Your first purchased home - how do you remember it?

Never bought a house built on a hillside again, always a house on the level.

Ours was a small 2 bedroomed in a village. It was fine when I still worked, but lonely as a young mum with a first baby, with my family and friends miles away. Even back then ( early 80s) , we could not afford to buy where we would have liked. We stayed there three years. The positives, it was easy to heat and easy to clean. There were lovely walks round about to take baby in the pram and a really nice park. We stayed 3 years, but it was hard knowing no one.

Tiny kitchen, tiny hall and a small living room, plus two bedrooms. Coal bunker and outside toilet. We were very happy there.

First house was an end of terrace with bay windows, early 20th century and still in its original condition with outside toilet (but a bath and washbasin inside). It was in Belfast, 1974, and cost £1600. The mortgage was about £15 a month and putting in an inside WC was a condition of getting it. We had next to no money as DH was still training. I was pregnant - an accident! - and DD1 was born in hospital in 1975 and taken home to a house heated only by a coal fire with a back boiler to heat the water, and a convector heater to take the chill off the bedroom. The WC was finally installed by DH during the hot summer of 1976 - he had to dig a trench for the sewer pipe in the brick-walled backyard and use a blow torch to fit new copper pipes onto old lead ones.

DH also repaired all the sash windows and I did a lot of painting. I painted the mouldings of the internal door panels in a deeper shade of the main colour - what a fiddle that would seem to me now. We kept the lovely old fireplaces, cornices etc, The mangle that had been left in the back yard came in handy for wringing the terry nappies (no washing machine).

We loved that house and our friendly neighbours and were unphased by the sound of helicopters hovering over a more troubled area near the city centre at two in the morning. Our area was relatively quiet but we were well aware of what many families faced in other parts of the city and outside it (as shown by Kenneth Branagh in his film ‘Belfast’).

We were sad to move, due to DH finishing his training, in 1977, when DD2 was on the way. We sold our little house for £3000 and bought a new car. The new owners ‘modernised’ the house and we were heartbroken ?

Our first house was a beautiful Glasgow tenement flat...2 bedrooms kitchen, lounge & bathroom that we bought for 9k before we got married in 1980...So many happy memories....I often dream about living there and always wake up with a happy feeling.

First house with my now ex husband was a relatively new 3 bed semi in Hampshire, I think 1977, for £24,000. It was a relief after a rented ‘cottage’ which only had coal fires and was in need of significant work as well as being freezing in winter. Not a happy place for me, we split up in 1985. I’ve been back as we get on very well with his wife, the house is probably worth about £370,000 now.

I bought my first house with my first husband from a friend who had recently lost his wife. He just wanted out so we got it cheaper than most on the market.
It was a very modern house one of three it was in the middle. A nice bright house with a long garden in a pleasant road.
It was ok while I was working but another matter when I had my son. I was suddenly very lonely I missed where I came from and my parents. I was only about six miles away I had no car at the time. I would walk back home to my parents. I complained so much about feeling isolated we put the house on the market. My husband worked long hours so moving back near my family home was my plan.
As it turned out I divorced my husband and I wanted to have a fresh start that wasn't a happy house. I moved again five minutes up the road when I remarried and I am still here. In reality we should downscale but we can't be bothered it's where we will stay.

I think we were lucky, although it wasn't a new house there were other young parents in the road and nearby too.
Mums didn't work and we used to meet up in each others houses and the children played together.
Happy days.

Our first house was a rented modern semi, oh the bliss of moving out on our own after living with the in laws when first married. Sadly I don’t have very happy memories as he was a very controlling man and we eventually divorced. Second time round we bought a semi detached in a quiet village and it suited us so well we are still there after 25 years!

We bought our first house in 1979/80.
A semi in Redditch i loved it,then moved into a victorian cottage in Sutton Coldfield in 1981,it cost 13k,needed updating,but loved every second we were there.
Still smile when i go past it,so many memories,it was my son`s first home,happy days.

When we first married we lived in Seychelles for two years. We had a bungalow on the side of a hill overlooking the sea. For another year we rented an end of terrace in Newcastle while OH did a Masters. The first house we bought was in the village we live in (we are in house number three) and we lived there for 9 years. It was a 3-bedroom terrace with a separate dining room and a sort of conservatory on the back. We moved to the next house (a semi) when the children were 2, 4 and 6. We stayed there for 6 years before moving to our current house (detached). Every now and again we think about moving but we can never find the right house! Anyway, we are having a lot of decorating done shortly.

We bought our first house at the end of 1965, after 18 months in an old mouse and spider infested cottage where the only heating was one fireplace in the front room and we shared a toilet across the yard with another house. So when we moved into our brand new house with a BATHROOM, and central heating, it was like paradise. We paid £2, 150 for it, but found no end of faults in the build, but the builders could never be pinned down to to anything about them. We lived there for just over 11 years before relocating to Lincolnshire, and have never had a new house since!

Our first house was a brand new three bed link detached, on a big estate just outside Durham. It was 1972 and was £5750, plus an extra £500 for the freehold. We both worked two jobs for some years to help pay for it and stayed there ten years. Would have bought again on the same estate, but the jump to the four bed detached there was a bit too much for us, so we moved a few miles away to get a bigger house and garden. Happy times in general.

