With Non-Continuous Verbs and some non-continuous uses of Mixed Verbs, we use the Past Perfect to show that something started in the past and continued up until another action in the past. Examples: * We had had that car for ten years before it broke down. * By the time Alex finished his studies, he had been in London for over eight years. * They felt bad about selling the house because they had owned it for more than forty years. Although the above use of Past Perfect is normally limited to Non-Continuous Verbs and non-continuous uses of Mixed Verbs, the words “live,” “work,” “teach,” and “study” are sometimes used in this way even though they are NOT Non-Continuous Verbs.