'We had 15 minutes to decide whether to buy our £180,000 house - couples were queuing out the door'
Any first-time buyer who bought a house during the Covid pandemic will remember just how frenetic the market was. With lockdown allowing many people to boost their savings, and the stamp-duty holiday enabling first-time buyers to avoid paying land tax, the property market boomed.
"Almost 10 years ago I came over to the UK with a loan, two suitcases and a backpack. My whole family still lives in the south of France but I wanted to try become a lawyer in England," Laura told the Manchester Evening News. The pair were looking to put down a 5 per cent deposit and initially looked at houses around the £220,000 mark.
Laura and Leighton went to view a two-bed Victorian terrace in the Tameside town that was on the market for £175,000 - but they weren't the only ones after it. "We rang the estate agents to put an offer in as soon as we got back in the car because the competition was so fierce. It all felt very impersonal."
"As Leighton is Mancunian and I’m Mediterranean, I wanted both of our heritages to come through in the house. I wanted to add some Mediterranean touches to give it a warm feeling, but also wanted to keep the industrial vibe that Manchester has," Laura explained. Talking us through the layout of their home, Laura explained: "It's a very common standard layout for a terrace, a lot of terraces in Manchester are like this.
Laura continued: "One unique feature of our home is the half-painted wall which runs throughout the dining room, upstairs onto the landing and in the second bedroom. "It might not be to everybody's taste but what we wanted is to feel like home and I think you come in and you feel cosy and warm, it looks like a house that has been lived in."
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