Anna Bloomer and Gavin Murrison with their daughter Emi
(Picture: Handout)When Anna Bloomer and Gavin Murrison put their London flat on the market and buyers immediately started fighting over it they could have been forgiven for thinking that exiting the capital was going to be a piece of cake.
In fact their 30 mile journey ended up taking an anxious year and a half. At times they thought they would be stuck in limbo in an outgrown but unsellable home forever.
The couple had bought their two-bedroom flat in a small development near Greenwich Park back in 2013.
After the birth of their daughter Emi, now five, they started considering whether polluted central London was the best place to bring up a child. “There was also the issue that buying a three-bedroom terraced house nearby was going to cost £1 million, and the secondary schools in the area didn’t have a great reputation,” said Anna, 43, a fitness professional who works at a hospital pain management clinic.
She and Gavin, 43, a software developer, settled on the beautiful cathedral city of St Albans in Hertfordshire for its half-hour commute back to London, proximity to their families, its vibrant city centre, and great schools. “It ticked all the boxes,” said Anna.
When the Government announced the Stamp Duty holiday mid-pandemic the timing seemed perfect. They put their flat on the market in June 2020. Within a week they had accepted an offer from a first-time buyer, and by August they had also found a house to buy. They planned to have made the move by Christmas, and started looking at schools for Emi.
Then things started to go very wrong. Their buyer requested an EWS1 report on the flat — the fire safety test introduced by the Government in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Emma and Gavin’s managing agents had not had one carried out, and claimed it was not necessary, leaving the couple resigned to staying put for the foreseeable future.
In May 2021, however, they had a stroke of luck. The owner of another of the flats — coincidentally a director of the company which had constructed the building — wanted to sell. As if by magic an EWS1 was carried out within six weeks — and came back all clear.
Anna and Gavin’s original buyer still wanted the flat. The house they had originally planned to buy was long gone, but they quickly found an alternative, a dated but spacious five-bedroom 1930s semi-detached house a mile north of the city centre. They sold their flat for £485,000 and paid £793,000 for their new family home, moving in just before Christmas 2021.
After all the build up the reality of their life-changing move has felt slightly flat. The great news is that Emi has settled quickly and happily into school and loves her peaceful, leafy new neighbourhood.
Gavin is getting used to the commute, and Anna is settling into a new job. “St Albans is a lovely place to live, but it is just different,” she said. “We loved Greenwich, we used to just walk out onto Trafalgar Road for shops and restaurants, now we find ourselves driving a lot more. But the neighbours are lovely, and we are enjoying exploring the city centre, it has just been a bit of a shock to the system.”
