So. I bought a house. More accurately I bought 5% of a house and every time I log into online banking I see the huge, terrifying minus figure that is my mortgage. (Etymologically mortgage means death pledge by the way.) My friends like to remark how incredibly adult this is, which surprises me because I’ve never accused my friends of being delusional before, or myself of being an adult.
So let’s set the record straight. This is how not to buy a house.
Most people carefully plan buying a house. Most people do it when they are financially confident, a bit more settled and are probably reasonably sure they know what they’re doing. Most people do not do it because they’ve found out the landlords of the lovely house they’re sharing are selling it in 3 months, and they’re not sure they want to pay for the staggering increase in rent when they move (it was a very cheap house). Most people do not do it when they’re barely above minimum wage and most people do not try and do it in 12 weeks. The last point probably explains why most people don’t end up technically homeless for two months.
Yes. That’s where I spent two months of my life. On that chair, with no internet, no TV, just a bike, a kindle and a suitcase full of clothes to live out of. And I count myself very bloody lucky that I had employers who had a room I could live in (and were kind enough to let me).
I won’t show you pictures of the bathroom though. No one needs to see that.
Choosing a house is quite obviously the first step.
Well actually, it’s kind of the second. First you find someone to buy a house with you. Or you’re some sort of modern millionaire. My brother and I had accidentally been living in the same shared house (I crashed in the spare room for a couple of weeks five years ago and just consistently failed to leave) for some time and had talked about buying a house many years ago. Since then I’d spent all those savings on a very expensive MA in London and we’d sort of forgotten it. Or at least I had. Steve hadn’t.
So essentially, Steve decided to buy a house and I sort of latched on for the ride.
The whole house buying processes largely seems to consist of a lot of signing things. That’s mostly what I remember. A lot of emails, a lot of signing pieces of paper and at least one really nerve wracking bank transfer. You can decide to sign more pieces of paper. See, mortgages come in a couple of guises. You have a joint mortgage (that’s the one where people lose the house in the divorce/ family feud/ estrangement) or you can be sensible and get a co-owned mortgage. This is the one where your percentage of investment is protected rather than the house considered 50/50 regardless of your input. The conversation we had on this topic went like this: “Oh, you busy?” “Yes, on my way to work. Why?” “We need to decide on which mortgage” “oh, yeah. Joint one involves less effort right?” “Yeah. Shall we do that?” “Yep. Great. See you later.”
We did make an effort to read things before signing them. Well. We definitely did once. Whilst drinking wine. And there’s definitely one I never read. Steve kept following me round when I was busy until I signed it to make him go away.
(If the devil ever wanted to buy my soul… Hell, for all I know he already has and I thought the contract was a supermarket receipt)
And then everyone else takes over and sends you a complete lack of updates for a couple of months until you get a call asking for money. A REALLY LARGE AMOUNT OF MONEY.
After that it’s literally waiting for the photo opportunity. You know the one. We all do it: The keys, in your hand, because jesusbloodychristonastickyouownafrickenhouse.
In this case, my hands covered in bike oil because my chain came off half way to the estate agents.
All of our stuff had been in storage for three months by this point and very sensibly we could have spent one night in our separate accommodations, but we’d spent a long time homeless and petty things like lack of furniture, cutlery or indeed beds weren’t going to get in our way.
We drove to the storage unit and collected: one computer monitor ( minus stand because I’d stupidly packed that in a different box); one set of speakers (minus the sub which is also the power supply because -see above); one computer tower, one chair (handily repurposed as the monitor stand) and two mugs.
We dined on a piece of wood we found in a cupboard with plastic cutlery I bought at the shop and watched a film with headphones in. Because this was now our house. Even if we had no idea how we’d done it (or in my case, how to pack either).
Note: Oh and when you do buy a house, try not to buy one that gives you nicotine poisoning; has windows that are not in fact attached to the frame; or requires adjustable spanners to hold the shower together. But that’s probably a whole different story.
Sloppy Copy 