bought a house in the country for just £3k.
After mulling over the idea and constantly checking Rightmove for properties, the pair bought a two-acre plot of land which included a three-bedroom house, a barn and outbuildings for £7k - cheaper than the £300k mortgage they were facing in the UK.
Lewis Vye, and his wife, Jordan, both 31, left their two-bed rental house in Bournemouth, Dorset, and moved 1,788 miles to Haskovo Province, Bulgaria, in June 2022 - with their two children, Leo, 11, and Fae, two.
Jordan got the idea off a friend of a friend, who told her she had bought a house in the country for just £3k.
After mulling over the idea and constantly checking Rightmove for properties, the pair bought a two-acre plot of land which included a three-bedroom house, a barn and outbuildings for £7k - cheaper than the £300k mortgage they were facing in the UK.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 You have to be crazy enough to think that it's possible.
00:03 That's how you f***ing do something worthwhile.
00:07 That's how you beat the f***ing odds.
00:10 You have to believe it's possible.
00:13 Hi, I'm Jordan.
00:14 I'm Lewis.
00:17 Hi, I'm Leo.
00:19 And this is Faye.
00:24 Join the FYE family as we up sticks and reroute from the hustle and bustle of the UK to a more simplistic life in Bulgaria.
00:31 Watch as we learn, grow, fail, succeed and everything in between.
00:40 From Bournemouth to Bulgaria.
00:44 So we're actually going to move into the house and not into that annex because actually
00:54 it's a lot harder to move into the annex because of the work that needs to be done to the rafters on the wood,
01:00 on the building, the support beams and stuff. It's in a lot worse condition than the house is.
01:06 So actually it's a cheaper job to fix the house roof because there's not really any replacing to do.
01:12 It's just taking the tiles off and putting some felt down and putting the tiles back on really
01:20 and kind of insulating it and making it nice.
01:23 We're going to start making the stairs a little bit nicer to walk up.
01:26 Current stairs look like this. They're a bit of a mess.
01:29 And they did look even worse than this.
01:31 So we're going to clear these up and get rid of the majority of the rubble and the crap and the broken cement
01:37 and hopefully get them to a place where we can walk up them.
01:40 Had a dig, had a sweep and we got some good results.
01:44 Well, we can walk up them and that's the main thing.
01:47 That's what they're looking like now. So I'd say pretty big difference.
01:52 I mean, the top layer has come off, the render kind of layer,
01:58 and we're kind of left with the foundations of concrete underneath.
02:02 You knew it!
02:04 A little record player. You're buzzing about that, aren't you?
02:09 I really am. And what is in that briefcase back there? I just don't know.
02:12 Oh, we haven't opened that yet, have we?
02:14 No.
02:15 Open it.
02:16 Is there stuff in there?
02:18 Yeah.
02:19 Crowbar it out.
02:20 Oh, my God. Are they unlocked already or not?
02:23 Oh!
02:24 You need to ruin it.
02:25 I didn't. Oh, that one.
02:27 Oh!
02:28 Oh.
02:29 Oh, what's those? Baby clothes!
02:31 [GASPS]
02:33 No.
02:34 No.
02:35 That would have been knitted by someone.
02:39 [LAUGHS]
02:41 That's adorable.
02:43 Oh, Faye's going to look lovely in that.
02:45 Oh, my God.
02:46 I think there's something mentally wrong with it.
02:48 There's something mentally wrong with you.
02:50 [LAUGHS]
02:51 Yes, but you've already adopted it.
02:53 All he does is meow.
02:54 Cheese.
02:55 Oh, no.
02:57 No.
02:59 And you've just adopted a baby boy.
03:03 Yeah, but this one's not our child.
03:05 She's still here.
03:06 [LAUGHS]
03:09 And then you've got these lovely wooden doors that we're going to restore.
03:15 They're very, very nice.
03:17 Very solid.
03:18 We found the keys for them, so that's good.
03:21 And then, so room number one here, probably going to have to replace this.
03:28 But as for the lintel that supports the wall, it's in pretty good condition.
03:33 Look at these.
03:34 Look at this lovely handle here.
03:36 That handle, it's just-- they're awesome.
03:39 They all work.
03:42 And they've got this cool little sliding bar all the way down.
03:46 Really well thought out.
03:48 So we walk through these double doors.
03:50 We come into this big open space here, which is quite nice.
03:55 That's the old electric box up there, the old fuse box, switchboard, whatever you want to call it.
04:01 That's going to be replaced with new.
04:03 All of this ceiling's going to come down.
04:05 And then we go left, and we've got this room here.
04:08 Beautiful wardrobe, which came with the house, solid wood.
04:10 Absolutely amazing.
04:12 You just don't get wardrobes like that in the UK.
04:14 You just don't get them.
04:15 How cool is that?
04:16 You sit here, you've got your grapes.
04:18 Grapes there.
04:20 Look at that view.
04:21 Sat there.
04:22 Just sat here looking at that view.
04:23 Wonderful.
04:24 Unbelievable.
04:25 And this room will be lovely.
04:27 We get it all cleaned up, and it'll be a beautiful little room.
04:30 We've got this room here.
04:31 The plan is to make this a bathroom area.
04:34 So we'll come in, and we'll have somewhere where we can stay warm, wash, and whatnot.
04:40 I'm going to rip this ceiling now, because it is battered.
04:43 There's cracks all the way across it.
04:45 So you can see the ceiling.
04:52 How pretty is that?
04:54 Unreal.
04:55 So nice.
04:56 And that's the floor.
04:59 So now we've got to shovel it all out the window so that we can deal with it at a later date.
05:04 Need to get rid of all of this.
05:06 Yeah.
05:21 There's not too much to see.
05:23 But it's done.
05:25 It's done.
05:27 [LAUGHS]
05:29 24th of September today.
05:35 So we're approaching October.
05:37 They say that the days here stay pretty good until November.
05:40 It's just the mornings and the evenings get pretty cold, which seems to be the case.
05:44 So yeah, final socket.
05:46 And it won't be too long until we've got power.
05:51 So for the first time, we're going to turn this on.
05:54 I'm sorry if it doesn't work.
05:55 We believe in you, Dada.
05:56 That's number one on it.
05:57 Flip that off.
05:58 Let's go for the night, shall we?
06:00 That's on.
06:01 Go and try a light.
06:02 Go.
06:03 No.
06:04 Has Dada fixed it?
06:06 Yeah!
06:10 [LAUGHS]
06:11 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
06:14 Light, light, light.
06:16 [SINGING]
06:22 I love it.
06:24 So far, here's the frames.
06:27 Whenever I do stuff like this, I probably would have called my grandad and asked him how to do it.
06:34 So my grandad passed away this year, and I think when I do this--
06:38 [LAUGHS]
06:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]