flowerfairy - we sold our house (just before the big upturn in house prices!) but then my husband had to take early retirement through ill health and so we lived off the money from the house for a couple of years. At first we had an expensive housing association house in the village where I was born, 10 miles or so from here... but I got on the council list and this house was offered us within 6 months. If I'd known it, I'd have moved back home YEARS ago! Our house is one of only 4 in the middle of nowhere and we have huge gardens front and back. We're hoping to buy it in the next year or so with the full discount. Our house is about 100 yards from the river and right opposite a very beautiful pond, so we can't ever be overlooked and we have the most stunning view. The view at the back is just as good - nothing but fields for 20 miles and the Yorkshire Wolds in the distance. Ironic that it's a council house because it is in the sort of situation people would pay a million or more to live in. We could never have afforded to live here, normally. We have a long drive, parking for numerous cars, we have a caravan out the back and a big chalet style shed - on their own bigger than the garden we had in the city . In the city we had to get the council to give us a disabled space on the road outside our house... Then the drunk neighbour's family got abusive because they wanted to park in it when they visited him, as he was 'disabled'... Sometimes took us half an hour to find a parking spot and we'd end up parking a ten min walk from our own house... No fun with two toddlers in pushchairs and other kids....
My kids go to an idyllic village church school and are in classes of 12 or 15 (35 in B'ham). Although we had to lose every penny from our house, if we hadn't we wouldn't be here now. And I was a bit put off home ownership by the fact we had a private house but a violent drunk next door. Whenever we lived in council houses, we always had lovely neighbours. Our neighbours here are fantastic too, although all the houses except our's are bought now. If I could never buy this house, I'd rather be a council tenant here than own my own house where we were (off Kings Heath High St). The week we moved into our 'own' home, there was a girl abducted and raped from the top of our street. The week we moved in there was a policeman chasing through our garden - and all the neighbour's - chasing a scally. I used to teach in B'ham too and had such bad experiences in the schools, I didn't want my kids to be there when the eldest hit 11. In the end, we decided to 'lose it all' to get out. It was the best thing we ever did. (We couldn't buy a house up here because by that time, my husband was no longer working and I was at home with our disabled son).
Although if we buy this, we could sell it on for a massive profit, we don't want to ever move, we love it so much. None of the neighbours want to move, either so there's a lot of stability here.
I was in exactly your position, and although it was a tough thing to do - and it was our first home of our own as before that we'd rented well into our 30s - we were glad we did it.
