On becoming a homeowner in England
Renting your home is a demoralising Faustian pact in the UK. Due to a combination of the high house prices here and various broken relationships, I made my way through most of adult life renting my home. Recently though, thanks to the generosity of my father (and stepmother) I was given a lump of money to use as a deposit. This brought the mortgage payments right down and made the jump on to the housing ladder much easier, so I found myself owning a mortgage on a home back in January. In effect, I had gone from renting a home off a landlord, to renting the money to buy a home off of the bank (who never actually had it in the first place, but that's another story). After the initial blustery circus and brouhaha of purchasing the place and moving had died down, I noticed a number of unexpected changes in my life. More settled and grounded Once moved in and settled, I felt more relaxed. Not just in a 'phew, glad that's over' sense, but a more fundamental way. I now kn
