Buying our first flat

A first step on the housing ladder is a very exciting moment. For me, that was back in 2003 when I bought my first property, a lovely two bedroom second floor flat in Worthing. We were lucky to have some financial help from my parents as well as some savings that we'd built up which gave us a good start. Ours was the one in the middle with the green plant in the window, which is still sitting on my kitchen windowsill today!

We spent a lot of time searching for the perfect flat. Fortunately Worthing has plenty to choose from, which are generally a good size and well maintained. The first property that we saw was actually the flat on the top floor, which we fell in love with, but as we hadn't yet sorted out any of our finances we were in no position to put in an offer. It's funny how these things work out though, and we were actually better off where we ended up as our flat had an extra toilet and needed less work.

We moved from a rented furnished flat so we had to buy pretty much everything. The majority of our furniture came from Ikea, and we had to drag my parents along to help us bring back everything that we bought! But it did mean that our actual move was done in a couple of car loads, along with a bit of extra help to carry the massive old style television up two flights of stairs.

The location was perfect - just off a lovely tree lined road filled with big houses, a short walk to the seafront and then to town, close to the station, and near enough to walk comfortably to work. We used to go for long walks along the sea in the evenings.

Inside it was lovely too, we had a huge living room and all the windows were massive, including a glimpse across the South Downs from the main bedroom. There was so much storage too, huge wardrobes in the bedroom the length of the room and a pantry in the kitchen which was brilliant.

We didn't need to do too much work to it at all, although we painted every room, replaced the flooring in the kitchen and had the windows done. Looking back through the few photos that I have (which were taken as part of a home inventory when I had much more time for such things than I do now) I'm amazed by just how little stuff we had. It's no wonder that I could clean the whole place thoroughly in under an hour!

After our wedding, with some more savings built up and plans to start a family, we knew that the flat would no longer be practical for us but it was a real wrench to sell it. We still drive past from time to time and reminisce. Perhaps we'll end up living there again in our retirement!

This is a sponsored post in association with Santander.