House

I first bought a house in 1969. It was £3,000 and I think I managed to scrape together the 10% (£300) deposit and the rest was on a mortgage. 3 years later I sold it for £9,000 and bought another for £10,500. That increased the mortgage (and the repayments) somewhat, of course, but when I sold it 12 years later, I made a small profit because I bought a place that was a little less. We made some improvements and lived there for another 10 years. Then it was time to move closer to my job and I again made a small profit - enough to pay for improvements to the new place. Again the property market did us proud. I needed to move closer to work and that happened to be in not such a desirable part of town so, again, there was a profit ... enough, at last, to pay off the mortgage entirely. That's the way that the property market can work. I seemed to have bought and sold at opportune times (without really meaning to) and have overall got to a position where I owe nothing and have a nice house to live in. Oddly enough, I am less than two miles from the first house I bought!