LABOUR have promised the financially unfortunate from my generation the chance to own a home. Might be tough for some of you who aren’t used to it. Here’s how to live in one:
Spouse and labrador not included
I know, on the pictures there’s always a hot hubby and a golden lab, but do they actually come with? No. For the staggering sum you’ll pay for a two-bed semi in a grey belt 15 miles from Peterborough, you’d think they could at least chuck in a Shein model. But you have to provide them yourself, like batteries.
Fear not the upstairs
Unlike flats, a house comes with a second tier of rooms above the first, like a box of chocolates. It’s daunting going that high up but you’ll find a cornucopia of activities awaiting you: storing clothes, changing duvet covers, sleeping and even having sex. Although that last doesn’t really go with property ownership.
Weekends are for maintenance
Your binge-watching days are over. From now on, weekends are for sanding skirting boards, unblocking gutters, pointing brickwork and staining fences. If you haven’t Artexed a ceiling the price of your house could crash tomorrow. Never relax.
Dinner parties are compulsory
Dinner parties are where you invite people with no conversational skills over to discuss what they’re eating and school catchments in a perpetual motion machine powered by boredom. Drink as heavily as you like, you’ll still be buoying prices in the area by loudly discussing the lamb tagine.
Expect to be haunted
Ghosts never haunt flats because it’s beneath them, but they’re a fixture in houses. Whether you have a headless lady in your en suite or a Roundhead soldier in the kitchen, just ignore them. Resolving their undead longings could cost up to £35,000, and all they do is roll balls down your hall.
Suppress claustrophobia
All these new houses will have the footprint of a MacBook Air, so learn to hold back your claustrophobia with breathing exercises. Train yourself to duck through doorways and always notify a friend before taking a bath in case you become wedged.
Gardens are deathtraps
As a millennial, you’ve got an extensive list of allergies and intolerances or as you call it ‘a personality’, so a garden full of pollen, nettles and biting insects is a death sentence. Also the wifi is poor out there.
You get to keep the house
Amazingly, once you’ve handed over several times more than it cost to build your house, you’ll own it! At which point you’ll vote for whichever political party vows to stop all housebuilding because then yours will be worth more.
It’s still 250 grand
Labour politicians can’t understand economics, so have no idea their 1.5 million houses won’t send prices tumbling due to supply and demand. But keep saving and one day you may benefit from a future initiative called ‘Tent Cities in Disused Carparks’. Politicians pandering to the youth vote again.
