Are you in your ‘Forever House’?

[NorthernLiner]

Do you think you’ll move again?
Are you happy with that decision, either way?

DH thinks we’ve got another move in us, I think not.
Together, we have moved houses four times in 30 years. That’s more than enough for me.

This our home to raise our family in. At some point we will move to a two bed flat as we are hoing some of the equity from the house will be part of our pension.

Yes hopefully, and the thought gives me such a deep feeling of peace.

No, we're in a massive house now, which is great while we have three kids at home. But very expensive to run and the garden takes a lot of work. It's also not ideal for anyone who has any kind of mobility issues. God knows when the kids will move out as they're only teenagers now but we'll move by the time we're 65 at the latest so probably in 15-20 years or so.

No.
We've moved 30+ times, including to 6 different countries.
DD is at university so our current, lovely house is far too big.
We are planning to move to Spain in 2025.
We already have a flat there and plan to rent our current house out to cover our expenses

Probably. We bought our house when we had small DC and plan to stay at least 25/30 years. I said I'm not going through getting a mortgage again. We might consider moving once our children have their own homes, but only if there is particular reason to I guess.

I love my house and we have no real reason to move but we've been here 17 years now and I would quite like a change.....until I read the property boards on here! The fact you can get so far into the process, spend hundreds and then it can fall apart at the last moment totally puts me off. Also the fear of bad neighbours.

No, we are in a huge old listed building. It is very rural and has been a fantastic home while the DC were growing up but they have all left so we will be downsizing to move back into a town in a couple of years.

This is my 4th home in 38 years.

I'll move again when I retire. Downsize and move further away from London.

Urgh. I think so. We have a three bed detached. It's lovely although it does need a bit of work but I feel it's just not big enough. DD has a box room as we have separate beds and it's just not fair on her. But the mortgage is nearly paid off and to get an extra bedroom is about 100k near here -2/300k for something that would be actually big enough. Not sure it's worth it as she'll be moved out before we pay that off. I still try and persuade DP but he's too sensible.

My dh thinks we are…big house, spent a lot of money renovating. It’s too big for just us really now. And I want a bigger garden when I retire.

I’d love more - more rooms, more cupboards, an extra toilet.

I’d be happy with less garden.

But I am now luckily mortgage free, so barring a lottery win to upsize or a health issue which makes me downsize to single story, I’m staying put.

In reply to the thread title - yes definitely!

We bought this house - it was a private builder ex show home in a quiet semi rural cul de sac - 30 years ago as we were offered a terrific part ex deal, I was 5 months pregnant and we needed more room. Our previous home just wasn't selling as it was during a very bad time for house sales. We weren't so keen on the area of this new house but loved the house itself and the plan was to stay for 4/5 years and then try to move again to our preferred location.

Turns out we fell in love with the area and our little cul de sac. The 4/5 year plan went to the back burner. We paid off the mortgage 15 years ago and both took early retirement. Our DD, who I was expecting during the move, almost died at 7 months old and was left with SLD but, once she left special needs school, we managed to get her a beautiful apartment in a wonderful managed centre pretty close by. This is her childhood home and we spend lots of time with her both at her apartment and here. We have spent a considerable amount on the house over the past 10 years having everything exactly as we want it and to make life easy in our dotage. 😊

Yes it's quite big for just the two of us being a 4 bed/2 bath detached with huge gardens but very easy to maintain - apart from the back garden which we will soon need to pay for help with - but wild horses wouldn't drag us away now. ♥️

Yes.

Yes, I hope so. We certainly bought this house about five years ago with this intention. Moved from a rural period cottage with a big garden and orchard to a modern four bed in a village with good amenities and on a bus route to the nearest city. But most importantly we're now near our daughter and her family, which she was very keen for us to do.

This house is so much easier to run and has a small easy to maintain garden, perfect for us in our retirement. We can rejig the rooms to sleep downstairs should the need ever arise. In principle there's nothing wrong with living in a flat as you get older, but the big service charges and lack of control over them would concern me.

We were fortunate and had great buyers (our sellers were ok, but had useless solicitors) and while the whole process went relatively smoothly it's still a huge hassle and I'm glad we didn't leave our 'downshift' until it was too late - we were in our mid sixties when we moved. Another thing I love about where we are now - our lovely neighbours - we had difficult ones previously!!!

We are at the moment but we are both in our 60s so depends on our health, it's a 3 bed detached with a very large garden so if anything happened to DH and he couldn't manage the garden we would as he is the one that does most of the garden hard work, DH would stay here even if alone as long as fit and well but I would move if it was just me.

I'd be happy to stay in this house until it's too big but DH really wants a lot of land so I suspect we'll move again in a couple of years.

We moved into our 4 bed house a year ago. We have young dcs, the youngest is a year old, and we plan to raise them here. The location is amazing - close to central London and schools and work. But it's a Victorian terrace with 5 floors, and it couldn't be converted to have all living space on one floor. So I think we'd have to move when the dcs have grown up, to somewhere that DH and I could live in if we couldn't manage stairs. I find moving house stressful and wouldn't choose to move unless we needed to.

No idea. I don't really believe in the concept of a forever house tbh. You never know if your life circumstances are going to change.

My DH was moving every 12-24months until we bought together and had about 6 moves in a decade.
When he moves he turns into some grumplestiltskin type character.
mega moody, almost toddler like unreasonablity you get the idea.
I've seen it twice only.

Our current home meets EVERY need we have and you can raise a family in it.... But it admittedly isn't what I or he imagined as a forever home. It's a perfectly nice house but no impressive frontage or extras ie. no mega wow factor

Two kids in I really do not care enough to drop £150k down the toilet on stamp duty so we can have one or two extra bedrooms, a bigger garden and nicer drive and possibly the hassle of moving schools

But DH WANTS / envisions us moving.
🥴🥴🥴

I just say "that's nice dear" knowing when it comes down to it I won't do a finger to help put it into motion and will unfortunately have tied up all assets so unable to contribute financially which should ultimately cockblock it. 😬👍

No, we'll move again one day. Maybe 15-20 years time though, for retirement.

We thought we were and then we got new neighbours three years ago and it's been absolute hell ever since. To the point I don't even like being in the house anymore and am scared of leaving and coming home on my own (aggressive drunk who likes to pick fights randomly over stupid stuff and if he's not picking a fight with us he's slamming around his house all day and night).

Yes.

Being a social renter, as soon as DD moves out, I'll have to move as I'll have too many bedrooms.

I’d like to think our current house isn’t our ‘forever home’ but the way the economy is going it might well be! Which would suck because this isn’t how I pictured my forever home!

We bought our house as a new build in 1985, before any of our children were born, with a loose plan to stay here forever. Our house does have stairs, it's a tri-level so they are half flights, which we are hoping we can manage until the end. Needing everything on one level is the only thing we can see forcing a move at this point, but one never knows.

I want one more move, the house we have is gorgeous but I would like a bigger garden and more privacy. Buying/selling us horrendously stressful though so I don't want to keep doing it. Maybe we'll downsize when old too?