“You won’t get another fantastic opportunity like this at this price… It will be gone in days,” went the estate agent’s pitch. The fantastic opportunity was a tiny ex-local authority 2-up-2-down terraced house with a loft extension, in an estate that would have been nice apart from the unkempt gardens, rubbish in the driveways and furniture in the backyards. And it was only half a million pounds. I felt slightly sick at heart as the knot inside me tightened – I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that this was the answer to our housing need.
We’d spent months looking for a new home. Our landlord of 10 years wanted his house back and in our search we decided to explore all options. Ideally we wanted to buy in the same area, so that we could stay close to our parents, not only to benefit from their help while the children were young but also to be useful to them as they grew older, and to remain in the community we had grown attached to and engaged in over two decades of marriage.
But buying in London suburbs is not easy, and with inflated house prices and a large family the options are extremely limited. What little that was suitable and in our price range was snapped up quickly.
A few weeks before I’d found a sweet ex-authority cottage in a nice setting that we could just about afford and I was determined to make an offer. But it was tiny, with two bedrooms and the potential to extend upwards. The downstairs floorspace was also small, but to me it didn’t matter as I thought we could make it work.
However, my husband Peter is an architect and he didn’t agree. His view was that the house couldn’t really cope with extending and although it would be ‘permitted’, that is allowable from a planning point of view, we would be the first in the block to do it and it would be out of place.
In reality, even when extended it would have been too tight for a family of six boys. I looked at Help to Buy but the homes within our price range were unsuitable apartments characterised as ‘luxury’, which in reality meant a few shiny taps and shiny floors, tiny box rooms and an enormous visitors’ toilet big enough to sleep two children.
The fall back position was to rent again, but rents had also seriously inflated during the 10yrs we were in our home. Houses for rent were obviously in short supply as they quickly disappeared off the market, despite huge upfront agency costs.
But there were other barriers. For us it was our children or rather the fact that we have six of them, and all boys. Each time I mentioned how many we had (and I never mentioned it until I had to, but one can hardly hide it) the conversation changed. Was I was on benefits? Was I sure I wasn’t? Appointments to view houses were cancelled and, on one occasion, a holding deposit was given back to me because the landlady decided the kitchen was too small. I felt humiliated and never wanted to be in this position again.
Diary of a Wannabe Self Builder 