Househunting is a bind when you are starting out with lots out of your price range. Old wrecks needing lots of diy. Are they in the right location? Can you get a mortgage? After much searching we went to Clacton at the weekend and came across a new development being built. In those days cheque books were the thing. I don’t think we even had a credit card. We went into the site office, looked at houses off plan. A 3 bed semi seemed ideal. £50 deposit to reserve that day. Tony wasn’t sure but with my cheque book in hand i swiftly checked the terms of the reservation and wrote my cheque there and then. When Tony took me home my parents were concerned as he was as white as a sheet. The prospect of such a financial commitment was a bit much to take in. At work the next day some of his colleagues seemed a bit worried too until i asked them the all important questions about their first purchases, ratio of cost to incomes etc and discovered that actually we would be relatively speaking better off then many of them were starting off. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. We lived there for 5 yesrs before the daily commute from Clacton to Colchedter finally wore Tony down and we moved to Colchester to be closer to where we both worked.