The First-Time Buyer

There are six packed boxes beside my kitchen table. I had expected there to be more.

Next Friday, if everything goes to plan, I get the keys to a small terraced house. There is a patch of garden at the back and a survey report I have now read four times.

I am thirty-one. It will be the first home I have owned.

It will not be the first home that has felt like mine.

When I left university, I wanted to get on with things. Three people I had met there felt much the same. We had done a few paid projects together and thought we could make a business of it: websites, booking systems and the patient business of keeping them working for small local firms.

We had some customers. We did not yet have reliable incomes.

We also needed somewhere to live.

I could have gone back to my parents. They would have made room, but I wanted to establish a life of my own.

My uncle had lived with his mum and dad for years after he started working. This was before the NAS. He used to say that he could afford almost everything except moving out.

I had grown up thinking that might be how it worked for me too.

Finding four affordable places within easy reach of one another looked like becoming our first substantial project. We were comparing rooms, deposits and bus routes when we applied to the National Accommodation Service (NAS).

We explained that we were setting up a business together and wanted to live close enough to make that practical.

Our first offers were scattered across town. Each would have given us somewhere suitable to live, but working together would have meant a lot of travelling.

We asked whether our applications could be considered together.

A resolver called us. She asked what we were planning, how often we needed to meet and how close was close enough.

“We don’t need to be next door,” I said. “Walking distance would make a difference.”

She found suitable capacity in two nearby ExoSett buildings. Three of us could move into one; the fourth would be five minutes away on foot. We would have to wait a few weeks for the last home.

Nobody needed a larger allocation or priority over somebody else. It just took someone looking at the four applications together and seeing a reason to coordinate them.

We each had our own allocation and our own front door.

Most mornings we met around somebody’s kitchen table. Later, when we could afford it, we rented a small office above a print shop.

My first home was compact, quiet and light. There was room to cook properly, have a friend round and shut the laptop away at the end of the day. I put up pictures. My mother brought a plant that survived considerably longer than she expected.

The home came with basic furniture, and the accommodation and essential services were provided without charge. I still had food to buy and a business that sometimes paid me very little, but I did not have to wait until I could afford private rent before living independently.

When a customer paid late, I still worried about it. I could at least stay in my home while we worked out what to do.

That made it easier to keep going through the uneventful, uncertain part of starting a business.

There was quite a lot of that part.

After a couple of years, one of us took a salaried job elsewhere. Another moved in with his partner across town and carried on working with us. We no longer needed to live within borrowing distance of the same printer.

Then my girlfriend, Anna, and I decided to live together.

Her work was on the other side of town. My original home had suited me well, but it was small for two people and in the wrong place for our daily journeys.

We asked the NAS about a home together.

A few months later, we moved into this flat, in another ExoSett building near a bus route that worked for both of us. It had a separate bedroom and enough living space for us to be at home without always doing the same thing.

My previous allocation ended at the handover. The local team arranged the checks and preparation for its next resident.

I missed being so close to my friends. Moving still meant boxes, cleaning and discovering which cupboard would take the saucepans. But the new home fitted the life we were actually living.

I have been here for five years now.

The business is still going. There are three of us working in it, and enough regular customers to pay ourselves steadily. Some months are better than others. We still chase invoices.

Over time, I was able to put money aside. Slowly at first, then regularly.

Anna and I separated last year. She moved nearer her sister. I updated my circumstances with the NAS, and this flat remained a suitable allocation for me.

By then, buying somewhere had begun to look possible.

I wanted a little garden. I liked the idea of choosing a house and making long-term plans for it. I spent several months looking before finding one I could afford.

I will miss this flat. It is warm, the neighbours are friendly and I know exactly when the afternoon sun reaches the kitchen table.

It has been a good home.

Once the purchase and moving dates were settled, I contacted the NAS. We agreed the handover arrangements. When I move into the house, my allocation here will end.

The local team will inspect the flat and arrange any repairs or refurbishment it needs. Its capacity will return to the local accommodation pool for another household.

I do not know who will live here next.

Someone once moved out so that I could move in. Now it is my turn to hand the place back.

There is room for another box beside the table.

This story illustrates how an ExoSett system might be used. Actual implementations would require project-specific engineering, detailed design and any necessary regulatory approval.

The National Accommodation Service can support ordinary life transitions: leaving university, establishing a livelihood, forming a household, moving and choosing to buy a home.

The NAS imagined here provides essential accommodation without charge, just as the NHS provides essential health care. This covers the building and its maintenance, the internal fit-out, essential services such as water and heating, and basic furniture. Residents can choose an unfurnished home.

Suitable space, location and accessibility are matters of accommodation need. Residents can express preferences, which the service considers alongside need and available capacity. There is no paid upgrade within the NAS. Someone who wants to make their own arrangements can rent or buy privately.

An allocation responds to current accommodation need. That need may be met in different homes over time; it need not attach someone permanently to their first dwelling. When a resident moves into a privately owned home and no longer needs an allocation, the released capacity returns to the local accommodation pool. Buying is this protagonist’s choice, rather than an expected destination for everyone using the service.

ExoSett provides a physical system in which accommodation modules can form homes of different sizes and layouts. Accommodation design determines how well those homes serve their occupants. Moving between suitable homes need not involve moving the modules themselves.

For the more difficult decisions involving need, preference and scarce capacity, see The Resolver.