Buying a house was not an easy or straightforward thing for me and my husband. We first embarked on our journey to buying our home in the April of 2016. We only got the keys to our first property with one another in September of 2019.

I know that our home-buying story is very long and laborious in comparison to others. I think that ours is a very realistic time scale and it just goes to show that buying your first property is not something that you should be running into and there is so much that can go wrong along the way. So, I thought that for today’s blog post I would sit down and share with you guys some of the things that we have gone through on the long and bumpy road to getting to this point.

 

 

I should start by saying that my husband and I both had a very clear idea in our head that we wanted to buy a home with one another and we never wanted a quick and temporary solution of renting a property together. Renting is just wasting money that could be spent paying off our own mortgage, so we decide that we would live between our parents houses until we could get the money together for a deposit and finally start looking for properties. I know that we were in a very fortunate position to be able to go ahead and jump straight into buying rather than renting and I completely understand that sometimes people do not have a choice as they need a quick solution, but we knew that this was something that we would be able to take our time with to save and find the right place.

 

The first house. 

Not long after we reached our saving goal, we saw a property online with lots of potential and in the perfect area and we decided to go ahead and have a viewing. We fell in love with the old house and our minds started running away with all of the changes that we would do to make the place our own and before we even had a chance to think about it we were putting in an offer. After lots of backward and forwards the offer was accepted and we were on the path to becoming homeowners. We went through the entire mortgage process, paid out our money for all of the surveys. Only to be sorely disappointed when we got the results back from the bank.

In our dream home the old couple that had lived there for the past 60 years had made many changes to the house. All without official regulations. All of the windows had been changed, with no paperwork. Even worse, a supporting wall had been knocked down and there was no RSJ put in place. We had to reach back out to the couple with some serious queries. The bank was not willing to loan us money against a property that could potentially fall down because a main supporting wall had been knocked down. We went back to the sellers with this query and they said that it was our issue. It ended very uncomfortable with us pulling out of the purchase and the eldest son of the family knocking on our door trying to cause a fight.

Our journey to buying our home had made us lose a lot of money. We then decided to leave it some time. Once we got our head back together, we tried again.

 

The next house

The next house that we saw was even more perfect than the first house that we saw. It was in the ideal area. Hell of a lot more modern than the first one. I could genuinely see us building a life there. We went for a viewing the very day that the sign was put up and we were the first people to go and view the house. We fell in love with it and I knew that it was going to be mine. Little did I know at the time that a millionaire had purchased the house. He renovated it and wanted to create a bidding war around the house. We go the knockback three times for the house and the last offer that we put in was massively above asking. We would either have to find the extra money from somewhere.

The house was listed on the market initially for £320,000 and our final bid was at £340,000. At this stage we decided to walk away. By the time we finished bidding on this house, there was 8 couples involved. Later we found out that the house had been sold for nearly £80,000 more than the asking price. Absolutely ridiculous. When people mention how hard it is to buy a house, it is because of reasons like this. Absolute arseholes that are willing to rinse people of their hard-earned cash just to be greedy. In the area that area where we wanted to live, this was the issue that we kept running into. It was quite affluent where people had more money than sense and this situation ended up happening more than once.

Our journey to buying our home had yet another set back.

 

The last house

We then saw a house a little further afield that ticked all of the boxes. I decided that I would go ahead and book a viewing. The house was 25 minutes away from where we lived, it was a new area to us and we didn’t know what to expect. From the very first viewing, I was in love and I knew I was going to put in an offer. It was the perfect family home. Just by travelling a little further afield, we could get almost twice as much house for our money. The couple who owned the house were even willing to go under the asking price. They said it just felt right that my husband and I wanted their house.

 

From that moment, everything just seemed to fall into place. The house sale went through merrily and the rest is history. I wanted to write this blog post because it is rarely smooth sailing when on a journey to buying a home. I really do think that we are the confirmation that everything is meant to happen for a reason. Had we not had those trials and tribulations to begin with, we would not be in our breath-taking home.