My mum rented all her life.

We lived in a council flat in Reading when I was little, then a series of small rented houses. Twice, when I was a girl, a landlord sold up and we had to leave with a month's notice. I changed schools three times before I was eleven.

I remember Mum crying at the kitchen table, surrounded by boxes, saying, “It's not fair, Katie. We pay our rent. We look after the place. And they treat us like we're nothing.”

I never forgot that.

When I was twenty-six, I started a company. Hearthstone Homes. We managed rented houses for landlords, but we did it differently. Long tenancies. Fair rents. Repairs done properly and on time. Tenants treated like neighbours, not numbers.

Twelve years later, Hearthstone looked after four thousand homes across the South of England.

When we opened a new office in Oxford, I needed somewhere to live. I didn't want to buy straight away. I wanted to get to know the area first.

So I rented a little two-bedroom house at number fourteen Larch Close, on a new development outside the city called Kingsmere Gardens.

I'm thirty-eight. I live on my own with a very lazy cat called Biscuit.

And the day I moved in, Nigel Fairbrother knocked on my door with a welcome pack.