What Price ?.

What price did you pay for your first home?.

Our first flat (Tenement), cost £160!.
The Tenement flat consisted of one large living area with a bed recess,which I made into an eating area.
We had a walk in cupboard cooking area.
We slept in a folding bed settee.
We had the old outside toilet on the stair landing,( Oh Happy Days) no fancy toilet paper,only the Daily Record..
This Was Back In 1961, and the wife and I were as 'Happy As Larry'..

 

But in those days a B&W TV that could only pick up 2 channels cost the equivalent of £1,000 in today's money (OK maybe you didn't need a TV).

 

The first house I bought was in fact my current house. On the market at the discounted price of £78k because it had stood empty for a year, and being a repo, the original lender wanted as much of their money back as they could get, as quickly as possible.

So I offered £71,500. The estate agent said I didn't have satisfactory proof of a deposit for it, so she lowered the offer to £70,500, which was accepted provisionally there and then, and confirmed within about an hour of me leaving their shop

Not bad for a good sized semi with front and back gardens, driveway and outhouse which is the size of a small living room.

 

£19,000 in 1986...We lived in the back bedroom for a few months while work was being done so it was a Lounge,bedroom and kitchen rolled in to one....

 

A bedsit then?

 

We lived on a mattresse in the back bedroom for some time whilst I damp proofed, woodworm treated, replastered, replaced ground floor construction, replumbed, rewired, repointed, replaced ceilings, replaced windows, refitted the kitchen, reconfigured door openings, refurbished/opened up fireplaces and a whole load of other stuff. We ate Xmas dinner off a Workmate bench in our dining room.

When refurbing the ground floor single storey lean-to bathroom we could lie soaking in the bath gazing at stars in the night sky.

Can't understand these TV property programmes where people expect all the work to be done to their liking before they even consider purchasing.

 

A brand new build, 2 bedroom, end of terrace £3,950....in 1972.
It was a struggle at the time.......and for months I wondered what I had done and why.
We look back and smile..................Yes it WAS worth it.

 

We didn't buy the same house did we Scrungee?

 

We have to take into account different areas have different price scales. My first house was a modern (back then) three bedroomed mid terraced house in Essex, we bought it in a sellers market when there was a lot of gazumping going on and paid £10,200 in 1973.

 

I won't go into our house in America so I'll start with the first one we bought in the UK in Buckinghamshire in Spring of 1978. We bought a 400-year old end terrace cottage (1 and 1/2 bedrooms) for £13,500. We sold it five years later for £35,000 and bought a two-bedroom 300 year-old detached cottage for £35,000 but only had an £18,000 mortgage on it. We lived in a ruin/tip for years but 18 years later sold it for £169,000 (still needing lots of work) and had re-mortgaged it three times ... which bought us three other properties, one on the IoW and two in Portugal. So, although we struggled with mortgages of over £100,000 we ended up with four fully paid properties and £120,000 in the bank.

We currently live in an old Portuguese home (not a villa with pool) and own two apartments, one townhouse and a caravan/cabin on the river here ... all paid for and bought on the back of the one Bucks cottage. It was because we did without and invested the money wisely.

By the way, we both worked full time in stressful jobs travelling around the country and never had time to go out only socialising with close friends usually at each other's homes ... whom we still do today in Portugal as most of them visit yearly ... love them. xx

Life is beautiful after many years of doing without and we are making the most of it and enjoying the fruits of our labour.