Everyone in England wants to be a homeowner.

Apparently.

Home ownership is just something that we do. Everyone accepts that we do it. Everyone looks questioningly at those who do not do it. We allow unscrupulous landlords, lettings agents and overseas property owners to decimate and destroy the rental market, because it’s a market no one really wants to be in anyhow. We all want to own homes; nay, we need to own homes. Because our parents say so. Because everyone says so.

According to my Grandma, this wasn’t always the case. She is very old and remembers the past. When she was growing up, only the rich owned their own homes. But attitudes and situations changed after World War II, and then Thatcher came along, and she really believed most passionately in home ownership. I’m unaware of the reasons behind the late Prime Minister’s conviction, and I am loathe to find out as it would necessitate spending time in her departed company.

I remember when I first became jealous of a homeowning friend. It was back in my mid-20s, while I was enjoying my time in a four-person flat-share in leafy Gospel Oak. In those days London was the greatest city on the planet to me, and anyone who failed to move there was plainly living out their life in an inferior manner.

And then all of a sudden, a non-London based friend of mine had a home, and my own space felt cramped and small. I rearranged my bedroom, because my bedroom was all I had. Then I left the flat-share entirely to move in with my brother and afford myself a fraction more personal freedom.

Throughout the years that followed I became fixated with the problem of home ownership in London. I began a series of gargantuan walks across the city, sometimes following tube lines from start to finish, on other occasions making it up as I went along, starting from my Highgate residency and stopping only when I could literally walk no further. On these travels I’d pass through resplendent neighbourhood after resplendent neighbourhood, compiling in my head a shortlist of the most desirable areas in which I’d someday like to live. And yet, there was no hope of my ever affording a property. No one was going to die and leave me a vast sum of money. I was never likely to be an elite-level earner. I was still grappling with various debts of Student Loan Company and self-inflicted origins.

This is what happens to most Londoners. We cannot afford to buy a home and so, in our heads at any rate, we are unable to take root or form any sort of feasible long-term vision. We live in the now because the future cannot exist; it is simply a question of counting down the days until the next landlord jacks up the rent and we are forced to move onto our next bedroom. Is it any wonder so many Londoners fail to grow up? We carry the naïve, often destructive habits of our youth well into our 30s because we cannot grasp any other modus operandi.

Now I’m out of London and I’m back in the land of the possible. I’ve fought tool and nail at times to get here, and my vision of the future feels tantalisingly close to being realised.

Two weeks ago we put in an offer on our first home. Since then I’ve been through a fortnight of sleepless, brow-beating and rash-inducing stresses. My face is blotchy and purple; the bags under my eyes are of the jumbo-sized Sports Direct variety. All this to get on the ladder. All this to meet society’s definition of a proper adult. It better be worth it…