The story begins

Several months after I landed in the UK, I’ve got a permanent job in one of the top-ranked universities in the South, and I’ve started renting. After having a very unpleasant (or more accurately, intense) conversation about bills with my landlord at midnight, I made up my mind the following morning to buy a property.

The pros of owning a house/flat is obvious. If you take a mortgage, your monthly repayment will be equal to (or even less than) the rent you pay to your landlord, while the biggest difference is – when you have paid back all the monies in c. 20 years, you will own the property outright, but if you pay rent for 20 years, it is the landlord who owns the property by then.

EDIT: Sept 2022 – Now please thick twice and do your math on interests carefully.

That said, with great power comes great responsibility. As a home owner you will have to take more care and pay its maintenance including council tax and service charge (unless you are the freeholder). However, I think it is worthy to buy a home, so I started in May 2022.

Time flies, and now I’m moving in! My property was sold with vacant possession and of course, unfurnished. Also I’m going to do some refurbishment work and make it a real ‘home’ of mine. Fortunately I found that Amazon.co.uk has most of the stuff I needed, though other choices are available from B&Q, IKEA and so on.

In the following posts I’m going to share what I have found useful. Please note that I’m an individual user and I’m not employed by Amazon, but as an Amazon Associate I was given chance to earn from qualifying purchases when you click on the link in my posts. Many thanks for reading and hope you find them helpful!