Judith’s on the move - read her highly entertaining account of downsizing and moving back into home ownership….

typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/03/14/streatham_hill.jpg">typepad.com/my_weblog/images/2008/03/14/streatham_hill.jpg" alt="Streatham_hill" height="58" style="float: left; margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px" title="Streatham_hill" /> Another of my 2008 intentions was to open up a huge gap between my income and expenditure by greatly reducing my expenditure and vastly increasing my income in a bid to end living beyond my means, a lifelong habit, and to create reserves and to have more money to invest.   And to be in ever-increasing integrity with what I teach all day long.

The first part of this plan revolved around moving back from the rented sector into owning my own home.The amount of rent I paid afforded a half million pound luxury flat in London’s swanky Docklands with THE best view over London and my beautiful river flowing past the door.   The same amount of monthly outgoing when buying your own home in London affords a 100% mortgage on a rather downmarket garden flat worth £300k in upwardly mobile Streatham Hill!   Hmm.   There are sacrifices to this downshifting lark.

There’s no doubt that Streatham was once very grand.   It’s housing stock is nothing short of plentiful and elegant and gorgeous.   One of my early callers (an 0800 Handyman) advised that perhaps we should not put up the picture of Canary Wharf as it might make me too sad.   Bless.   And also it was his opinion that I was not living in Streatham Hill, but Telford Park.   Bless, again.  When I first lived in this neighbourhood some 29 years ago (!), there was a branch of John Lewis in Streatham called Pratts.   I was an account holder.   No-one remembers Pratts now and Streatham High Road has become a ghastly race-track to Gatwick and Brighton.

One of my clients is a professional property investor who owns no fewer than three properties in this area and she tried to cheer me up about my choice, as I ducked in through my side gate covered in bird poo underneath the two (!) satellite dishes - and me not even owning a telly.   This building was beautiful when I bought the flat and they had already mutilated it by the time I moved in, in the name of footie.   Bah humbug to Murdoch.

What’s the worst part of being back south of the river…………..?

typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/03/downshifting-no.html">READ MORE HERE >>>>