Now I appreciate that I am now armed with a certain degree of knowledge when it comes to mortgages purely because I have been living and breathing this subject every day for the last few years and I'm always conscious when I'm talking to clients of that fact.

I try to remember how I felt when I was buying my first property as I think this really helps clients feel at ease because I can communicate the information to them in a way that is tied to real life.

As I said, I believe that I made the majority of the mistakes most first-time buyers make when I got my first property but Sadly I didn't know any better at the time.

Having been there and come through the other side I'd say I'm grateful now  that I did actually get onto the property ladder and if I had to do it all again, including making the same mistakes then I definitely would and that might sound strange but let me explain

Firstly, I would like to say the only thing I did well was going to a mortgage adviser and from that point onwards it was simply downhill from there, and honestly, I can't even take credit for making that decision.

I was led as many First Time buyers are to the desk of the mortgage adviser after wandering in estate agents closest to where I lived. I was told as many first time buyers are that this was necessary if I wanted to view a property which is the same line every first-time buyer is told when they also decide they want to look at Properties.

I did have a fairly decent amount of deposit saved up which I had worked incredibly hard for. At the time I was working for a company where overtime was readily available and I would take every single opportunity to do so, to my way of thinking,  if I was working I wouldn't necessarily be able to spend any money so it was a double win for me.  At this point, none of my peers owned or even rented property but it was something I wanted to do, especially as I had seen how much it meant to my parents after they, after many years of being in the army finally bought their first home together. Growing up we had spent all our lives moving from army quarter to army quarter and we only bought our first home when we left the army and I think I was headed to university at the time.

So I was certain I wanted to buy my first home and I knew I needed a deposit but that is about all I knew and that is how I found myself plonked down in front of a mortgage adviser sat behind a desk within an estate agents.

I don't remember the gentleman's name but I remember very little about the application process after the first meeting which I now realize must have meant that we had very little to do with one another after that first meeting.

The budget that he had based on my circumstances at the time I'm was very limited. When I would go on to online websites to search for properties I would always have to sort the properties lowest to highest and I very rarely made it off page one.

Having said that at the time I did have a fairly broad range of properties within my budget and I was lucky he because I didn't have a strict list of requirements which I felt I had to religiously stick to so I looked at every single property within my budget I looked at flats above shops I looked at houses I looked at one bedroom two bedroom and even completely by mistake a 5-bedroom mid-terrace but that's a story for another time.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, I found the one. I describe this feeling to all my first-time buyers and assure them it will happen to them. something strange comes over you when you walk into the right property something just feels right and you feel like you are at home.