The perils and pleasures of buying a house

I didn’t expect this. My husband and I are in our 40s and assumed until a few years ago that we would be renters for life. But now, each morning, I check headlines for mortgage rates and house prices in the same way I did when I was 14 years old checking horoscopes on Teletext in the hope that it would say my crush would finally notice me.

In fact, it’s not really a new obsession, just one that finally feels within touching distance. Owning a home has been my biggest crush for as long as I can remember. More than a crush, a stalkerish infatuation, but always seemed an impossible dream.

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Over the years I’ve looked at buying a 24ft fibreglass boat to make my home on London canals, a shipping container in the Highlands and a stone ruin in Sicily. These sound outlandish but no more so to me than the idea of a mortgage for bricks and mortar.

I will be a first-generation buyer. My maternal granny spent her last years in a tiny council house in Aberdeen that we called the ‘hen hoose’ not least for all the clucking, pecking and gossiping that took place on her doorstep. My American paternal grandmother spent her last years in a trailer in San Diego, crammed with the remnants of a chaotic, colourful life, unable to afford her insulin.

I was eight when I first understood some people owned their homes and others did not. We were on our 12th home at that point: a string of women’s shelters, homeless B&Bs, the occasional, panicked night in a coach station, council houses and, finally, the relative security of a rural housing association flat.

Visiting a new friend, I asked how they’d got the council to give them such a big place, a garden too, and her (honestly, quite snooty) mum said, ‘We bought this house, dear. It belongs to us.’ From that moment, I believed my pal must be impossibly rich and was constantly cadging her sweeties in the playground.

It took me a long time to realise that, in fact, a lot of people with modest incomes and sensible mentalities do manage to buy their house. Or at least that used to be possible before the triple whammy of dwindling wages, spiralling rent and inflated house prices made it so much harder.

It took me longer still to learn that some had the inherent privilege of ‘family money’ not least because many rarely admit it. Unfortunately, I had neither a sensible mentality nor family money so I accepted I’d never own a home, consoling myself instead with travelling to far off places and leaving my stable job in NGOs to write novels.

Three-quarters of buyers in Glasgow are buying for the first time (Image: Newsquest)

All changed when I became pregnant at 39 years old. The moment that second line on the test turned pink, I understood that my body was now a home for another human, and I knew I would not drag them from place to place if I could possibly avoid it.

I’d give my kid the same bedroom to wake in each morning with the same view and the same neighbours he’d get to know. He’d be able to spill juice on the carpet and it wouldn't feel like the end of the world. I’d mark his years on our door frame with felt-tips and paint his room whatever his favourite colour was that month.

And so, we’re finally home in Glasgow, ready to take the plunge. In 2001 the average age of Scottish buyers was 31.5 years old so I’m aware we’ve still a bit of catching up to do. It probably won't surprise you to hear as a couple, a writer and a stay at home dad, we’re not exactly bringing in megabucks. But my new stable lecturing job and my husband’s excellent credit score, so clean it sparkles like white goods on The Price is Right, means we might actually qualify for a mortgage.

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Like many later in life first-time buyers, I watch mortgage interest rates and house prices soar as helplessly as watching the balloon you paid five quid for slipping from your child's hand. Everyone in Glasgow tells me repeatedly how expensive it is now. Everyone has a horror story of the ‘offers over’ system and I know that three-quarters of the buyers in Glasgow are also hungry first-timers like us.

So, I devour the financial pages looking for any crumb of information but the truth is I might as well be reading my Teletext horoscope, because there is simply no predicting what the market will do next.

What I can predict is that I will never ever take having a home, rented or bought, for granted. And you'll never hear me moan about how stressful buying a house is or how awful the prices are. Whatever we end up buying won’t be big or fancy. It likely won’t even be as nice as the tenement flat we rent from our fair and kind landlords at the moment. But it will be all ours.

Owning a home is a privilege. Something I thought from my childhood was reserved for ‘other people’. Instead of securing someone else’s future each month, paying half our income in rent, we'll be laying the foundations for our child to have a better life. By the end of this year, all being well, I’ll put my boy to bed in the room he’ll grow up in, with felt-tip marks on the door frame, in a room painted his favourite colours. If that happens I’ll thank each and every lucky stars.