Should I stay or should I go?

[lucas161212]

If you were in the following situation what would you do? Opinions needed.

You have inherited a six figure sum of money, think £500,000 plus. You live in a very nice 3 bed end of terrace house in an affluent area. You have two pre-schoolers, two bedrooms are big double bedrooms and the other is a small single room which is ok. Dh is about to start from home and has nowhere to work from except the kitchen table.

You absolutely love where you live and are fully aware you can get something bigger if you move out of the area but don't want to. Everything is walkable.

Money has been spent on the house.
Extension,new kitchen etc
Bathroom done to high quality less than a year ago.

More money needs to be spent on the house;
Completely re-do garden with patio etc
House needs painting inside and out except extension.
New carpets throughout upstairs
Repair roof
Re do front garden
Re-Tarmac drive at front and side.
New curtains, furnishings through as all inherited from previous owner.

You can't decide whether you should move or not. Either way you will be mortgage free. You don't want to spend all that money if you are going to move but feel in limbo just in case. The house is plenty big enough now but would like extra bedroom and bathroom and study area for dh as well as bigger living space and utility room downstairs. You feel like as the children get bigger you will outgrow the current house.

The current house has scope to do a loft conversion but not extend downstairs living space.

Would you move?

To clarify, you would move within the same area to a bigger house.

Knock through single room and make two smaller bedrooms.
Build a garden room in the garden and miss that for the office.

Or move, depending on what is available in an area you want.

What does your partner say when you discuss it?

If there's no scope for extension or a garden office, I would move.

Can you have an office in the garden?

There's scope for a garden office outside and for a loft conversion just not the living space downstairs. There is a tiny utility room and toilet. But currently it is a spacious and a lovely space. Not seen anything like our extension when looking on rightmove. We would have to go through another extension probably.

Wondering about moving now or in 5-10 years when children begin to grow out of it.

Dh and I go round in circles and can't decide.

Move now, I suspect property prices will just keep rising

Blue- we re lucky enough that that doesn't matter really. We re in an area where prices will pretty much always rise, unless there's a crash obviously.

I was going to say 'stay', but if you are considering moving in five years time, you may as well grab the bull by the horns, and move now.
House prices will rise.

Maybe wait and move in 10 years time when we have outgrown the house. What we want now might be different to what we want then.

Not worried about house prices going up. We would buy in same area so the price of our house would go up as well as where we might move to. Don't necessarily think we d get more for our money now than if prices go up.the stamp duty and estate agent rates make it expensive to move so want to do the right think and use it wisely.

Wondering about staying and buying a buy to let in an up and coming area instead.

Does dh have to actually be at home? Are there any hot desk type offices around he could hire monthly to have proper workspace but still live where you live?

Just in the meantime I mean so he's not at the kitchen table, we have a local place that you can hire a desk so it's like your space but it's not hugely expensive

Move now, I suspect property prices will just keep rising

I'd take the other side of that. I think they will fall, London first, as Brexit bites and interest rates have to rise to deal with rising inflation.

What's the trade up going to be like?

We moved from a three bed semi to a large four bed detached (more than twice the size) and it was the best thing we ever did.

But I'm not sure we would have moved if it was to a slightly larger semi, or just one extra room downstairs etc. The cost and the hassle wouldn't have been worth it. We could have extended but we'd never have got the space we have now.

Why don't you just browse Rightmove until your dream house comes up? It sounds like yours would sell pretty quick?

Blue- we are doing that but need to make a decision either way as don't want to be in limbo spending no money on our current house incase we might move. The things I ve listed I things we want to do if we stay but obviously don't want to spend that money if we re moving.

Yes, we would only move to a substantially bigger property. Obviously it depends on how much of the money we use. We don't want to use it all. It would either be a 4 bed semi or detached but would need to be substantially bigger than our current home.

I agree with blue, keeping an eye on rightmove is a smart idea to see what you could get for your budget.

You've already spent a fair whack, and looks like you will need to spent a hell of a lot more to make bigger rooms/dh workspace and still end up with no bigger living space?!

If you love your house don't move. Use your money to do it up nicely and get a log cabin thing in the garden for the office.
Then invest the rest of your money wisely.

Well have booked a viewing as thought as well as seen one house we like. But it's only £150,000 more than the current value of our house. It's much bigger but still semi detached and four bed with potential to be 5 bed and extend outwards. It needs a lot of work and think cheaper as on corner of busy road. So would probably cost another £30,000 or so to sort it out.

But I am not sure a house £150,000 more is worth moving for. We could wait 5-10 years and make this money work for us and then move to somewhere with a bigger budget. I am reluctant to spend all the money on a house. If we bought this one we would have £250,000 left over.