I swapped my home ownership dream for a 42-foot narrowboat

Telegraph

22-02-2025

Swapping bricks and mortar for boats and water may seem a pretty extreme way to handle the soaring cost of home ownership.
But with house prices, rents and the general cost of living rising beyond anything I could afford, that is exactly what I've done.
I have swapped my dream of owning a house for the reality of owning a 42-foot narrowboat, which is now a home for me and my greyhound, Meg.
As a child, I had always assumed that I would be merrily funnelled through the pipeline of work hard, save up, buy house, watch house price rise, pay off mortgage, retire comfortably.
But thanks to high house prices, that model is increasingly broken, especially in the south of England – and particularly if you are not buying with a partner.
Combine that with the cost of living crisis, which is still very much with us, and you have a situation perfectly designed to leave single hard-working adults in their 20s and 30s still living at home with their parents or renting shared properties.
At times, adjusting to that reality left me very dejected. It felt like a social contract had been broken by house prices rising far more quickly than wages, with no fix in sight.
Then my rebellious streak kicked in. If the housing system is no longer working for me, then maybe it was time to live outside that system. Stop worrying, start living.
I did briefly consider renting a home, but there were certain things I wasn't prepared to compromise on when it came to accommodation. I'm 37, and my days of sharing a property are over – especially when you bring soaring rental prices into the equation. A one-bedroom property in Kent, where I live, now costs north of £1,000 a month, and that is very much out of my budget.
My dog limits my rental options even further. Out of interest I had called a few landlords that advertised properties as allowing pets, only to discover that, for the vast majority, 'pet' does not mean 'dog', it means 'a goldfish, maybe, if it's well-behaved'.
So the path of my life led me inexorably towards the canals.
The idea of buying a boat had coalesced slowly in my mind. When I rented a shared flat by the Grand Union canal in London many years ago, I had been fascinated by the colourful narrowboats and some of the equally colourful characters that lived on them.
Some lifestyle changes had also nudged me towards narrowboats. I have recently set up a freelance journalism business, Barker Editorial, after many years of working on Fleet Street newspapers. All I need to work is a phone, a notepad, a laptop and an internet connection, all of which I can do from anywhere.
Also, a breakup and house sale meant I was sitting on just enough money to buy a boat, which I had tucked away in Premium Bonds.
But save as I may, I knew that pot of money would never be enough to get me back on the housing ladder in the South, where my friends and family live. Not unless NS&I sent Agent Million to knock on my door to tell me I'd won the £1m jackpot.
Monthly costs are low
A major attraction of owning a narrowboat was the relatively low monthly cost of living compared to a house.
I bought mine outright for £33,000. You don't pay a mortgage or rent or council tax, provided you are a continuous cruiser without a home mooring. You also don't pay water bills, as these are included in the yearly fee paid to the Canal and River Trust to use their waterways, which for me is £1,118.64 a year.
The reduced space and simplicity of narrowboat life also lends itself to saving money.
I have very limited space on a 42-foot boat, especially when four feet of that space is taken up by my dog. The restricted storage means you can't own as much, or run an array of expensive electrical items, and that means saving money. You are also extremely incentivised to conserve costly things like food, diesel, smokeless fuel, gas and electricity, as all of these either need to be moved by me on to the boat or else generated onboard.
My typical monthly outgoings now are between £600 and £1,000, which includes all boat-related costs as well as groceries and things like vet bills and the cost of running a car. Anything I earn above that can be swept into savings or my pension.
Another part of the appeal of a boat is the security of ownership. In the past I have been made redundant, unhelpfully during the initial Covid lockdown, where employers battened down the hatches and stopped hiring. At points I have also been unable to work for long periods due to accidents and ill health.
Although I am in a better place now, I remember all too well that corrosive fear of losing work, burning through my savings and falling into arrears.
The idea of owning a boat outright that I can't be kicked out of – and isn't subject to sudden rent or mortgage increases – is very comforting. And of course, if I don't like my neighbours, or the view, then I can just fire up the engine and get some new ones.
...but there's a time cost
