How I bought £150k house by getting a second job and selling drawings on Facebook
ARTIST Fran Prince turned her talent for drawing into a money-making business to help buy her first home aged 23.
The 27-year-old from the Midlands bought her three-bed house near Coalville with her partner Robin Brill, also 27, for £150,000 in 2016.
She put £1,000 towards her £10,000 deposit by selling handmade cards, prints and jewellery on Facebook and at arts and crafts fairs.
Through this, the creative arts graduate was also commissioned to produce personalised illustrations for customers, who’d pay between £25 and £100 for a piece.
She also took on a part-time theatre work running workshops in Stoke alongside her full-time marketing job.
The £60 a week she earned running theatre workshops for children went straight into her savings account, on top of the £500 a month she was tucking away from her monthly marketing salary.
“Working at the theater was so tiring, especially as I’d already worked a full day in the office,” Fran told The Sun, “but it was worth it now that we have our home.”
Paying £200 a month to live at her parents home helped Fran save more, but she also saved on commuting jobs by walking to the office which was on the outskirts of the same village.
In total, the couple put down a 10 per cent deposit worth £15,000 and took out a mortgage for the rest.
They also saved around £1,500 on furnishing the home, after the previous owners left behind all of the white goods including a fridge, freezer, washing machine and tumble dryer.
The savvy savers upcycled secondhand products too, that were given to them from friends and family, or bought for a bargain price from a charity shop.
Three years on, we spoke to Fran about what it takes to own your own home for the My First Home series.
What does your house look like?
I live in a three-bed semi-detached house in a village near Coalville in the Midlands.
I bought it with my partner, Robin, in 2016 when I was 23 - we’ve been together for about seven years now.
The house was built in the 1970s and we’ve got a garden, our own driveway and a shared driveway that the neighbours can also use.
All three rooms are doubles. The only problem I have with it is that we don’t have a bath. We could put one in but we’re not desperate for one.
The previous owners were elderly but they’d had a new bathroom and kitchen fitted shortly before selling it.
The house was totally liveable but wasn’t decorated to our tastes so we’ve changed a few things since moving in - nothing major though. We’ve not moved any walls or anything.
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We both grew up in a village not far from here, which was partly why we went for this property. Also because it was easy for both of us to get to work.
When I finished uni I thought I wanted to live in London but I think I’m a bit of a country bumpkin at heart and we would never have been able to get a mortgage there.
Let’s talk money. How much did you pay for it?
We bought the house for £150,000 with a 10 per cent deposit - I put in £10,000 and my partner put in £5,000.
Robin spent two years longer at university than I did so had less time to save, which is why it worked out that way.
We took out a mortgage for £135,000 over 25 years. Our monthly repayments are around £585.
Renting a similar size house in the area would easily cost us between £750 and £850 a month.
The house was actually on the market for £155,000 and we offered £146,000 but they weren’t having it. We haggled with them until they knocked £5,000 off the asking price.
Unfortunately, we bought before the Stamp Duty relief for first-time buyers was introduced so we had to pay £500 for the land duty tax.
We also paid another £1,500 for the surveys and solicitors fees.
Since we bought it, the house is now estimated to be worth £180,000 by Zoopla so it was definitely an investment.
How did you save for the deposit?
It took me two years to save the money. I was living with my mum and paid her £200 a month in rent.
It was much lower than what I’d be paying compared to renting a room somewhere so that really helped.
I also managed to get a job at a PR agency that was based in the same village so I walked to work to save on commuting costs.
My starting salary was £15,000 a year and I was saving around £500 a month. The rest of my money went on board, paying for my car, covering my £20 phone bill and going out.
I paid £750 to insure the car for the year and spent no more than £15 a week on fuel.
I didn’t really have to give stuff up as I was super frugal to start with.
I topped up my salary by taking on extra jobs and side hustles. For example, I studied creative art at uni and was commissioned to do a few pieces.
I was paid £2,000 to paint a mural while I was at uni and I was also picked to be the National Trust’s young artist of the year.
This involved working with local artists and organising projects for local schools. I earned £160 a day and it was over about five days in total.
I sold artwork and crafts, such as handmade cards, prints and jewellery, through Facebook by setting up a business page. I earned about £1,000 from doing this.
During my first year at the marketing agency, I freelanced at a theatre in Stoke in the evenings as well.
What help is out there for first-time buyers?
GETTING on the property ladder can feel like a daunting task but there are schemes out there to help first-time buyers have their own home.
Help to Buy Isa - It's a tax-free savings account where for every £200 you save, the Government will add an extra £50. But there's a maximum limit of £3,000 which is paid to your solicitor when you move. These accounts have now closed to new applicants but those who already hold one have until November 2029 to use it.
