Moving house is definitely in my top ten of stressful things that I have to deal with. I’ve had my fair share of it, having lived in several places. We’ve only moved as a family of three the once, over eight years ago. This is a big one.

Very soon we’ll be moving house, moving from the world of renting to Shared Ownership. We’re moving areas too, though only fifteen minutes up the road. Far enough that we have to change schools.

Shared Ownership is when you part buy and part rent a house. There are quite a few flats out there, though houses seem to be more difficult to come by. We wanted a garden and we wanted a nice area which we’ve eventually got – it took about two years of looking.

House prices around here are too much for us, and even where we’re moving they’re as high. With Shared Ownership we own 30% of the house, paying rent on the other 70%. It works out exactly the same price as renting so we’re not out of pocket.

A new housing development near where we currently live had Shared Ownership houses planned, though they appear to have dropped off the developers plans. This has happened a lot and gets quite frustrating when all you want to do is settle.

Our house is a new build which is where being a blank canvas comes in. We have a lot of pictures from renting and not being able to decorate, indeed, I’ve been told that you can’t decorate or paint a new build for the first year until everything has settled. We’re in no hurry.

When we’re settled I’ll write up the mortgage process and what we found we had to look out for. It went through smoothly, helped with us both having taken out Help to Buy ISAs. When you close your ISA, your solicitor claims back 25% of the value from the Government which is a big help.

Things are moving along nicely, other than getting rid of a lot of our things – mainly things we really don’t need any more. Marie Kondo has been with me in spirit helping me tear myself away from most things…

The moving house day is a week or two away, that has given me time to sort out the transfer of internet, tv and phone services. This time we’re going with BT for everything.  I’m booking removal vans and we’re hiring one to do smaller journeys once we get our keys.

H is getting used to the idea now. Her room has a little cubby hole which is going to be a reading corner over time. She has the books for it – I suspect we’ll need bigger shelves. She’s enjoying planning her space.