Kirstie Allsopp reveals her boyfriend once bought two homes without telling her
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Kirstie Allsopp’s long-term boyfriend once bought two houses without telling her, the presenter has revealed.
The Location, Location, Location host said her partner, Ben Andersen, bravely - or perhaps foolishly - purchased the family homes at auction without seeing them first.
“He bought three houses, sight unseen, at auctions, and two of them were without telling me,” the property expert told MailOnline.
“In one case, I was a little cross at the time,” she said.
But Allsopp, who is daughter of the former chairman of Christie’s auctioneers and the sixth Lord Hindlip, believes that the purchases are proof that their nearly 20-year relationship is strong.
“If you are a true couple, and love each other, then you trust each other,” she said.
Allsopp, 52, and Andersen, 63, share two children together, and she is also stepmother to his two sons from a previous relationship.
The Channel 4 star, was introduced to real estate entrepreneur Andersen in 2004 by his ex-wife Theresa, according to the outlet. They swore they would never get married 10 days into their relationship, eschewing the modern trend for “overblown” weddings.
The couple bought a house together in the Devon countryside in 2009, a property that had been vacant for over 39 years, which became the subject of TV series Kirstie’s Homemade Home.
Allsopp sparked debate on social media when she said she preferred a terraced house over a detached new-build, despite living in a detached property in Devon.
In a piece for The Independent, the property expert said she did not deny her privilege and defended against claims of snobbery: “I am writing this from my detached house in Devon, so I completely understand why people reading this will say, ‘what the hell does she know about it’?
“I’m not denying my privilege, but in London where I live some of the time, my home is in a block of flats with a communal garden that we share with six other families. If one of my three immediate next-door neighbours cough, I hear it.”
Meanwhile, Andersen allegedly angered locals when he took over a Victorian pub in upmarket Kensington and renamed it without consulting them.
