House Hunting And Renovations- Part 1

Now calling this post house hunting and renovations makes it seem like we’re actually at the point of doing these things but we’re not even close but I wanted to do a series over the next few years updating the progress of our future move and our plans. I love reading these types of posts and I know the progress of planning and buying a house is a long one so I wanted to reflect this.

To give you some context in case you haven’t read my blog before I bought a shared ownership flat back in 2012 on my own and since then I met my boyfriend Luke and we know that we want to buy a house together. Shared ownership is a great way of getting on the property ladder when you’re not in a situation to be able to buy outright, be that because you’re doing it alone or just can’t get enough of a mortgage. Despite this they can take quite a while to sell as I know from various people in my building who have sold up, this is because it’s not just you and the people buying involved you have the housing association which means that things take a lot longer.

Me and Luke are hoping to start looking for a house at the end of next year/ start of 2020 so realistically I know that I need to put my flat on the market around May next year to sell that and be free of a chain. We’ve decided realistically that we’re going to move back in with my parents for a while so we can save a bit of extra money between moving out of the flat and into somewhere new, but also it means we can then buy a house without a theoretical chain which should move things on quite quickly. I feel very lucky that moving back in with my parents is an option as I know a lot of people aren’t lucky enough to be able to do this, but I think between 6 and 12 months is going to be realistic for us.

At the moment all we’ve really been doing is starting to save money as we know the process of moving will be expensive with stamp duty, solicitors fees and storage units while we’re at my parents for all our furniture. But we’ve also starting thinking what we really want from our house and how much realistically we think it will all cost. We’re going straight in looking for our forever home so we know what we want is going to be a lot but it’s somewhere we’re hoping we won’t need to move from for a long time (if ever).

We had the initial ideas in our head of semi-detached, drive way, minimum 3 bedroom and a garage preferably (if not side access to the garden with the ability to build an outhouse) but after going to the Grand Designs show last month we now have a proper idea of everything we want such as:

• Underfloor heating so there’s no need for bulking radiators
• Solar power to save us money in the long term
• G9 LED Bulbs so the lights last longer
• Home security system so us and our home is safe and secure
• Home automation as technology is so clever now we want to take advantage of that
• Pocket doors as you don’t have the awkward space behind an open door
• Boiling mixer tap which would mean we wouldn’t need a kettle or a water cooler
• Bi fold patio doors to open up the back of our house as much as possible like these ones from St Helens Windows

As you can tell it’s going to be a fun time saving!

So that’s where we’re at the moment which is pretty much just saving and dreaming at the moment but only time will tell how our journey progresses.

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