How We Climbed The Housing Ladder

And why now, we want to get off.

Jan 27, 2024

I met my husband, Joe, in 1999 when I was celebrating my 28th birthday at Break For The Border on Argyle Street. Anyone who was working in London in the 1990’s will have memories of this venue, if not only for the tequila girls who would circle tables strapped up with slammer belts. He was a school friend of my work friend Ashley and bore more than a slight resemblance to Chandler Bing, a comparison that would follow him for years until he got older and started to be regularly mistaken for Guy Garvey. Ha. I was, to put it nicely, otherwise engaged at the time (AKA I already had a husband, albeit not a very nice one) but the lure of Joe in his Nicole Farhi jumper with his comedic personality and dubious chat up lines was too much to resist and by October, we had rented our first flat together, catapulting me from leafy West Harrow to the sunny climes of Reading.

The flat was in a two bedroomed new build block on the old Reading Football Club ground on Tilehurst Road and we lived, it has to be said, an easy life with no children nor commitments other than jobs to occupy us. We went on last minute holidays, had long lie ins and ate a lot of Cadburys Heroes (called Miniature Heroes then, for info) whilst lying on the sofa. After a year of living aimlessly (not dangerously; even then we liked a good box set), we decided that it was time to get on the housing ladder and pooled our very limited resources for a deposit. Here’s how we started, right through to where we ended up and why, now, we’re ready to jump off it.

House No 1: A Party Perfect New Build Barrett Home (2000)

Bought for a princely £150k in the Millenium year with what was the minimum of deposit amounts, this brand new build end of terrace on the same site as the rented flat was perfect for how we were living at the time. Built in a stretch of three, all of us new home owners were young working couples, meaning that we had an instant social life of drinks and dinner parties, with the added benefit of never needing to stand in a taxi queue to get home. We partied a lot. My low point memory was sitting on the loo with wine induced cystitis whilst Joe passed me a McDonalds Bacon & Egg McMuffin through the bathroom door. Shameful. We’d been torn between this house - easy maintenance - and a 30’s semi in Caversham that needed work. This, I admit, is our one house regret. The 30’s semi would have been a longer term project and a better investment but we were young(ish), carefree and preferred to spend our money on takeaways than on a Black & Decker drill and rawl plugs. For reasons unknown, I painted the kitchen lilac and our bedroom lime green; we had no furniture so we filled the entire house from House Of Pine for ease. An outrage, quite frankly. The arrival of Ella meant that priorities changed and no longer did we need a built in social life so 18 months later, we stuck it on the market and found…

House No 2: A Bought-For-The-Aesthetic Victorian Terrace (2002)

Conveniently positioned directly behind Tesco Express (the arrival of the morning tankers was suspiciously omitted from the marketing details), I fell in love with this house on sight. Traditionally laid out with all the original features, the one bathroom was off the kitchen and the small garden had been designed cottage style with loads of plants that I had no idea about and two small patios for sitting in the sun. It was a less than two minute walk to Waitrose which was lucky since our road was limited permit parking - the majority of my time was spent lugging a one year old plus buggy whilst heavily pregnant after having to park my car half a mile away up a hill. Sigh. I loved it though. It had all the character that I lusted after and was super central to Caversham centre which meant I never ran out of milk. Or wine. Or Silk Cut (these were the early days of parenting when every moment to yourself was a gift from God himself so you made the most of it). Side note: despite the obvious hygiene issues, bathrooms leading off the kitchen are VERY useful when you have kids as you can multi task. However, a weak pregnant-again bladder and a downstairs loo were not a match made in heaven so a mere year later, we put it on the market and moved into…

House No 3: A 1920’s Semi Detached With An Actual Driveway (2003)

We exchanged on this house as I was being wheeled into the operating theatre to have Max. The joy of having a driveway was extreme; it also had a wooden side return that was extravagantly described in the particulars as a ‘utility room’ but that was, in fact, perfect for escaping the children for a cigarette. The long garden sloped down from the park, the proximity of which meant that our house, with its cavity walled extension, was a haven for rat breeding. In the words of Blackadder, my suspicions were first aroused when I came down to breakfast with baby Max to discover the fairy cakes had been eaten from the worktop. Anyone who has ever encountered rat problems will know that they are absolute little f**ckers to get rid of and my main memory of our time here was of trying to catch them in the act (we did, eventually, with the help of Roland, the Council rat catcher. True name). It was in this house that I really threw myself into decorating for the first time, painting every room in the Farrow & Ball colours of the moment and even making my own blinds on the sewing machine in what can only be described as my ‘shabby chic’ phase. I had a part time job at Walmsley, the local estate agent, and when we came to put the house on the market to upsize, my boss Simon came over to tell me that my sub standard decorating attempts could actually have devalued the house. Sold it with nothing to go to so we rented for six months before buying…

