The Shippon, near Shrewsbury, Shropshire, £150,000

What it is: The Shippon, a former milking parlour dating from 1870 that has been sitting empty for more than five years, now has planning consent to be converted into a five-bedroom home with a large L-shaped sitting room. It has a 50ft x 40ft garden, and sits on the edge of the hamlet of Newton on the Hill, about seven miles from Shrewsbury.

The problems: Once purchased, the 2,000sq ft property will need at least £150,000 spent on it to carve out a habitable home. As it is little more than a shell, the new owner will need to build walls and install floors, doors and windows before adding four bathrooms and a kitchen. Linking up to the mains should be straightforward, as nearby pipes serve the farmhouse opposite.

This is a semi-detached barn conversion. The farmer who owns it is selling only two-thirds of the building, to fund his own conversion of the remaining third. He intends to live there with his wife when his son takes over the farm and, with it, the main farmhouse.

The advantages: If you live in the southeast or the southwest, you may have thought that the only barns left to convert were those restricted to holiday home use or with a price tag of over £500,000. More than 60 brochures have been posted out for the property, which came on the market just before Christmas, and the selling agent has received half a dozen offers.

“It is rare to come across a barn this size,” he says. The largest single barn to convert he sold last year was 1,250sq ft. “Most are small and, once converted, can be poky. The opportunity to build a large family house is proving to be popular.”

Once converted, the agent estimates that the Shippon could sell for £450,000.

Samuel Wood & Company, 01743 272 710, www.samuelwood.co.uk

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