When I was with my now exh (father of my DD) we bought what was to be our “forever home”; it had everything we wanted, ticked every box. Four bedrooms- two were large doubles and one was an extension over the garage so ran the whole length of the house, that was my DD’s room. Large kitchen with space for beautiful large dining table, plus two other rooms downstairs so could have one full of toys and the other kept nice and tidy! In a “naice” area in catchment for outstanding school, which DD started attending the Nursery and moved up to Reception while we lived there (she’s now in Y1). Garage, nice garden with garden shed. Lovely large bathroom with separate bath and shower cubicle. Loft boarded out so plenty of storage. You get the idea....
Anyway, two years after buying the house, we separated. Neither of us could afford to take on the house alone (buy the other out/be approved by bank for remaining mortgage amount/keep up the monthly repayments) so we sold the house and split the equity. We actually did well and sold for £18k more than we’d bought for 2 years prior (as I said, nice area, outstanding school catchment, always going to be popular).
With my half of the equity and my own salary, I was able to buy a house myself. My new house (been here a little over a year now) is an end terrace, and is still generally within the same area (e.g. I can walk DD to school on my day off, it now takes 25 mins versus the 5-10 mins from the previous house), but is a less “naice” area, and wouldn’t be in the catchment for the school DD attends. I do have three bedrooms; one double which is mine then a smaller one for DD and a box room which is basically a dumping ground for everything we can’t store anywhere else. Downstairs there’s just the kitchen (modern and fine but only space for a small two seat table) and living room so it does get quite cluttered! There is a large garden which has space for DD’s trampoline but it’s very overlooked as theres a sort of cul-de-sac part of the street running up alongside so there are 4 terraces all along my garden fence, which is a low fence. No garage, no shed, so nowhere to keep a lawn mower, bikes/scooters, paddling pool. No boarding in loft so no storage there for eg suitcases, Christmas decs and so on. The bathroom is so small it has a smaller/shorter than normal size bath in it. Everything is modern as the house was bought by a developer (when it was in a bit of a state) and done up and sold on to me- so new windows, new boiler, new bathroom, new kitchen units and floor. All nice/fine and modern but perhaps not the highest spec that you’d do if it was for yourself to live in, since they were doing it up to sell on.
I was getting a bit resentful of the house over Christmas, what with all the Christmas presents, toys, decorations, food, there was just nowhere to put anything and everywhere was a tip. Plus I missed not being able to have family over to stay; at my old house I had space for my brother, SIL and their three kids to sleep over, space for the kids to all play and large kitchen for entertaining. However, now I’ve had the January clear out, it does feel much better/less cluttered.
So anyway, now I have DP and he hasn’t yet moved in but is here a lot of time and eventually will move in. We’d like to eventually TTC and have a baby (I have DD age 5, he has no DC).
Once we live together, with his salary taken into account, we could afford a house more similar to my previous so-called “forever” house (could get mortgage approved and jointly afford the monthly payments)- a larger family home, in nicer area and closer to DD’s school to be in catchment for if we had another DC. However, there would of course be all the costs of moving, legal fees, stamp duty, moving company etc, as well as the fact that the mortgage would be much higher. If we were to stay here, where I can already cover all the bills myself currently, and he moved in and contributed (officially contributed, he does contribute now as he stays over a lot), then we would be very comfortable financially- could afford the little extras such as Netflix subscription, theatre trips, eating out etc which we would probably have to cut back on if we were to move, as well as comfortably affording DD’s swimming lessons, dance class, Rainbows, keyboard lessons...! It might drive me crazy having a baby here though, with the clutter and so on. We’d have to get the loft boarded for storage in order to make the box room (currently dumping ground) into a baby’s room. Also need to consider hypothetical childcare when going back to work after hypothetical maternity leave- again, much more affordable if we stayed here with lower costs. But due to no longer being in catchment for DD’s school my hypothetical second DC may have to go to a closer-to-this-house less good (but still fine!!) school.
I just can’t decide what to do. Would really appreciate any thoughts/experiences. TLDR; should I stay in smaller, cheaper but generally fine house in less nice area/out of school catchment, or look to move to larger, nicer family home in school catchment but face all the associated costs?