For years I hated my neighbourhood and wanted to live in ‘proper London’, and now I can only dream of a house in Dagenham
When I started this column, I thought, “Any month now, I’ll get on the property ladder.” I imagined sharing the tribulations of house-buying: the estate agents who say “compact” when they mean “claustrophobia-inducing”, and psyching out the competition at open viewings (“I hear they’re opening a sewage works near here,” I’d say loudly).
That was a foolishly optimistic period. I thought my partner and I had enough for a deposit (we didn’t), and we viewed nearly 50 homes. We quickly learned we couldn’t afford to buy where we wanted, so started to move our search. Eventually, we were looking at homes on the very streets I grew up on, near the blustery council house that defined me.
Related: All the places I’ll never live: London’s most famous meeting point
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