Buying a house here is going to be a whole new experience for us.

Property here tends to be in short supply (it's a small island, after all.) And what's available tends to be both hellish expensive and not very nice. Definitely a winning combination of attributes. Even reading the adverts can be slightly depressing - I mean, you know you're in trouble when you look at a listing for a house that costs close on 300k and it cites "coathooks in hall" as a feature.

And then there's the odd way they do the actual property transaction here. In England, you see, if a seller accepts your offer, the agreement is not in fact legally binding on them. So they can back out at any stage before the actual final contract signing. If, for instance, they decide not to sell after all. Or if something goes wrong with the sale of the house that they were planning to buy. Or if they get a better offer from someone else. The practice of making higher offers on houses which already have "sold" signs up is quite rampant, apparently, and has a name of its own - gazumping.

Despite all this, however, I am actually quite looking forward to house-hunting again. There's always such a sense of potential and possibility when you're looking for a new home. So many alternative paths one could travel down.