I regret selling our home to move to Spain - it took 12 years to buy again

For Justine and Andrew Boniface, the dream of buying a home slipped further away with every year they spent renting after returning to the UK from Spain.

The couple, both 55, had already climbed onto the property ladder once before. They bought their first home in Hemel Hempstead in 1998 for just over £70,000.

But they sold it nearly a decade later for around £205,000 and moved to the Costa del Sol with their three sons in 2008, renting a property.

Shorts

At the time, they expected the move to be permanent. Speaking to The i Paper, Andrew said: “We fully intended to stay in Spain. Unfortunately, we moved the year the first recession hit, so it wasn’t quite the dream that we thought it would be, but we loved it and we took what we could from it.