LEAP of FAITH

Jo Marston and Joe Pinder took a huge gamble when they bought a former vicarage that had been turned into offies – but it paid off

- Karen Wilson

After seven years together, Jo Marston and Joe Pinder decided to sell their respective homes and move in together, but the buying process was far from plain sailing.

They had fallen in love with a beautiful Victorian house – formerly the vicarage for Leeds Parish Church – but it had been converted into offices in the mid ‘90s before standing empty for nine years.

‘Every room was an office, except the toilets and kitchenettes,’ says Jo, 46, a project manager for a bank. ‘But we loved the magnitude of the rooms, which was beyond anything I’d lived in before.’ Adds Joe, 48: ‘It immediately made sense where the key rooms would be and by the second viewing we’d sketched out the plans we wanted.’

The biggest challenge was getting a domestic mortgage on a commercial property. Consequently the couple spent around £25,000 securing permission for change of use and installing a kitchen and bathroom before they’d even exchanged contracts. ‘It was a massive risk,’ admits Joe, who has his own construction firm creating bars and music venues. ‘We toyed with the idea of just installing a £3,000 kitchen and £2,000 bathroom to get the mortgage, but we wanted to prove to the banks that we meant business so went the full hog. It was a weird feeling to be paying so much attention to detail on a house we didn’t even own.’