Up THE DREAM!’

After a year-long search, Sally nearly gave up her hope of home ownership, until along came the perfect property

e had been looking to buy a house for 12 months at least,’ says Sally. ‘We had always rented, but were ready to put down roots.

‘We went into the search prepared to take our time and wait until the perfect property found us, but after discovering I was pregnant with our second child, the search became a bit more intense, as we really wanted to be settled before the new baby arrived. By that time, we had viewed countless houses (which may sound dreadful to some, but it’s actually one of my favourite pastimes) and even put in offers on three or four particularly lovely properties, but nothing had worked out.

WLast-chance saloon

After a lot of disappointment we decided to stop looking for a while as it was starting to get both my husband and me down. However, I forgot to cancel email notifications from online sites, which continued to fall into my inbox every so often with properties that met our criteria. One morning, after swearing that our search was on hold, my phone buzzed, and it was an email about this house. It looked so perfect – even through the screen – that we didn’t want to risk missing out on what might be our dream home, so we made an exception, called the estate agent and scheduled a viewing for the following day.

Property stalking

My husband and I had a look around the house the next morning and by 6pm it was ours! One viewing and no second thoughts, we just knew it was the one, so we went for it. We do tend to follow our hearts over our heads a lot of the time, but things usually work out; this house definitely did. The only downside was that we had our offer accepted in the April,