At what age did you buy your forever home?

[ThedaBara]

Just being nosy.
DH and i are still in our starter home, after 15 years. We're almost mortgage free, but with COVID and childcare costs, have no savings. Our youngest is about to start school, so that will free up some cash. We would probably need to borrow at least 150k to move into a home we could consider our forever home. I'm about to turn 40 and the thought of taking on a huge mortgage at this age is worrying. WWYD?

29, my second property, H's third. Mortgage free by 40 (me) 47 ( him).

50 and 52, 4 years ago, enormous mortgage, but enough equity in it to take the risk. It’s a dream of a house, still needs lots of work but we love it. We review things every 6 months or so, but so far, no regrets.

Fingers crossed this Spring at 37 - it will be our first home.
Anecdotally I've known a few people my age (mid/late milllenials) do it this way...years of years of rubbish rentals, have kids, then go straight into a family house late 30s.

We bought ours a couple of years ago at 35 and 37. We added 150k to the mortgage (almost doubling it) and moved to a cheaper area about 30 minutes away. We were living in a 3 bed terrace house with a box room. If we had stayed in the same town we could have got a semi, with 3 double rooms and a bigger kitchen. It didn't feel like much of an upgrade for so much money.

We might not be here forever but we won't outgrow it. In our last home we knew we'd move again in the future for more space but it was what we could afford at the time.

I'm 48 and wouldn't describe current home as forever home
Been here 10 years, it's nice enough.

We have been in our home for 25 years but will make one more move. We paid our mortgage off in our late thirties. We did consider moving about 17 years ago but decided to stay in our perfectly nice 3 bed semi with a big garden in the very lovely road we live in. We are one of a few semis, many of my neighbours have indoor swimming pools and cinema rooms and all manner of very nice touches. You pay a premium to live on this road. I love the road, houses rarely come up for sale. My friend put hers on and had three offers within a week last month. She has lived here for 30 years.

We decided we wanted to retire early to travel and have managed to retire at 55/56. So will do this for a while and then we will do one more move as we will be relocating areas. We are going to be buying something with an acre or two.

40, after 'us' renovating three others, so no holidays, weekends etc., all devoted to fixing up wrecks! We only got the money by doing most everything ourselves, as didn't want an enormous mortgage.

Average age for the pair of us of 44 when we bought our biggest home. We will never want more, will only downsize from here.

38 (over 25 years ago). I didn't think it was going to be our forever home but for various reasons, including an endowment mortgage that spectacularly underperformed and my decision to work part time while the children were at primary school, we couldn't afford to move.

Instead we have extended a couple of times.

So many different perspectives! What I'm realising is that my tolerance for risk must be lower than most people. I don't want to be in a position of being stretched if one of us loses their job, or having a mortgage still outstanding when we're nearing retirement. Will work on building up savings!

We are about to move to what will hopefully be our home for at least the next 10 years we are 40 ish and our mortgage will be about 250. I don't think in terms of forever homes as needs change I don't expect us to need or want the size house we are moving to when all the kids have left home and we are getting close to retirement. This next move will be the fourth house we have owned and at no point have we thought this is it forever.

Never really considered any house being a forever home. Different types of property at different stages in life. First home at 21 a 1 bed, second home a 2 bed at 23, 3rd home large 3 bed at 28, relocated to a 3 bed bungalow at the other end of the country and had DC, retired and moved abroad at 46 and had a couple of homes there over a decade incl a 5 bed 4 bath property with a pool. Came back 15 years ago and purchased a 2 bed bungalow which I imagine we'll stay in as now in our 60s but perhaps not. Been mortgage free since we moved abroad.

I was 37 and DH 41 when we bought current place. Would have been 2 years earlier but both times we were ready to move one of us lost their job!

Well I'd like a bigger house but don't need one so we've never gone for it. A turning point for me was visiting friends a few years older than us in bigger house. They had so much space they'd never needed to clear out toddler toys etc and had loads of things they no longer needed. It really inspired me to make the most of what we had.

31 and we're mortgaged up to our eyeballs 🙃🙃🙃

I was 24 when I moved into this house, and it was intended to be a do-er upper that we'd sell on and move up the property ladder. It was never meant to be a forever home. Getting on for 40 years later, and I'm still here.

How young is "very young"?! I presume you're child-free too, or are you taking your kids with you on the travel adventure? I dream of early retirement and travelling too (no kids) but I would have to accept my 2-bed flat as my forever home. I can kind of see where your DH is coming from - it's a trade off.

27

I don't think I ever will tbh

I've lived where I am now for 22 years, a flat in London. Now it's part of the financial order thingy with exH. So I'll take whatever it s left over on my side and buy in a much cheaper part of England, but who is to say I will stay there? So I can see at least one possibly two moves before staying put. I'm 47.

He says 45. I say no chance and more like 50/55. We will be mortgage free by 42/3 but could be sooner if we paid more. I think we pay enough. DD will be about 20 by the time we may retire so perfect to have the house to herself most of the time. We had her at 23 so we get to live our lives after she’s flown the nest too - bitter sweet for me as of course I would have preferred to have been around more when she was tiny as we both worked full time but it’s still a good end. Of course, she’s perfect 🤣 our house isn’t really big enough but has the essentials. I wouldn’t want ten years of bills to have a nice “me space” so there we have it.

51 and since I married DH we've I've lived at 6 different addresses 3 bought, 3 rented, never really considered any of them our 'forever home'.

Hopefully just about to move again, and in theory it should be our last move if all pans out, but who knows. I always think life is a series of chapters, who knows what will happen in the future, and whatever it is you just close the chapter and be open to the new one.

Respectfully, im of the opinion that a two bed flat with no children is enough to be free! And I mean really free! No waking up in the morning and dreading work, no boss telling you about something you don’t want to hear! the only problem with a flat is the service charge I think.

I think you’re spot on! There are many threads where people ask at what age their mortgage will be paid off and people comment 5 years old and you think you must be in the wrong for still having a mortgage touching 40 but then you get a thread like this where people are touching 100 and still owe 3mil. I suppose it depends on the question you ask, who pops up to answer.

We bought a "starter" home in our late twenties and then the house prices went crazy, so we are still there nearly 25 years later. We were able to extend it, and it's actually a bit of a unicorn - one of the cheapest houses in the city when we bought it, but we have three double bedrooms, a garden and a driveway within walking distance of our jobs, the city centre, a host of amenities and three outstanding schools. So it's now become our forever home and I have no desire to leave it. I occasionally look at Rightmove and whoever I see a house that I genuinely think is significantly better than the one I live in, it's usually at least £600;000 more expensive.

Only bought 3 and I think they were all my forever home, though I'd like to move again in around 7 years to something smaller, as current house is 4 bed 3.5 bath, preferably a bungalow for our dotage.