The search starts here...

Night after night sitting at my laptop looking on Right Move clearly wasn't getting me anywhere. I had literally searched the whole country at places we could live…

We, I might add is me and my partner, we've been together forever, lets call him Big G! He is just desperate to get out of my parents house, where we've been living together for the last 7 years. I give him some credit, I couldn't have lived with my in laws for that long without murdering them! 

Anyway, I had changed my job at Easter and had to wait for 6 months to apply for a mortgage. Holy heck by August I cracked, Big G was arguing about anything, he was so fed up, so we went to see a Nationwide minion. 

This, I might add, is the first thing to the start of the process rolling. You don't know what to look for until you know for sure what you can borrow. And we were told we could borrow £23k more than we had expected. This made our lives so much easier, and opened the market wider.

Now, something that you should be aware of is after this stage, this is not the end of the mortgage process, there's so much paperwork and interviews and a mountain of crap that follows.

Next, go and register with all the agents in the area you want to live in… We made the mistake of not deciding for sure, 100%,  where we wanted to end up, and now… a little down the line are being FLOODED with emails from agents of new listings! Wait until you are sure. But don't wait once you have the mortgage offer, you only have 90 days to find the property!

Another point to mention is EVERY BLOODY ESTATE AGENT will try and book you in to see their 'in house' mortgage advisor! They do this because they get commission, I've heard it's at least £50… but don't fall for it, especially not straight away! Even when they say, 'Oh our guy has special deals with the banks that not even the banks offer'… They all say this and they all have deals and they all have the same computer system showing all the deals you can get. Don't be pressurised!

So we started our search in a small town in Sussex, commutable to London, close to the sea, a place we could get a house and not a flat. But after seeing 4 stunning houses we were left sad and cold and not knowing what to do. We wanted to be close to family and this was too far away….

This turned everything on it's head, as we were so sure we were moving away, to buy a two bed house with a garden and a drive way and a garage, near the nice schools for some future children we may or may not have...