In January, Nicola Kent decided she needed her own space. Tired of living in a three-bedroom flat with a group of friends in north London, fighting over the bathroom and the telephone, she realised it was time to move on.

With the property market picking up again after the recession of the early 1990s, the number of single men and women in London buying their own property is increasing. Nicola, a freelance television director, says she had been thinking of buying her own property for more than a year before she did anything about it.

A three-week break from work allowed her to search for her 'ideal' home - a two-bedroom flat with a garden or access to an outside space.

'Originally I was looking in places such as Bermondsey and Rotherhithe in south-east London - friends had suggested the area because of the new Jubilee Line extension due to open soon. But when I drove around the area I was put off because there seemed to be very few people on the streets and I asked myself why I should move there when I didn't know anyone.' Abandoning that idea, Nicola extended her search to Clapton in east London; 18 months previously, the price for a two-bedroom flat with a garden in Clapton was £75,000 sterling: by January the price had jumped to more than £90,000. Nicola says it was at that point that she began to feel deflated. Several ideas came to mind and she considered looking for a one-bedroom flat, 'very central', because she loved the idea of getting into the city in 10 minutes.

'Sometimes, though, I lost sight of why I wanted to move. I knew that I wanted my own space to work in and that I wanted a twobedroom flat with a garden, but so many people were looking for the same thing . . .'

Eventually, a small, independent estate agent came up with a £90,000 sterling, three-bedroom flat in a converted Victorian terraced house in Dalston in east London, 20 minutes from the city.

Dalston is comparable to the less trendy parts of west Dublin. Large housing estates stand next to restored Victorian houses and lots of money is being poured into Dalston in an attempt to improve its profile. When Nicola went to see the flat it wasn't quite what she wanted. With three bedrooms and no access to the garden it was far from her ideal. However, after looking at it again and realising it needed very little repair, and because of its proximity to the city, she decided to buy.

The problems began when Nicola tried to get a mortgage from a building society. A freelance director for less than a year, and with an erratic salary, she was turned down because she could not provide accounts for the past three years. The NatWest bank also refused so she turned to an independent financial adviser for help. Within days the adviser had found Nicola a £70,000 sterling 25year mortgage.

But with a high risk, no-status mortgage, the monthly repayment is £521, with a variable interest rate of around 8 per cent. It is costly, but Nicola says that if she had not turned to the financial adviser for help she would never have been able to buy the house so quickly. 'I know buying a house is meant to be one of the most stressful experiences in your life, but there was no chain of buyers and it was really smooth,' she says. 'Trying to find somewhere to rent is much more difficult. It's a nightmare.'