Nuno & Nayia
St Clements
"Hi I’m Nuno, I live with my wife Nayia, two daughters Isabel and Eva and mother-in-law. My wife who is Greek and myself (I’m Portuguese), met in London and we’ve lived in East London over 16 years. Our current two bedroom flat is too small considering that we are five people and the flat is occupancy is for three. When my mother in law visits for six months, she stays in the living room. My daughter studies for her GCSEs in the kitchen and she doesn’t have quiet space. During her mock exams she was revising while someone was cooking next to her.
Our daughters are ten and fourteen years old and have to share a small room where there is no space for two beds. This meant that privacy was always a negotiation, not to mention the fact that noise was a constant issue.
Having an extra bedroom will be a big help to our family dynamics. When we moved in there was only one child, now our teenage daughter would really like to have her own space.
We are really connected to the area on a personal and professional level so moving away would have been a huge step as we would have been uprooted. We found ourselves completely unable to find a slightly bigger place and looked into shared ownership in the area but couldn’t afford it. Affordable housing is now considered to be 80% of the market which is no longer affordable for us. Twelve years ago shared ownership made sense, but not anymore. Now we would have to borrow a lot to buy in the area.
Moving to St. Clement’s will allow us the space we need and mean we get to stay in the area we call home. As it’s a London CLT home it’s linked to local incomes which keeps us away from the craziness of the open market. We did a valuation on our current shared ownership property and the apartment is worth £580,000 – when we bought it twelve years ago it was closer to £200,000 so the price has more than doubled since then.
My family and I are looking forward to starting a new phase in our lives at St. Clement’s."
