No way would I buy a house near a cliff edge, however stable and secure it was supposed to be. Cliffs are unreliable things, they can be rock solid for decades and then one day collapse dramatically.As London property developer Sue Diamond has just discovered. She bought a six-bedroom clifftop house in Torquay, Devon, last week and just six days later a huge chunk of her garden disappeared in a 5,000 tonne rock fall.
Not surprisingly she's said to be too upset to talk about it.
I guess she decided it was a risk worth taking, as a house that would normally cost about £1.5 million was sold to her at auction for just £154,500. A pretty tempting discount for a spacious seaside hideaway with stunning views of the English Channel.
But the cliffs around Britain are eroding rapidly, and numerous houseowners have found their gardens, or even their houses, crumbling into the sea overnight. It's not a risk I would have anything to do with.
And it's a risk the buyer knows all about. They can't say when disaster strikes that it came out of the blue, they were taken unawares.
The people I feel sorry for are the ones who buy a lovely house in a pretty spot and are then faced with some totally unexpected development that ruins their little bit of paradise for ever. All of a sudden rolling green fields turn into a hideous housing estate, or a thunderous motorway, or they find a local factory is pumping out toxic chemicals.
They can protest as much as they like, but the politicians and local authorities seldom take much notice. They're written off as moaning Nimbys*, diehards standing in the way of progress, or hysterical nutters smearing some harmless activity. Or they're told "Well, you had it good for a long time. It couldn't last for ever."
They didn't see their purchase as risky, but it turned out to be just that.
* Not In My Back Yard
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