House No 4: The House Of My Dreams That We Couldn’t Afford To Do Anything To (2007)

We maxed out BIG TIME on this house, bought at the height of the interest rate hikes. Our mortgage was so huge that we could barely afford food but GODAMMIT, I loved it so much. It was ripe for a renovation that we had no money to do and the top floor, despite having radiators, was uninsulated so the children were freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer, but luckily too young to complain about it. The kitchen was tiny but, predictably, I ripped off the wall units, painted the cupboards and stuck up shelves, decorating the walls in vintage plates and religious iconology collected over the years. At one point, we attempted to get a loan so that we could knock this space into the conservatory to create a big kitchen/diner but were thwarted after discovering a County Court Judgment of £24 for Book Club dues from ten years previous that had wreaked havoc with my credit rating. This was the house where I sold my soul to vintage, queuing for the Sue Ryder Charity Sale in Nettlebed once a month for mid century bargains, wheeling Leos pushchair around the charity shops and trawling eBay for preloved treasure. But things changed after I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012; my treatment finished and Joe was offered a job in York so we grabbed the chance for a change of scenery after a stressful time, if only for a couple of years. So we packed our bags and three children, bought a dog and moved to…

House No 5: A Riverside 90’s Build With Flood Terror As Extra (2014)

This was the least ‘me’ like house on our house buying ladder but I was totally sucked in by the fact that the garden backed directly on to the River Foss. This was glorious in the summer, sitting on the lawn watching the ducks go past, but not so much fun in the winter where every heavy rainfall and river rise made my heart palpitate. We built a fence to stop the dog, Buddy, launching himself Tom Daleyesque into the river but it still gave me the fear every time he went out for a wee. The house had a dubiously built conservatory on the back but it was a nice neat property on a quiet street, a short distance from York City Centre. It gained bonus points for being opposite the children’s school and having a lovely mulberry tree in the front garden; it lost bonus points because we were the ONLY people with young children in the Close and as such, the neighbours were deeply disapproving of any cul de sac sporting antics such as footballs or bikes. We didn’t last long. One year in, we realised that we all loved living in York and weren’t going to return to Reading for a while, so decided to throw it all in and buy…

House No 6: A Detached Georgian Farmhouse Which Changed My Life (2015)

And finally, we ended up here. The North/South house divide was a winner for us and when we came to view and realised that this beautiful listed house could actually be our home, it was a game changer. We moved in; I started taking photographs of the rooms as I was decorating and posting them on my Instagram account, just at a time when people were starting to look to social media for interior inspiration. I was crazy lucky to be there at that time and it’s given me the push and also the confidence to decorate and add to this house over the last eight years to create a family home. Our mortgage is still massive, of course - we’ve spent the last 23 years with a massive mortgage, always going for the most money that we could borrow whilst still ensuring that we have enough to be able to eat and pay the bills (just). We haven’t inherited or been given cash, but we’ve bought and sold houses and made sure that each time, we’ve made enough money to buy the next one, through good markets and also through some really bad ones. We’ve never been scared to push the limits.

For 24 years, Joe and I have been climbing the housing ladder until we reached where we wanted to be. But what we have discovered is that now we have got there, we don’t really need to be there. We don’t need a big house. We don’t need all this space. It feels faintly wasteful, in fact. Ella and Max are now at University and Leo is sitting his GCSE’s next year - in a couple of years, there’ll be two of us. When I spoke about this on my socials, I was bombarded with messages saying that we’ll need that space for when they came back. That we’ll regret downsizing. That we’ll wish we’d kept the big house. Let me tell you now, we won’t. Ha. For over two decades, we have bought houses to accommodate our family and now it’s our turn. They’ll be FINE. We can’t continue to live in a big house just in case they might return. That would be madness. And in addition, I love this house and I want a family to buy it who will love it as much as we have, who will use it as a home.

So what next, once we’ve sold our house and got off the ladder? The dream is to be living - hopefully - mortgage free in something more akin to House No 4, smaller with a courtyard garden that doesn’t require my attention or any gardening skills whatsoever. A project that I can work on. And if all goes to plan, in a few years time we are also hoping to be able to spend some time in the sunshine (give me a finca in Spain with a plateful of garlic prawns and my dreams will be realised). We may have moved a lot (including rentals, nine times, in fact), but we’re hopefully going to reap the rewards in our 50’s. Fingers crossed. Hurry up market, we’re waiting.

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