Twelve years ago this month, my wife and I celebrated a momentous day – long before we had children, but something that would inevitably make a big difference to their lives in the future.
Yes, a dozen years ago we bought our first house. After 3 years of renting various flats around Reading (and before that sharing student rentals at university for two years) we finally managed to buy our own place – a flat that we stayed in for nine years before finally moving on.
I’m sure I don’t need to state the obvious and explain how amazing this moment felt. Finally, we had somewhere to call our own – and a place that we could work on and improve over the coming years.
In fact, the very blog you are reading right now first started life as a way for us to chronicle our home improvement. Back then it was called “Our First Flat” but you can still read many of the posts in the archive.
Heres a couple of before and after photos of the bathroom as a ‘for instance’, to show you what we achieved in our near-decade in the house.
Of course, it wasn’t all paint swatches and flat warning parties – buying your first home can be a complicated process, wherever you live. Which is why the clever people at AIG Ireland have created this handy step by step guide to assist first time home buyers through the process: the AIG guide to buying a house a Ireland
For example, did you know that (at the time I am writing this) when you buy your first home that many lenders require you and your partners to not only have life insurance buy home insurance too?
You can find the handy guide in easy to read infographic form below, and hopefully it may prove useful when you make the big step that many of us dream of. And good luck on the big move!
