Your first purchased home - how do you remember it?

Our first home was a two bedroom terraced cottage bought a few weeks before we got married. It had no central heating, only an open coal fire and a coke boiler in the kitchen to heat the water. It was a pretty miserable place and hard work to keep clean when working as a nurse. We stayed there for four years and bought a new build when I was expecting second baby. I remember telling my mother that we were moving and she accused me of putting a millstone around DH'S neck because we were paying £5,000 for the house. We sold the cottage for what we bought it for, was glad to get a house with a garden.

Interesting to read of other people's experiences. I do sometimes tend to forget the vast age differences on these threads. Only a couple of others on here purchasing their first homes in the early 1960's.!!!

Our second house, bought in 1972 - a new-build 3 bedroom terrace, does still carry a place in my heart. I was so happy there, even though we went through some extremely difficult personal times. Wonderful neighbours, babies 3 and twins (4 & 5) born whilst there - which was reason we had to move on.

We purchased it for £6,000 (being very lucky), as this small number of 7 houses were being built by local authority for sale. Once they had set the price they did not revise it. Prices set at end of 1971 - by the time we actually moved in August 1972 prices of properties were rising almost daily.

Four years later, the need for more room forced us to move again - no possible way of extending that house, and we sold it, easily for £8,000 (private sale).

I actually went round each room, when it had been emptied, saying my goodbyes, and remembering happy times we had spent there.

Next house I stayed in for the next 28 years - lovely big Edwardian property and the one all my children remember as where they grew up. The earlier years there were wonderful, lovely neighbours, lots of interests, at one time, even though five bedroom, it was scarcely big enough for us all. But by the turn of the millenium it was much too big.

Sold in 2003 at which time, I was living by myself. Moved to a lovely 1930's terrace house in a small cul-de-sac.

Another very happy house. Was able to carry out so much in the way of updating, etc. 16 years there, and then this final move to my wonderful and lovely flat where I am so very happy and will spend whatever is the rest of my life.

Out of interest I have just checked those houses where I first lived in 1964 on Rightmove. Back then we purchased it for £3,950. We let out the small garage and took in a lodger to help us pay the 6 3/4% interest mortgage! and still struggled.
Sold it in 1972 for £6,000.
Saw that the price rises there were just steady up to about 2010 with these terrace houses selling for around £350,000 then. In the last few years they are now selling at approx £800,000 - several made into flats which each sell at £500,000. Just wonder where, on earth, young people today find that sort of money!!!!

I remember the huge problems we had in saving for the deposit. Every single penny went into a saving account, and mum gave us £100 towards it. Eventually we found a house we could afford, but didn't really like in an area we didn't like. We agreed to stay there for a maximum of ten years. It went on to become twenty, then thirty. The boys left and it was just us, but my husband still refused to move. He said "Only death or divorce will get you out of here". So I divorced him. (there were other factors as well, of course).

We bought our first flat in 1977. It cost £11,756 exactly as houses went to sealed bids so we had to put in an odd number just to nudge us ahead. My Dad sold his back garden to a developer to get us a good deposit. Nevertheless the mortgage interest rate was 14%.
The flat was in a victorian tenement and, looking back, was a really good first home and in a good convenient location. We sold it three years later for double the price. We knew we were extremely lucky.

Having lived in Married Quarters for ten years it was a relief to finally have a permanent home so that our children would be settled, particularly as one of them was very ill as a child and needed stability. It was a modern end of terrace house with three bedrooms and a box room, literally the end house on the estate as it backed on to country fields. It was a pleasant house, but my husband stayed in the military and over the next five years his trips home became fewer and fewer until eventually he stopped coming altogether. I sold the house at less than market price to a friend who had a disabled child and was in desperate need and left without a backward glance.

I think I’ve moved house nineteen times and the house I’ve lived in for the past twenty five years is the only one I’ve had an attachment to. It’s been a wonderful home for our children and a home-from-home for our grandchildren.

My first purchased home is the one I still live in now.

When I first moved in I was renting it as a BTL. The owner suddenly decided to relocate to the UAE and offered me the chance for a quick sale. There had been disputes with a neighbour which she would have had to report (as I reminded her) and it would not have been a quick or easy sale to anyone else. I had just made some money with Bitcoin.

The sale went through quickly and of course there were no for sale signs up. It was two years before my whining neighbour found out I have bought the house. One day she came to me and asked for the contact details of the former owner as she wanted her to share the cost of a new fence. I told her she has gone to live abroad and I dont know them. Oh, so who is managing the house? I am, I bought it. So if you want anything you deal with me!

You should have seen her face! It was a study.