I’m in the city but it feels like I’m in the countryside. If you’re in the right area you can get that. I see trees and people walking up to the hill. I saw a lot of properties before I bought this one.
How does it compare to your childhood home?
It’s so different.
I was brought up in Birmingham in a three-bedroom terraced house in Harborne just outside the city centre, which now is very nice. When I was growing up it wasn’t as affluent.
There were seven of us in the house: three brothers, me, my sister, my mum and dad.
Life was difficult because my parents were immigrants from Pakistan and arrived in the 1960s. There were a lot of immigrants and they lived in small houses, but they were still making their way in business and building their lives here.
My dad was starting out in business. We didn’t have much money and it was a really run-down property.
In the living room, the carpet had worn away and you could see the floorboards. We played in the small garden but it had no grass, just mud.
Sometimes we’d play on the street, ride the bike up and down, or in Queen’s Park round the corner, where everybody used to play.
What was the first property you bought?
A two-bedroom maisonette with a garden in Walthamstow, London in 2000 for £79,000, when I was teaching.
But there was a lease problem, it was too short.
You had to get the lease extended if you wanted to sell it – which cost me £10,000 – and when I came to sell it, my solicitor found that the previous owner had extended the lease but their solicitor (who turned out to be dodgy and was later investigated by the Law Society) hadn’t registered the original lease.
So I’d been in this property for 20 years with an unregistered lease. It took me ages to sell it but I did and made a profit.
Have you done alterations to your flat?
I had white built-in bookshelves and wardrobes made and fitted.
And I had spice shelves made specially in the kitchen because I do a lot of cooking and have loads of spices. I’m still developing it, really.
