Would you stretch yourselves for the perfect house?

[overthinkersanonnymus]

I have found a beautiful house on a very sort after street and I'm so torn on what to do. I put a really cheeky offer in (30k below asking!) and as expected, was knocked back. She won't budge from full asking.

My current house is fine, 3 beds, 2 bathrooms, drive, decent sized garden etc but this one is a real upgrade. It would mean doubling out mortgage 🫣

We don't have children (unexplained infertility) so it could still happen, although after 2 years of trying, I doubt it. Not with out help anyway.

Would you stretch yourself in order to get the right house?

This. Life is too short to hate your job.

🤣🤣

I'm sorry about your infertility, OP.

I probably wouldn't buy the house because - without wanting to be insensitive - you've already got plenty of bedrooms given that you don't have kids, and if you still want to have a proper crack at having kids, you'd be better off using your money to pay for fertility treatment.

If you've made your peace with not having kids and aren't planning to do IVF, I'd carry on living within your means mortgage-wise and have the kind of holidays that people with kids can't easily have.

No way. A small mortgage paid off sooner is far better. You are very lucky to have a mortgage that size these days. And if you hate your jobs you will only feel more trapped in them by a large mortgage.

Do the maths on the mortgage, current interest rate what your repayments if you stay and go to the new house? If the interest rates shot upto 5/6/7/8% what do these repayments look like. Pressure test and see if it’s doable. Sounds like it might be a no based of responses so far.

I would move in a heartbeat if I knew we would be ok if the interest rates increased and could put away a small amount for living / having fun

Rather than look at the amount of the mortgage I would look at the monthly payments vs your joint income. £350k would prob be 2500-3000 per month depending on term. That with an income of 5k is too tight but on a 9k income might be ok.
The house is not perfect without the work you want to do so you need to leave money for that or you may regret it.
I've just bought a house with the potential to be a perfect house and have now realised we don't have enough savings to do all the work we want to do. So we will need to increase our mortgage very soon !

hard to say because it depends on SO many things.

First of all I'd talk with DH & decide what we wanted to do re children. 2 years in, it doesn't mean you won't conceive naturally. Little buggers can take their sweet time!! But discuss if you want to have fertility treatment or not at some stage IF it doesn't happen naturally. IF you decide you will, how much are you prepared to spend on it. Then I'd ring fence that amount of money (on paper if not cash in the bank right now)

I would NOT move until that was sorted.

Then do you want to be SAHM? Either that or childcare costs A fortune. I wouldn't be taking on a mortgage that that left us with bugger all after it & the bills had been paid & basically either way, if you have a baby you'll be doing it all on one wage (after considering SAHM drop in income OR childcare)

for ME, all the other considerations come well after this.

best wishes for conceiving naturally soon, xx & for making a good decision now re the house

It’s your choice, if you are a homebody and that’s the most important thing to you then it could be a goer.

We did, we love it here and recently paid off the mortgage too , I don’t get the whole what about hols and experiences. I genuinely only know one couple who constantly are on holiday or off on day trips, the vast majority of people maybe do one hol a year, and the occasional day trip.

id do it op, house prices always increase in the mid to long term and loving where you live is important.

If your current house is fine is there any scope to move out for a bit and fully renovate your current house? Add an extension for a utility room and the other bits you'd like?

I've been mortgage free since I was 30, bought a 2 bed cottage flat with driveway and gardens, no it's not my ideal home, yes I'd like a nice big detached house BUT I love what I can do with my spare money and the security that it brings (and it's in walking distance to the beach). I've decorated and renovated it so it's more executive flat rather than 1970s decor from the older person who lived here before and giving the space some real TLC really changes the place

"My current house is fine, 3 beds, 2 bathrooms, drive, decent sized garden etc but this one is a real upgrade. It would mean doubling out mortgage"
Given this, I honestly can't see why you would do this.

I did.
We had opportunity to buy a £650,000 house mortgage free as we'd made a lot of the sale of our house but instead we doubled our mortgage and got a dream house - it requires a LOT of renovations so has been very hard but the house, surroundings and area are a joy and I think and hope will continue to be so worth it.
I would say only go for it if it is the long term dream home - with or without children (ie big enough and near schools) and somewhere you'd be happy to stay put.

So after lots of conversations and number crunching, we are staying put.

The comment about the feeling of not worrying about money at the moment has swayed me.

I'll be honest, I'm sad. I do love that other house.

I feel like I might regret the decision in a year or two, but as of now, it's not right.

I'm Sulking. 😂

You've made the right decision for your needs at the moment. You may need different things in future and who knows? That house, or something similar, or something even better may come up when you're ready. ☺️

This is an interesting thread.

we are currently mortgage free in an “ok” house, but looking at upgrading to somewhere bigger, and possibly taking on an additional £200k mortgage.

We are real homebodies.. we spent most of our time at home, the new house will mean the kids can walk to school rather than having to get a bus , and we really need another bathroom.
For us, while it will be expensive, I do think it will give us a better quality of life on a day to day to day basis.

I do have moments of “fear” about the mortgage side sometimes .

I think the thing to comfort yourself with is if you had moved and then fell pregnant immediately how hard would that have been financially?

I have endometriosis and after meds and surgery I was told I would categorically need IVF and you can see where this is going. We were told to start ttc immediately so that a year from then we would be eligible for the IVF. I became pregnant the first month we tried. We were shocked, the gynecologist was shocked. We all think my body was as free from the endo as it could be. Ds came along naturally 3 years later.

I think in this economy having a big enough house that you can afford easily is not to be taken lightly.