Back living at the parents

I wanted to post something slightly different to what I typically write about and decided on writing about moving out of the parents home and back in..... Hope you enjoy!

It's true what they say when you meet the one - you know (I know that's terribly cliche!) After about 3 months Nick moved into my parents and shared my rather box-like room with a small double bed! Although we both get on with my parents well, you can imagine it wasn't the most ideal situation. There's only so many times you have to have a cold shower or hold it in when you're busting for a pee! So a year in and we decided to look for our own place, unfortunately for us it was right in the midst of the credit crunch so banks weren't giving mortgages out as freely as they used to.

As Nick and I didn't have a hefty deposit and at the time we were both in low-paying jobs, we decided to go for a shared ownership scheme with Hightown Homes, on a new build flat situated next to the Kodak building in Hemel Hempstead. At the time shared ownership was a new scheme that had been introduced by the government to help first time buyers, only problem with this was that the only bank that we could get a mortgage with, with a 10% deposit of 25% of the flat was Leeds Building Society, which meant the interest was a little on the expensive side. Once we had got through all the stress of the paperwork, If you haven't already been through this, it's a little on the stressful side (understatement!). The sale went through really quickly and we had moved in within 6 weeks. Now - to furnish the flat, I learnt very quickly not to leave a man in charge of getting furniture....I returned home from work to find a 46inch LED TV and 3 bean bags, oh but wait he had pre-ordered a hoover! We spent most of the next few weeks in IKEA (the place of divorce!) and Wilkinsons, kitting the house out in the most affordable way. I'm glad to see the back of flatpack. I have to say I loved the flat, it was the perfect start and great to have our own space, plus it was only a 2 minute walk into town. A year in and we had a few problems to say the least,  the main one being that the boiler was installed incorrectly and took 10 months to fix, which wasn't ideal as we had a no heating, but they did provide 2 small electric heaters to compensate and a reduction on the rent £30 a month to be precise! 

Word of advice: Although shared ownership seemed like a good idea at the time, had we looked into it a little better, I'm not sure we would have gone for it, as Hightown Homes really are not the most helpful people to deal (understatement) with and they put the service charge up by 100% in 1 year!

Back again!

4 years down the line and planning a wedding! We decided to sell the flat, Luckily for us we sold the flat relatively quick thanks to Navigation Estates, however it took over 3 months to move.

Hightown homes paid nothing towards the legal costs or the estate agents fee, which are based on the total cost of the property not just the 25% that we owned and they charged us £500 to move out! I thought the paperwork was bad when we moved in, well it's probably on par if not worse when you sell a property! Solicitors really are a pain in the backside!  Packing up the flat was a joy as I'm sure you can imagine, a lot of broken nails and bruises. You really do accumulate a lot of rubbish over 4 years, A fair few trips to my parents to offload our boxed up flat and many a visit to the charity shops the flat was nearly empty except the furniture. As we didn't have anywhere to store furniture, we decided to donate it to the YMCA, who were fab they came and collected everything which was great! Once the flat was empty, we spent the next few hours cleaning and of  course it was only right to order our last ever takeaway in the flat! I found moving out of the flat really emotional and dropping the keys off to the estate agents was awful! I'm not quite sure whether it was a combination of knowing that we were back living at my parents where we started or all the lovely memories we had from the flat.

The idea of moving back to the parents was to save some money towards a deposit for a house, 3 months in and we are only just starting to save, who ever knew organising a wedding could be so expensive. The enjoyable parts of living back with the parents is my mum and dad's cooking and the fact they do the washing (I don't miss doing this at all!) The disadvantages are the fact my sisters is back living at home now as well, so there is 5 of us and 1 bathroom, which often leads to arguments in the morning before work! 

Hopefully the next blog post I write about my life will be that we've saved and found a house!

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