The Perfect House Date – How We Chose Our Home

Perfect House Date

Just under 4 years ago we started the exciting but scary job of house hunting. I’d never been in a position to buy a house before so I had no idea where to start. Luckily Ant and his mum knew what they were doing so I just followed them!

We started looking at estate agent websites and choosing some houses to view. While scrolling down the page a photo of a huge garden jumped out at me.
It seemed to have been taken in early spring and it looked really bright and spacious. There was a small tree in the middle of the lawn that tilted to the left slightly and I fell in love with it.

Our House

We arranged viewings for 5 or 6 houses once we’d seen what was on offer in our price range and excitedly visited the first one.
This happened to be the one I’d fallen in love with just from the photo of the garden. Ant had checked out the listing and also loved the look of it but for totally different reasons; it had a big garage and 2 toilets. Our old house only 1 toilet and it was a nightmare in the mornings when everyone was trying to get ready. Ant and I decided that one of our ‘must haves’ would have to be a second toilet!

When we walked in the house for the first time I had a really good feeling about it. The kitchen was old and would need replacing but that didn’t put me off. The downstairs shower room had an old pink shower suite from the 80s and still, it didn’t put me off.

The living room was nice and big and very light with patio doors that led out onto the lovely garden. As we went outside Ant whispered to me that I needed to calm my excitement because it wasn’t good to show the seller how much you liked the house!

Apple Tree

We walked up the garden and the final piece just fell into place. From the photos on the website, I hadn’t known what kind of tree was in the garden.
I saw red apples on the grass under the tree and my excitement soared! Looking back, I think it was that moment that decided it for me. At the time, though, I just knew I liked the feel of the place.

Obviously, we looked at lots more houses but I found myself comparing every other house to the first one we’d seen. Nothing else really came close; when we found one with a lovely kitchen it would have a tiny garden or only 1 toilet. I soon realised I had set my heart on the first one.

Our Perfect House Date

Thankfully, it turned out that the first viewing of the first house had been our perfect house date. We put in an offer and bought the house 🙂

We’ve been lucky because we’ve been really happy ever since, but, looking back, I should have taken note of some of the things in the following image from The Law House.
We only had one viewing when it’s always advisable to have at least 2 and because I’d set my heart on this one, I didn’t look at all the other houses objectively.

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