In Britain, around 350,000 homes are for sale at any one time. Between 1.2 million and 1.5 million are traded annually. The country is densely, invisibly criss-crossed by chains of sellers and buyers, some eager to move, others dragging their feet. Some rich, some very stretched – all tied up by half-assed deals, waiting for a definitive word from an agent or lawyer before they can wrap their arms around an unknown set of keys. Ever since the Covid pandemic briefly froze and then adrenalized the UK property market, the headlines for the industry have been mixed. “2021 UK housing market poised to be busiest since 2006,” boomed this paper last December, around the time Alf Thompson, now moved from his hospital bed in Loughborough, settled into a Shepshed nursing home. He was too ill to return to the cul-de-sac. Buying a home is a big life event, often prompted by something else: a promotion, the expansion of a family or the bereavement of a loved one. Bean-counting and bombshell tend to obscure the human realities that underpin our housing market, those billion-odd cases of health problems, expansive ambition, deepening romance, or plummeting personal satisfaction that fuel frenzied commerce. Buying a home, for those lucky enough to do so, is a big life event, and one that has likely been prompted by a bigger life event, whether it’s a promotion, job loss, family expansion, or grieving a loved one. . When Alf Thompson died in December 2021, he had already made plans to sell his house to cover the costs of his care. Now his daughter Emma had to deal with her bereavement and funeral arrangements with a decision about what to do with the house. Talk to family members. Contact some real estate agents. It was agreed that they would go ahead with Alf’s plans and put the family home up for sale, with Emma as the seller. When she went on the market in January, Emma became the leading link in a housing chain – she only sells, not buys, and therefore waits for other people in different circumstances to join in a series of deals below her. There were countless other housing chains struggling in the UK that month, but this is the story of one of them. Liam Cape, 31, a community nurse, grew up riding his bike on the narrow green belt path that ran behind Alf Thompson’s garden. His parents continued to live nearby. Liam is a busy, financially-conscious father of three, someone who saved a lot of money as a teenager and heeded his father’s advice to put aside a chunk of his earnings for the future. “When you’re a kid, you want to spend all your money on clothes, cigarettes and booze, right?” Liam said. “Not saving for a house. But looking back, I’m glad I did it.” At 19, Liam was working at a Shepshed care home when he met Alysia, two years his junior, who had taken a job making sandwiches for the residents. She remembered him telling her he had saved enough money for a mortgage deposit. Who says that, at 19? A few years later, the couple bought their first home together. They married, started a family and began a steady uphill journey through increasingly expensive Shepshed properties, taking better-paid and more time-consuming jobs in the NHS to cover their ever-increasing mortgage repayments. In the late 2010s, Liam was working days and nights in nursing. Alysia had two jobs: a health administrator and a teaching assistant. They lived in a spacious four-bedroom house that backed onto a huge, leafy park in Shepshed. You could have put the Cape in an advert, emblematic of Britain’s cherished image as a place full of sensible, thrifty, happy homeowners. Except for one thing. The Capes weren’t sure they were happy. Children don’t care if a house is detached or semi-detached. Home is where their toys are In order to stay on top of childcare and their jobs and monthly mortgage payments, Liam and Alicia barely saw each other. “One day a week as a family?” Alicia guessed. In mid-2021, as Alf Thompson was spending his last summer at home in the cul-de-sac, one of the Capes children became seriously ill. Although their child recovered, there were terrible weeks in the hospital and Liam and Alicia suffered irrational guilt afterwards. They felt that as trained healthcare workers, they should never have been caught like this. “We decided: no more.” Their park-side four-bed went up for sale in January 2022, the same time as Alf’s. The Capes wanted somewhere smaller and cheaper. They wanted to work fewer hours and regain a sense of themselves as a family. “Kids don’t care if a house is detached or semi-detached,” Liam said one day when the pair were at Alf’s house for a viewing. “Home is where their toys are.” “Yes,” Alysia agreed, “they care because it’s where they can make their memories. They care because it’s where they can … where they can drop their cookies.” She said this fragmentarily, chasing their youngest child, who had just launched a half-eaten Rich Tea Biscuit, onto Alf’s carpet. Alf’s daughter Emma was present, apparently enjoying the sight of young children running around her old house, dropping crumbs, making a racket. With the help of her family, she had spent Christmas gutting the property, storing or destroying furniture and taking internet-friendly photos of the empty rooms. An agent from online estate agency Purplebricks, Chris Ball, came and had a look around. Ball, a pleasant 30-year-old who has a romantic way with words, called out the kind of tantalizing descriptions (and hidden admissions) that could be used to lure buyers. Lots of possibilities, Ball thought, of Alf’s old place. Requires modernization. Fantastic possibilities. Emma Lowe has sold her father’s home in Shepshed, Leicestershire, for £206,000 to …… Alysia and Liam Cape, who are downsizing to spend more time with their children Ball doesn’t see himself as a real estate agent long-term. trains in the evenings to be a surveyor. But he was happy to be a part of the housing industry during such a frenzied, sharp era. He spoke of a sales boom in the Leicestershire patch throughout 2021 to 2022, mirroring the much-touted national boom. The activity had begun to increase and Ball had a theory about the explosion. “As early as 2020, when the government was warning people to stay inside, we saw these little dips and spikes,” he told me, between screenings. “In the beginning, with lockdowns and permits, everyone felt uncertain about the future, no one wanted to buy or sell. But then we were all stuck at home for months.” As lives were cut short, Ball speculated, people felt hungry for change. Desires intensify. “And people were spending a lot of time on their computers. They took a look at what was out there.” Bal priced out Alf’s house by eye, telling Emma that given its many features, it could fetch up to £210,000. Along with other agents who visited the property, Ball advised Emma to put it on for a little less – say £200,000. This way they can attract dozens of interested parties and cause a bidding war. Liam and Alicia Cape have decided to price their parkside home at £290,000 – Ball thought of it as a charming family home. A few miles away in Loughborough, sitting in the kitchen of what Ball called a well-executed modern take on the classic two-up, two-down terrace house, a woman named Meghan Beesley looked online at photos of the Cape residence. She liked what she saw and arranged to visit, bringing her tape measure. It’s one of those great, unexamined rules of modern Britishness. Queues are sacred. Milk should be added to the tea. And a house is better bought, not rented. Margaret Thatcher started all this when she pulled the government levers in the 1980s to make mass home ownership not only possible but, in the Tory worldview, what amounts to a moral civic duty. Over time, the housing market has been fueled and fattened by generous financial legislation from successive Labor and Conservative governments. Banks played their part, offering 100% mortgages until they were punished by the financial crash of 2008. (In short, with similar mortgage packages being offered once again in recent years.) In the early 2000s, just as the word “location, location, location” entered the lexicon via a hit TV show, real estate websites began to make it easier to search farther, wider. Later, social media came into its own, adding a sense of competition and inadequacy to the mix, reinforcing already existing trends. By the time the current government introduced a stamp duty holiday, sparking the market boom in 2020, we were a nation of obsessions, trusting our savings to it without hesitation, unapologetically checking on Zoopla to see how much the neighbors they took their place, daydreaming about keeper extensions and unpredictable lateral returns. Not for nothing is the British Olympic team now sponsored by an estate agent. Meghan Beesley represented England and Great Britain for many years, competing as a 400m hurdler in international competitions. A 32-year-old with a lively, positive attitude, Megan returned from the Tokyo Olympics in…
