What will we get for our money?

From what we can see, you get a lot more for your money in Skye (and most of the north west coast of Scotland for that matter). Importantly for me is that most of the properties come with land, or very generous sized gardens. Personally I'd like 0.5 - 1.0 acre of land as we've never had much more than 100ft of garden before now.

We've found a good range of internet based estate agents so that we can start the process of seeing what prices properties are going for. Some of the houses look fantastic and we could get carried away and want to rush the process, but we want to plan this carefully and visit the area a few times to get a good feel of the differant locations. (I know the area relatively well, but Linda doesn't).

Here are some of the agents we have found :

http://www.skye-property-centre.co.uk/
http://www.iosea.co.uk/
http://www.skye-properties.co.uk/
http://www.hspc.co.uk/
http://www.primelocation.com/uk-property-for-sale/browse/all/uk/scotland/
http://www.remax-skye.co.uk/
http://www.lochalsh.com/mhproperty/property.html

and here is a useful summary of the buying process in Scotland, which differs somewhat from England:

http://freespace.virgin.net/nicola.taylor/property.htm

We'll be looking for a 3+ bedroom property in order to host lots of visitors.

Linda would prefer to put Beacon Croft on the removals van and take it up with us, but that's only because we bought new kitchen curtains in January !