Great stuff, you eventually become the proud owner of a dilapidated two bedroom flat, one that you think is yours, sorry mate, not really, no, you have basically rented it for seventy five years, after that it is no longer yours. Note you have RENTED it, you have not PURCHASED it. If you buy a freehold property then yes it is yours for keeps, but a leasehold property NO, it will never be yours. Keep that in mind. When I came to realise this I cried, I have less ‘rights’ than if I was renting week by week, I have to pay for everything, maintenance, ground rent etc., I have no protection, and if for any reason I cannot pay the mortgage I lose my home, my investment, my nest egg, everything.

But look on the bright side, you are confident you will never lose your job, you will always be able to pay the mortgage, you will be able to do all the work, and you will make it the DREAM flat that you always imagined.

Everything looks ‘rosy’, you have got the flat, you are committed to paying a variable mortgage rate, a rate dictated by the ‘bank of England’ and completely out of your control, you are mortgaged ‘up to the hilt’ but you are in, you are doing the work, but what with the full time job, promotion etc. looking good, it’s all going to be OK right. You have borrowed four point seven times your earnings, but you have got it, fine so long as you can always pay the mortgage, fine so long as you always have a job, fine so long as you can reliably predict the future?

But if anything were to go wrong, what then, you attempt to sell to a depressed market, you believe you will get your money back, you have the spare cash to carry on until completion, or borrow again - until completion. Sorry but your already on a loser, and it gets worse, you need to sell fast, and by next year the market will not be ‘fast’, all the time you wait you will be paying the mortgage, otherwise you risk the chance of ‘losing it’ all.

But, a big but, before we can really live there we need some essentials, quite apart from the trendy ‘must haves’ there are many ‘rock bottom’ essentials, take a look :-