Well we bit the bullet and have after nearly 5 years decided to buy a house in Milton Keynes. We brought over some of our New Zealand dollars and suprise, surprise! actually had more than we thought we would get due to the NZ $ being stronger than normal.

Then the fun and games started - looking at houses, small funny boxes here that they ask a fortune for and get. The local paper the Citizen (or if you are a Pom "Cit'n" as they can't say t's or h's too for that matter) has a property edition so that was pored over and Kath as is her wont was going "yep, we'll have that one" as she pointed at some mansion going for £500,000. We called about some (cheaper) but they were sold but this got us talking to some Estate Agents and we told them that us poor colonials wanted to buy and had the dosh... so they did some work and came up with some places for us to look at.

We went to Shenley Church End to look at a 2 bed Maisonette which means that it is the top floor or floors of a building with other apartments in the same block with Kim from O'Riordan Bond. The area was ok, the flat was actually quite nice but there was no garden at all and the car parking was not the best. £85k plus £5k premium as a shared ownership. This we had not come across before and this means that you buy a share of the house from 30% to 70% and the Housing Association owns the other part. You then pay your mortgage and also a rental. It was started as a way for anyone to get onto the property ladder and start with a smaller investment.