When it came to buying a house in Harwich in Essex, lifelong resident Gem Newberry knew exactly what she wanted. ‘My husband Mike and I had been renting in the town for 17 years already, so we had a very good idea of what was available,’ she explains. ‘We'd been saving up to buy our first house, and our last rental was an Edwardian flat above a shop.’ After coming home one day to find the shop for sale, the couple started their search. ‘I love period properties and I'd always had my eye on this terraced house in the town,’ recalls Gem. ‘It had been on the market three years before, when we weren't in a position to move, but I thought whoever got it was a lucky person.’
Finding her dream house up for sale again was the push that Gem and Mike needed. ‘It was fate. I couldn't believe it when it came up, and it pushed all the other properties we were looking at out of the running,’ she says. ‘We went round on my birthday,
