Waterloo Farm: a country living blog

In November 2002 we decided to make the move back to Norfolk with our young family after 8 years living in Purley, Surrey. Our two kids had just turned 3 and 1 and we felt that it was a good time to return to ‘the country’ for a better quality of life, and so that our kids could enjoy the benefit of living near their grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins etc.

Having made the decision, we were very excited about finding our ‘dream home in the country’ and visions of a large house and garden which we could fill with home-grown veg and chickens, started to take shape. We put our own house on the market and started our search in Norfolk in earnest, scouring websites and making the occasional weekend trip to view properties. It was all very exciting!

Then disaster struck … Nigel was made redundant totally out of the blue in January 2003. This was a real blow because it meant that, without a job, we could not get a mortgage, and therefore there was no way we were going to be able to afford that dream home in the country. Not to be deterred, we decided that we would move anyway, and that we would find somewhere as an ‘interim’ home that we could afford to buy outright, and then when things improved on the job-front, we would be in a position to finally buy our dream home, hopefully in a couple of years at the most … easy! We had the usual trials selling our own house, but did eventually move back to Norfolk at the end of October 2003, almost a year after deciding to make the move!

Our first year back in Norfolk was fairly awful in the end as Nigel’s self-employed work didn’t really work out as we’d planned and we used up all our savings, and of course, all this time there was no way we could move into that elusive dream home, but we never lost sight of it as a part of our future. In October 2004 Nigel got a full-time job, which was a huge relief and meant we were back in the running for a mortgage, but by then Tammy was pregnant with our 3rd child and without any savings to cover the cost of moving, it was not the right time to pursue our dream.

By August 2005, thoughts of ‘the good life’ were very much back in our minds and we decided we were ready to go for it in terms of finally trying to find our forever family home, put down roots and start to enjoy all the things we’d been dreaming of all that time … chickens, raised beds, space for football and tennis without wrecking the flowers, peace and quiet …

We started to seriously look for a new home, but we were quite specific about what we wanted. Must haves included space for Nigel to work (he works from home) preferably away from the main house, large garden, 4 bedrooms or potential to extend, in the catchment area for the local High School (which has turned out to be our most limiting factor), not on a busy road, rural but not isolated but preferably no very close neighbours. Not too much to ask, or so we thought, but the search for the dream home has now been going on since then, so almost 3 years! In that time we have been gazumped on 1 property (March 2006), withdrawn from another (March 2007) and most recently, had various offers declined on yet another (March 2008), so as you can see, properties that we’d like to live in come around about once a year!! Maybe we’ve seen our ‘1 house’ for this year but we always live in hope! We have been saying for the last 3 Springs how wonderful it would be to be in a house by the summer so that the kids can have the benefit of a large garden over the summer. Will 2008 prove to be that year …

We’re currently in rented accommodation but the type of house we are looking for is as rare as hen’s teeth, and when they do come up, they’re either massively over our budget, slightly out of the catchment area, or there are several other interested parties, most with more money than us. This has been one of the most frustrating times of our lives and we just want to be able to feel settled and start to live again because we have felt like so many aspects of our lives have been ‘on hold’ for so long as we search for the home to fulfil the dreams we have for our family. Our friends have stopped asking us about the house because there is never any news LOL!

So there you have it, a summary of how we got to where we are today in terms of the search for our dream home.  Five and a half years after making the decision to move back to Norfolk, we are still looking for it. It’s been such a long and very frustrtaing journey, and still continues, but in all that time we have never lost sight of the dream and still thoroughly believe in it, and are looking forward one day to actually living it. Let’s hope that day will be really soon …