BIG NEWS! Our House Is On Rightmove!!!!

Our House Is On Rightmove!!!!

OK! I kinda click baited you there! Don’t worry, we aren’t selling our house, but we ARE on Rightmove!! We are HONOURED to be featured on their website as a ‘Moving Story’. We were interviewed a few weeks ago about our home and our Moving Story, all about our big move from London to Margate, our giant renovation project and of course, becoming pet parents to Gordon, who featured in the feature. I’m SO happy to share our story with so many people and hopefully, we can help inspire someone out there to take a leap of faith, be it moving their entire lives to a new area, buying their first home or taking on a hefty renovation project.

Our Moving Story

It’s no secret that the last four years have been incredibly hard work, but honestly, I wouldn’t change it for the world. Ripping apart a dilapidated old building and turning it into a home has been SO much fun and so rewarding. Without getting totally emotional on you, in some ways, I honestly can’t believe we pulled it off! When I first saw these photos, I felt a little teary, our little house looks SO good!!! Although, we can’t take all the credit, Rightmove captured these shots with the amazing photographer Joe Woodhouse.

Remember When Our House Was A Social Club?

Looking back, there isn’t much we didn’t do to this house, we ripped down every stud wall, changed the male/female toilets into double showers (did I mention part of our house had formally been used as a social club!?), we rewired, we plumbed, rennovated windows, replastered, ripped down ceilings, ripped down a conservatory and SO much more. We discovered windows behind walls, a secret cupboard in the wall and found some furry friends along the way. Over the years, our house has been a tobacconists, social club and bedsits. It’s been a LOT of work turning it into a home and a lot of fun! If you want to read all about it and see more photos, please go check out the Rightmove feature on our story and our home and I hope you like these photos!

Right Move Made Margate Feel Local

People often ask me if I had family or friends in Margate and to be honest, we didn’t, we literally had no connection to the area, or even Kent. I’m from the North and had been living in London for years and Jon grew up in Hertfordshire, so we had no ties, friends, family or even knowledge of Kent or even more specifically Margate, however, we knew it was an area we could afford, we loved the idea of living by the sea and we knew there was a similar creative scene in Margate as there was in East London, where we had been living. When we first discussed the idea of moving to Margate the FIRST thing we did was look at Rightmove to get a feel for the styles of properties here (we knew we wanted a period home and a project) and we knew what we could afford (not very much!). Prior to Rightmove existing, I honestly don’t know how we would have gone about looking for houses here, I guess we would have driven down to Kent, walked around looking for estate agents and tried to book viewings for the following weeks, where as Rightmove gave us all the house listings for every local estate agents and allowed us to book viewings via the platform. Between the ease of it and the incredibly helpful search functions, we were able to pick a small area (close to the sea, near to Dreamland and The Old Town) and filter via number of rooms, price, detached etc. and even map out our desired area using the ‘Draw A Search’ tool, as well as searched for ‘period property’ using the keyword search. It’s funny, what started as a simple, discussion about Margate quickly escalated into us looking for properties on Rightmove and then the next thing we knew we were in the car a few days later having a day trip to Margate with some viewings set up. We never really made a decision to move to Margate, it just kind of happened, it felt so easy and all the stars aligned and one of those shining stars, was Rightmove. I’m honestly not just saying this, but if Rightmove had never been invented, I honestly don’t think we would have bought our house and moved to Margate. It made house hunting 80 miles away from home feel easy and local.

Let’s Talk Money!!!

When you are browsing on Rightmove, you might notice at the bottom of each property listing, there is a ‘Rightmove Mortgage Repayment Calculator’ which is honestly invaluable. I don’t think I’m the only one who finds the numbers side of buying a house kinda scary and this REALLY took the fear factor out of the question ‘Can we afford a mortgage?’. The price of the property is already filled in (although you can alter it) and then you literally just type in your deposit amount and it works out the monthly repayment amount based on a 25 year mortgage (which is the average mortgage) and the current current average interest rate, based on the top five UK banks on a 5 year fixed rate mortgage. Once we typed in how much we had in savings, it automatically worked out our monthly repayments and I realised ‘OMG! We can buy a house!’. We had been paying as much in rent on a small London flat, as we would be paying for a mortgage on an entire house! If the payment amounts are slightly too high, or you think you can afford to repay a little more each month in order to get a bigger, better house, then you can just adjust the numbers until you hit your perfect formula. Again, Rightmove gave us the simple to use tools to figure it all out. Sometimes, my friends, achieving goals in life are just about breaking things down into simple tasks and having a good mindset and Rightmove gave us the tools we needed to have the confidence and find our perfect first home.

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A HUGE Thank You to Rightmove for sharing our story and Joe Woodhouse for capturing the images. Also, Rightmove would love to hear about YOUR Moving Story, if you have an inspiring tale, reach out to them and tell them all about it!