First-time buyers are a rare breed, and in London, rarer still. Dips in house prices haven’t come close to making even tiny flats affordable for most twenty and thirtysomethings who don’t have massive financial backing from parents or the kind of job that means you can endanger a multinational banking corporation before lunch. And yet, we’re the same as previous generations: we want homes of our own, enough space for ourselves and our stuff, and an address that the local pizza place isn’t afraid to deliver to.

But, for years, that has been impossible to find. I, at least, was never remotely consoled by endless articles telling me that only in the UK do we have an obsession with home ownership; on the Continent, you know, they rent, and it’s normal. Yes, I would think, of course it’s normal. My Belgian cousin used to rent a three-storey house in Eeklo for less than it cost me to rent one room in a damp basement in Islington. Anyone who tells you that you should get used to renting is invariably a homeowner.

I spent years saving to buy a flat, earning more every year but seeing it become less likely that I would ever be able to afford one. And then hoardings went up at the end of my road. They were for a new block of flats: another set of homes that my boyfriend and I would never be able to afford. Then the details of the sellers were painted on the hoardings: Notting Hill Housing Group.

That didn’t sound cheap. But when we got home I logged on to the website and discovered that the group provided shared ownership schemes. You buy a percentage of the flat, you pay subsidised rent on the rest and you end up with a toe, or at least a bit of one, on the housing ladder.

So I registered, safe in the knowledge that nothing would come of it. We watched the building at the end of the road get taller, smarter, better. When a letter came through asking if we wanted to see the show flat, we thought that it would only sate our curiosity to see the inside of the place. Neither of us is a “key worker”, so we hadn’t a hope of getting one.

We looked around the flat and loved it. There were loads of other people viewing it, and it was all I could do not to trip them up, so certain was I that they would get a flat and we would not. We started going through the numbers and decided that, even though it was ridiculous, and a waste of paper, I would give Notting Hill Housing Group a £250 cheque to register our interest officially. When it called the next Friday to tell us that we had been accepted, pending the financial interview, I felt sick. But, of course, it still couldn’t happen, because I had to get through the interview. And then it would realise that I am a writer and my boyfriend is an actor, and people like us don’t buy flats. We rent, resentfully.

The interview went well. Tim Jones, at Notting Hill Housing Group, was reassuring. Not that it mattered, because we had to arrange a mortgage, in February, when banks were refusing even the safest loans. But finally, a lifetime of keeping paperwork paid off. Bafflingly, since we are both self-employed and the banks weren’t lending to anyone, Nationwide agreed our mortgage — perhaps because we weren’t borrowing very much for our £100,000 share of the property and our outgoings would be significantly lower than the £14,000 a year we were paying in rent.

Arranging the mortgage, the valuation and moving date was incredibly stressful. But I don’t care now, because I am sitting at my desk in my flat, investing in my future instead of my landlord’s. I am not even angry that there are roadworks outside. They’re building a new pavement, so my home will be nicer for it.

So don’t listen to the people who tell you it’s impossible. Put your name on a list for a shared-ownership scheme. This is the bridge between the haves and the have-nots. And you may just get across it like we did.

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