Natalie and James' homeownership story!

“Before buying our first home together, I was living with my parents and James lived with his Mam, so we could maximise our savings for a deposit. We decided not to go into renting as it doesn’t allow you to make the changes to your home that you would want to. We also felt buying a home is more of an investment than renting. With this in mind, we chose to start our search with Gleeson as we knew they offered the First Homes scheme! We liked the area where the scheme was available, so it made sense for us to visit the homes at Moorland Green.

“We wanted a home that was a modern blank canvas and ready to be moved into whereas a renovation project or second-hand home can sometimes not be the style you like and therefore requires more work to be done to it, which adds a further financial burden to the journey. The show homes at the development were the Tyrone, Woodford and Kilkenny, my favourite floor plan was the Woodford and when we looked at which homes were on the First Home scheme, we saw this house style was available, so we went to look at the plot. Whilst we were there James saw the Kildare a few houses down the street which was also on the First Homes scheme and we instantly fell in love with it. After discovering it was the same floor plan as the Woodford but a little bit bigger, and was also a detached home, we knew that this home would be the one!

“Overall, the process of buying our home was very quick and easy! We had a few minor encounters with the First Homes Scheme, when we originally looked into buying the home, we were told the Scheme was ending at the end of August so if we wanted the house with the 30% discount, we had to act fast. We were very lucky our solicitors knew about the deadline and were quite quick at getting documents organised and our Sales Executive was great too. We were lucky as the First Homes Scheme deadline got extended until the end of September which allowed us to relax and take our time a bit more, with completion finalising on the 28th of September."

“We feel like we have a lot more responsibilities now, making sure the house is always clean and tidy, doing the washing and cooking, but we love it, something we didn’t enjoy doing living with parents. We definitely don’t feel like we can be lazy anymore either which is actually a good thing."

“I have recommended buying a Gleeson home to my parents as they want to downsize from their current home and I think the larger sized homes such as a Waterford would be perfect for them. My cousin is also looking to buy her first home with her boyfriend so I showed them ours which they loved so they are looking at Gleeson Homes now too! As we look ahead to 2024 James wants to do the garden out as when we bought the property, the back garden was a blank canvas, so we are excited to start that in 2024 and I think just finishing off making the house a home since we only had 3 months to do so in 2023!”