Where the heart is - how home buying can affect your relationship

As a first-time home buyer, live by the golden rule: Never assume anything. This applies not only to the property you're thinking of buying, but also to your relationship with the person you're buying it with.

Buying a home is probably the biggest financial step most of us will make in our lifetime, and the accompanying stresses when things do not go according to plan can make or break a relationship. Never assume that just because you have a clear life-plan it is identical in every detail to that of your partner. You might be into nesting and planning a family, while your partner secretly hankers after a few more years as a party animal. Your partner might go along with your version for a while, but when it begins to seriously impact on the unspoken, unfulfilled framework that underpins his or her identity, then it is only a matter of time before the house of cards of your different visions tumbles down around the two of you.

Before you visit your first open home, before you talk to the bank or the estate agent, take the time to talk things over. Talk about your dreams, your ambitions, your wishes, both for the long-term and the short. Discuss where children come into the equation, if they do at all. Think about how you would live if two incomes suddenly became one. Consider how much it matters where you live, and in what sort of home you live. Examine whether you have a secret hankering to impress anyone, your parents, the neighbours, old mates from school or uni. Talk about how you want to spend your leisure time. Just because your partner is a master builder doesn't mean he wants to spend all his weekends doing what he does all week. Perhaps most of all, discuss the ability of each of you to cope with stress, with mess and with the fact that renovations could eat up every penny you earn and more, for years to come.

On the basis of these discussions, decide if you are ready for what it takes. Should it be a sharp apartment in a good block that you are going to pay off as soon as possible, or should it be a do-up with more potential for making money? Only you can tell. But if you never talk it through you'll never know what's right for you both.

Catherine Foster is a freelance writer who has bought, sold and renovated six houses both with a partner and on her own.