Golly, where do I even begin when describing the purchase of my first house? The tears, the screams, the running up and down the stairs (and that’s just my mum).

Anyone who has ever bought, or even dabbed their little toe into the world of house buying will know exactly what the emotional process is like. When I say tears I mean actual, blubbing down the phone to parents tears, when I say screams I mean yelling down the phone at one’s bank, and when I say running up and down stairs I am referring to a woman making use of lengthy call centre queues. In the four months it took to buy a house my view on the world radically shifted. I learnt that legal advice is not always wise, that sellers are not always chummy and that bankers are complete…well they’re not very nice people.

There’s no point humouring the uneducated, in all my 24 years on the planet buying my first house has (so far) been one of the most stressful things I’ve ever gone through. According to other educated people the list of stressful things goes something like this: putting a gold loop on a finger, spawning another human-thing and buying bricks. At the heart of the most stressful and painful activities are, arguably, the simplest fundamentals. But, like getting married or having a baby, what pushes us to the edge only makes the love and bond stronger. (I’m still trying to figure out how to sicken my social media followers with daily house updates.) No one can ever begin to understand my love and devotion to the bricks and mortar which almost broke me many times over.

Over the next series of posts I will document the ups, the downs, the ‘what on Earths?’ and maybe make time for a coffee break, before concluding the tale of how Alice E. Bennett came to own her first house. If a 24-year-old English girl can go through this and still maintain a degree of sanity, then by Jove you can too. Heck, you might even learn something along the way. 

So, on that note, let’s begin. Pull up your socks folks, this journey is going to be off the chain.

This post is part of “The First Time Buyer Diaries”. To read the entire series (so far) click here.