Just About Me 35

Some years before, we had bought a four bedroom house in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Mandy's mum lived there at the time, we bought it to let out for holidays and was charging £200 pw, it was all going to plan until my mother in law decided to move back to London, I did not blame her as all her kids live in London, we rented the place out anyway. Forward on to 2001, the three of us were now living in a one bedroom flat in Fulham, so Mandy went to the council to enquire about a two bedroom place, she was told to come back when Laura was 12, she asked what would they do if we had another child, they told her it could sleep in the bath. Well I don't know about you but I think that is slightly unreasonable. Before we carry on, all you people who are thinking, why not move to Great Yarmouth, well I worked in the Kings Road, Chelsea, a three and a half hour drive away on a clear road. So we decided to try and buy our one bedroom flat as well, I knew a chap who was quite high up in the Abbey national and he arranged another mortgage, we bought the flat for £72,000, it was valued at £110,000, we somehow qualified for the full discount. So now we owned two places. Why would you want to buy a one bed flat Paul, I hear you ask, simple if you sell the flat within three years you have to pay back the discount, but you can live in it for one year and then rent it out, So that's what we did. In 2002 I met a chap who worked in Southgate who arranged mortgage's, he sorted one out for us and told us to go and find a house and let him know about it, we found a 3 bedroom house in Carshalton, Surrey. He not only sorted out our mortgage of £151,000 after I had paid a cash deposit of £17,000, he also arranged the sale of the house in Great Yarmouth. So we now owned two places within a five mile radius, the flat in Fulham will hopefully one day pay off my mortgage in Carshalton with a bit over, only time will tell.

We also in 2000 bought a chalet in Leysdown, Isle of Sheppey, Kent, it cost us £3,000 and we went halves with my Mother in Law Annette Sime. It was never really my cup of tea although I did have Sky TV fitted and an air conditioning unit, we had it converted from calor gas to all electricity, and a bit of landscaping, all in all it probably cost us about £6,000 in total. Mandy,Laura and Annette loved it, they would go down most weekends and sometimes stayed the week, it was great for Laura as there was no traffic on the site. It was fairly near to all the major Kent towns, and some really lovely villages. We sold it in 2005 for about £4,000 as the yearly charges became too much for us.