We bought our first house in 1971. It was a tiny Edwardian semi (we were told that Bernard Miles had been born in it) It had 3 bedrooms but no bathroom. The loo was outside and the tiny kitchen only had a cold water tap. Most of the kitchen was filled up with the old copper. It cost £2,750 and we got a council mortgage. We were able to get a grant from the council to improve the house and we built a proper bathroom and modernised the kitchen. Of course we did all the awful 70s things like ripping out the original fireplaces, but it was what everyone was doing. I remember a work colleague gave us an old washing machine that ripped DH's shirts to pieces!

Our first home was a semi detached two bed bungalow, that we bought from DH's brother and his wife, when they moved on to a larger home. It was very spacious and comfortable. The only down side was the solid fuel boiler that was temperamental at times. We stayed there for 7 years, then moved to the house we are still in.
Both houses have been very happy places for us.

Our first house was an almost new, 3 floor town house with 4 bedrooms in the South of England. In 1970 we paid about £4k. It was so big we let the ground floor to help pay the mortgage. Our lodger stayed until the arrival of DS2 and used to babysit sometimes.
I had wanted a doer-upper in the countryside but alas we couldn't get a mortgage. But in retrospect we were so lucky and our neighbours were also young couples with children and it was quite a lovely, lively community.
There was some waste ground behind the terrace where the developer had run out of money, so one of our clever neighbours fenced it off as a playground and built a swing. We had bonfire parties and became great friends with the others in the terrace.
We were the first to move away when DH got a job back in his native Scotland which was quite a culture shock for me.

I am still in contact with a couple of our original neighbours.
I just looked on google and those houses now fetch £300k and I see the back wasteland has been built on.

I have very fond memories our first home. It was a three bedroom mid terrace on a new housing estate in Surrey and it was perfect as we were all young couples having our babies around the same time. I still have a couple of friends from those days.
We moved after six years though as we needed more space for our growing family.

I've just looked at our old house on Rightmove, last sold 5 years ago.
I feel quite nostalgic - how I miss that view!

Just before we got married in 1977, we bought a very spacious two bedroom, top floor victorian flat for £6, 750. The roof leaked, two ceilings collapsed, the flat downstairs went on fire, while I was home alone and the bailiffs were at the door, because the previous owners hadn't paid any bills.

We moved two years later to Troon, to a new build, three bedroom Wimpey house, just before my son was born, as DH had been promoted, was now working in Ayrshire and I couldn't get up the stairs to the flat, due to a worsening lung condition. The house was originally priced at £17,500, which we could just about afford on one wage. By the time it was built, it cost us £18,750 and the mortgage rate rose to 15%. We could hardly afford to eat!

We are now in our fourth house, which I love. We extended it in 2018 to make life easier for me, with an accessible, downstairs shower room and a bigger kitchen. I will be leaving in my coffin, as we have no intention of ever downsizing.
In fact DD and SIL are moving in with us in a few weeks, as they have sold their flat and haven't found anything yet. Thank goodness we have plenty room.

We fell in love with the house without examining it properly. We couldn’t really afford it but we bought it and are still in it over 50 years later. It was meant to be our first house but we never quite got round to moving. Instead we extended it out the back and upwards. We won’t be able to stay here forever as it has a steep drive and steps up to the front door but at the moment we are still enjoying it.

Our first house was a small three-bedroomed semi. Of its time, 1981, it had artex on the walls of the hall, stairs and landing which cut us to ribbons. We had very little money - the only new item was our bed - so carpets were pieced together, and I recovered a sofa and two chairs we were given. There was no sound insulation between us and the adjoining semi. We could turn off the volume on our tv and listen to theirs.
Set in the head of a cul de sac, the rear garden was standard with an additional triangle of land on which we grew veg. It was bordered by a spectacular beech hedge.
By the time we’d had the children we needed a larger house.
Now we’ve come full circle and really should downsize. I keep looking…!

We are still living in ours. We bought from DH's mum in 1990; this is the house he lived in since the age of 3. It's a very simple 60's build, but it has a beautiful view and is in a good location.

3 bedroom semi in a vast new suburb in 1985. Practically everyone was a young first time buyer. The only people around during the day were the small number of women who had given up work when they had babies. Most women were staying on at work by then because of prices and high interest.

I found it really bleak and lonely. After six years we were able to move to an older smaller suburb with a mix of age groups and more facilities around. That was a 70s build with a converted attic. We lived there for 5 years then bought a 1930s semi with lovely features, 10 minutes away from our own house. We loved the area and had really settled there.

We took my Mum and Dad as a surprise to see the concrete slab that our house would be built on, quite close to where they lived (MrOops was working away from home for 2 years, and I had 2 under 5s at the time) they were underwhelmed, it looked so tiny. Dad worked out that it was twice the size of his garden shed, except ours had an upstairs.

The first house my exh and I bought was in Tillicoultry in the Hillfoots. (Ochil Hills) We bought it for £22,000 in 1983. It was a two bedroom semi detached house with a kitchen/dining room and a box room that we set up as a study. I loved that house and the outdoors in particular. We had the hills right behind us and we could see and hear the sheep on the nearest one. We outgrew it sadly and moved closer to exh work.