Prices where I currently live (house share with my boyfriend) have literally doubled in eighteen months. Two years ago, I was going to buy the house next door for £336,000, but backed out as it needed loads of work and had an illegal loft conversion. The house on the other side - done up, but a lot smaller and with a garden a quarter of the size - has just gone on the market for £700,000.
This price hike is staggering... unbelievable.
Since I last posted, I have seen four properties. Two were in my favourite spot, Highgate, London N6. One had a kitchen with no windows. It was sandwiched between the living room and the bedroom, which was on the front of the house, not ideal if you're a light sleeper like me.
One was quite nice but too small - nowhere to put my office desk, filing cabinets, etc. And no outside space.
One was on the fourth floor with a Juliet balcony and I got vertigo when I looked out. The kitchen was built into a corner with sloping ceilings, so there was little cupboard space. Nowhere to put breadmaker, microwave, juicer, smoothie-maker, mixer and all the other tools of DIY cook's trade.
Then there was the one with a front bedroom onto a very noisy main road. Not only that, but the vendor confessed that the tenant upstairs was an insomniac who paced the floor at 3 am and turned on her computer. Above the bedroom, of course.
Finally, I had a call from a gentleman whose flat I had viewed three years ago, only to have him withdraw it from the market because he couldn't find anywhere to move to. Now he has decided to move out of London so he offered me first dibs, obvious forgetting he had told me about the wooden floors upstairs and lack of soundproofing, and the freeholder who grabbed £2,000 a year and did no repairs.
But I have been offered a helping hand, should I want to take it. It goes against the grain to accept a cash injection from a friend, but a good mate has come into a goodly inheritance and prefers to invest it in a property with me rather than make 0.1% to stash it in the building society.
This means I can up my budget.... but there is STILL hardly anything on the market, even in my larger price bracket. Anyone got a tent for sale?
