When Olivia Bowen was a little girl, her mum used to drive past a beautiful house in her Essex home town. “It was my dream house,” Bowen reminisces. “Very grand with big gates, the kind of house I would want to live in for ever.”
This was perhaps a far-fetched dream for a 22-year-old working in sales. But after she and Alex, who are now married, were crowned runners-up in season two of ITV’s hit dating show Love Island in 2016, everything changed.
The Bowens bought their first home for about £800,000 in Chelmsford, Essex, in 2017. Influencing was a less saturated market then than it is today, and Bowen was making tens of thousands of pounds in brand partnerships. The couple also bagged their