However, only a fool would think boating is automatically some sort of silver bullet to the housing crisis. There are some very good reasons why houses have caught on and we're not all living on the water.
Firstly, there is a lot of time and cost associated with maintaining a boat, more than most houses. For example, the hull needs repainting every few years and the engine servicing every couple of hundred hours. Diesel and water tanks must be cleaned, and batteries maintained.
A narrowboat is an off-grid home with everything you need to live, but is also a series of hidden pipes, pumps and cables that can and will fail in the least convenient time and place. Frequent high repair bills mean barge owners joke about 'boat' standing for 'bung on another thousand'.
Then there's the cost of diesel for the engine, wood and smokeless coal for the fire and gas bottles for the oven, all of which have to be sourced and often lugged manually on to the boat.
There is a cost to time itself, and there can be a lot of time associated with keeping a narrowboat going.
Unlike a house, it is also a depreciating asset. If you buy one then you need to be comfortable knowing that you will almost certainly sell it for less than you bought it for.
A well-maintained narrowboat will last for decades, and even some of the old working boats that are 80-plus years old are still afloat. But realistically most have a natural lifespan. If you buy one towards the end of that then you also need a plan for what happens when you have to move off it and sell it for scrap.
But so long as you buy the right boat, in my view it remains one of the cheapest ways to live.
'It can be as safe as living in a shed'
There are other downsides to boat life besides cost. You are forced to deal with the elements far more than when living in a house, for example.
Safety is another issue. A narrowboat is not much harder to break into than the average garden shed, and unlit towpaths at night can attract all sorts of urchins. Things that go bump in the night definitely knock a lot harder when you live alone on a boat, so you have to take sensible precautions, rely on the watchful eyes of other boaters and get good insurance.
Fortunately, I love the lifestyle. I was brought up on a farm, so I'm used to the rain and the cold and the mud and the chores, and I'm in love with the natural world and the changing of the seasons, so living on a boat doesn't faze me.
The process of buying a boat is simultaneously entertaining and fraught with pitfalls.
Some of the boats I looked around had ceilings so low I could not stand up in them, which brokers tenaciously ignored during the viewings. With others, the sales photos hid a multitude of sins, from corroded hulls to rotten wood and dangerously bodged plumbing and gas pipes.
So it is important to get a survey where the boat is hauled out of the water, which will likely cost £1,000 or more. Just like buying a house, some parts of the boat are inaccessible when it comes to surveys, so there is always a slight leap of faith.
The two most expensive things on a narrowboat to go wrong are the hull and the engine.
My survey came back fine, showing the metal of the hull was just as solid as the day the boat first hit the water 22 years ago. The boat has a reliable, British-made Beta Marine engine with relatively low running hours and had been regularly maintained. If Vladimir Putin ever hits that big red button, that engine will share the apocalypse with the cockroaches.
Buying a boat at below-average rates for its size can also present you with more bills almost immediately, which bump up the overall cost of purchase.
Some would-be sellers put off the regular work that boats need when they want to sell up, because why spend lots of money on something you want to get rid of anyway? This can include things like painting the hull (£600-plus), four-yearly safety certificates (£200-plus) or expensive repair work, which can cost thousands, and which all has to be factored into the overall cost.
Some work needed to be done on my boat, but not much: a new cooker and fridge, the gas boiler needs a service, the walls need to be sanded and varnished, the rudder is slightly skewed and some windows need renovating.
I've hired tradesmen for some of the work, but a lot of work ends up being done by the boaters themselves – though it is still an extra cost. Learning how to service an engine involves a lot of swearing and scuffed knuckles, as well as a badly bruised wallet.
But the upsides to boat life, for me, make up for all the negatives. There are worse ways to start a morning than drinking coffee on the roof of the boat while the sun burns the mists off the water and curious ducks paddle up to say hello.
Likewise, it is hard to picture a better working environment than writing an article next to a cosy fire while my dog snores happily at my feet.
While I may never be able to own a house, at least when everything on the boat goes right I've bought peace with my money.