A TENT village has sprung up in Lower Compton, near Calne, as eager house buyers brave the elements in their quest to peg down the home of their dreams.

Competition for the former Ministry of Defence properties on the estate is so fierce that families are camping outside to keep their place in the queue of prospective buyers.

In total, 42 homes are up for grabs, with two-bedroom houses starting at £109,950 and a four bedroom home at £159,950.

Annington Homes, which owns the houses, has a first come first served policy when it sells houses. The launch date of the next sale in Lower Compton is not until June 6, but as a result of the policy, 20 families have already made camp and more are arriving every day.

Matthew Hibberd, 31, lives in Lower Compton, but pitched his tent in the playground yards from his house because he wants to buy a larger home on the same estate for his young family.

The site office opened on May 19 to allow people to start registering their interest, but Mr Hibberd, who has a 15- month-old son, pitched his tent four days beforehand to make sure he got a place in the queue.

"I live on the estate and I heard there were so many people interested, so if I wanted it I had to get to the front of the queue," he said.

"We are in second place, but literally ten minutes after we arrived, ten more people were there and they carried on arriving through the morning."

Mother-of-two Debbie Angell, 28, and her partner Allan Coombs, 38, are also hoping to bag a bigger house.

Ms Angell, who has lived in Lower Compton for ten years, has been unable to camp out because of her eight-year-old daughter Rachel and 19-month-old son Zak, but her brother Mark has stepped into the breach.

"A lot of the people camping are local and know each other anyway," she said. "But people who are new to the area have also been made to feel very welcome, so I think it will be a really friendly neighbourhood when everyone moves in."

Helen Luty, 31, expected to camp for a maximum of two weeks, but when she and her RAF husband Chris, 33, from Brize Norton, arrived to look round a house on the estate, they discovered 16 people already in the queue.

She said: "We hit action stations. We drove to Oxfordshire to pick up our five-year-old son Charlie and then I drove back on my own and slept the night in my car.

"I'm 6ft 1ins and I spent my first night here on the back seat of a Fiat Punto with a bottle of red wine. My husband drove down the next evening with a tent my brother-in-law had brought all the way from Northamptonshire the night before, but I just missed him."

Mr Hibberd, an engineer at Honda, in Swindon, who has managed to take time off work to camp, said the weather has been miserable and his tent was flooded at 3am on his first night at the camp.

But he said the uncomfortable conditions have pulled people living in the tents together and created a sense of community spirit.

He said: "It's hammered it down, it's been wet, cold and miserable, but the atmosphere on the camp is brilliant.

"Everyone chipped in to buy a canvas gazebo and we have had a fire going. We all sit out at night and have a good chat, which means you don't have to sit in your tent shivering."

Mrs Luty, who works in Swindon for Thames Water, said: "There's so much nervous excitement going on. It's a fantastic atmosphere. Everyone is sticking up for each other and watching each other's backs."

The campers are not allowed to leave the site for more than an hour each day or they risk losing their place in the queue.

If Mr Hibberd wants a shower or his evening meal, he has to speak to his wife on her mobile telephone and arrange for her and his son to walk over and do a shift at the camp for him. But if he is really stuck, he said, he has a gas cooker and some emergency rations in his tent.

He said he missed his bed, but was never tempted to sneak home in the evening and spend the night in the comforts of his own home.

"I'm never tempted to go back home because there's too much at stake," he said. "If five or six people are interested in your house and you clear off, even though they're ever so nice, it could go and it's just not worth that risk.

"It's a great place to live because everyone knows each other on the estate and looks out for each other and there's a real community feeling."

In 1996, Annington Homes bought all the MoD's married quarters and then leased them back to the Ministry.

But as the military shrinks, MoD properties become surplus, and Annington Homes sells them off through estate agents or in batches.

The company said it does not take a list of names in advance because it says people do not always turn up on the day, slowing down the sales process.

A spokesman said this has resulted in people camping on the estates where batches of homes were being sold.