Help to Buy equity loan - The Government will lend you up to 20 per cent of the home's value - or 40 per cent in London - after you've put down a five per cent deposit. The loan is on top of a normal mortgage but it can only be used to buy a new build property.
Lifetime Isa - This is another Government scheme that gives anyone aged 18 to 39 the chance to save tax-free and get a bonus of up to £32,000 towards their first home. You can save up to £4,000 a year and the Government will add 25 per cent on top.
Shared ownership - Co-owning with a housing association means you can buy a part of the property and pay rent on the remaining amount. You can buy anything from 25 to 75 per cent of the property but you're restricted to specific ones.
"First dibs" in London - London Mayor Sadiq Khan is working on a scheme that will restrict sales of all new-build homes in the capital up to £350,000 to UK buyers for three months before any overseas marketing can take place.
Starter Home Initiative - A Government scheme that will see 200,000 new-build homes in England sold to first-time buyers with a 20 per cent discount by 2020. To receive updates on the progress of these homes you can register your interest on the website.
Every Tuesday and Wednesday, after I’d worked 8am until 4pm at the agency, I’d come home, eat my dinner and leave again at 6pm to drive the hour or so to Stoke to work at the theatre.
The workshops were for underprivileged kids in the area and ran from 7:30pm until 9:30pm, so I wouldn’t get home until about 10:30pm.
I earned £15 an hour, which added up to £1,560 over the six months that I worked there - it all went straight into my savings. I had to stop doing it though because it became too tiring in the end.
By this point, I’d been working at the marketing agency for about a year and my salary had gone up so I was able to tuck away £700 a month.
During this time, I did dip into my savings and paid £4,000 to do a journalism degree.
The course was online so there was no commuting involved and it helped me better my career. As a result, I got another pay rise taking me up to £21,000 a year by the time we took out a mortgage.
I still went on holiday while we were saving but they were cheap trips. For example, we went to Sweden for a few days but Robin’s uncle lives there so all we had to pay for was the flights really as we stayed with him.
When I first started working, I was still living on that university budget so I didn’t find it overly hard to save.
I still saw my friends but I would never have spent like £100 on a night out, and I hardly ever bought new clothes so it didn’t really feel like I had to cut back there either.
How did you find the extra money to furnish it?
The previous owners left us all of the white goods including a washing machine, tumble dryer, fridge, freezer, oven. They even left a Dyson vacuum.
That was brilliant because it all worked perfectly well and would have cost us £1,500 to buy them brand new.
We also upcycled loads of secondhand bits. My aunty gave us a dining room table and chairs for free which we painted - it would have cost us around £300 brand new.
We also bought two sets of drawers for £20 from a charity shop and painted them using a few tester pots that we had left over from decorating. They’re very 70s and we’ve still got those now.
We bought a big oak unit for £35 from a charity shop as well but it was too big really so we sold it as it was on Shpock for £75 - we made £40 on it.
We were also given an old bed frame from a friend, my mum made us some curtains and Robin’s grandad bought us a TV as a moving in present.
Over the years, we’ve slowly started to replace some of the secondhand bits, like the sofas, as we’ve built up our savings again.
Robin, who’s a teacher, is great at making things too so he broke down a load of old pallets, sanded them down and made them into a coffee table and a TV unit.
And he made shelving out of an old piece of scaffolding - these are the things I really like because it makes our home even more personal.
We also saved money by framing wallpaper samples to put up around the house instead of forking out for expensive artwork.
Did it need much work doing to it?
To be honest, it’s been a case of redecorating rather than renovating.
The garage was seriously run down, so that was our first project. We did need to pay for a professional to rebuild it, but to save money Robin watched YouTube videos to find out how to take the roof off himself.
We also used all of the old bricks to rebuild it to avoid paying for new ones and knocked off the mortar ourselves to save the builders time.
All in, it cost us £3,000 to do but we didn’t do it straight away.
One thing we did do straight away was change the beige bathroom that we really didn’t like.
As it was almost all new, we didn’t feel like it was worth ripping it all out and fitting a new one.
My First Home
Instead, we paid £180 to upcycle it. We bought white tile paint and grout pens to cover up the existing ones.
We sprayed all of the chrome fittings, like the toilet roll holder, matt black and instead of taking the tiles in the shower out, we just put new ones on top of them.
My brother works for a construction company and he gave us some left over lino to cover the floor up with too, which we did ourselves.
How does it feel being a property owner?
We love it. We’ve been here long enough for it to feel truly like ours.
We never had a set time for when we wanted to buy somewhere but everything just sort of fell into place in the end, once Robin had finished uni.
I think the biggest thing for us was realising how much the bills cost us. It’s affordable but you know, it’s a big cost when you haven’t been paying them yourself before.
To save money, we tend to shop through sites like TopCashback when we buy big items or birthday presents and then put the money towards the bills.