Alison moved into her home in 2013 and bought it in 2017

"It does mean that you could make that new start"

“So I chose the plan because I'd recently got divorced and I needed to start up again. So previously, having had a house with my ex-partner, it was about being able to go and buy my own home. I wasn't in a situation to raise a deposit at the time, so it just made sense to actually live somewhere, new start, and start building up that deposit again before buying.

It was great to be able to make the home ours. Put our own stamp on what it wanted to look like. You know, what wall colouring did we want? Did we want wallpaper? Did we want to paint? Change the carpets and just make it our own home. Something that you can't really do when you rent a home and you're stuck with somebody else's colour scheme. So that was really appealing to be able to do that.

Some of the changes we made before actually purchasing the property outright is, we put a utility room into the garage, we landscaped the garden and we changed the bathroom as well, so we'd already made those improvements to the home before we actually finished purchasing it. So before we got to that purchasing stage we'd already added value to our home.

In my advice to anybody that's considering this option to buy a home you know, is do it. I did have to think about it myself. Were there risks in actually doing this? Was it a "For real?" type situation? Yeah, it did sound a little bit too good to be true that you were renting a home for a really good value whilst actually building up that deposit at the same time. But it's a lifesaver, and it does mean that you could make that new start, which perhaps you wouldn't have been able without having this actual scheme available to you to do that.”