If you've hugely increased your mortgage for the dream house, please talk to me!

[scoobydeedoo]

We are looking into the possibility of moving, quite limited in terms of area due to primary school and me not driving!

There's very little in our area within budget but there is a house that is our top end that we really like. Our monthly payment is currently 12% of our income and the new payment would be about 29%, the huge increase scares me a lot 😱

Has anyone else been in this situation and made the jump? Any regrets? We would be moving from our small 3 bed flat (yard, 2 small bedrooms, downstairs neighbours) to potentially a detached house with garden, driveway and space enough for an office (I currently work with my laptop on the settee because we don't have room for a proper desk!)

key factors to think about would be what you are doing with the rest of your disposable income right now and what will you have to give up for the move? Are you prepared to make those sacrifices, really? How much of an emergency savings buffer do you have?

we did it and no regrets but pensions and savings were all sorted and not impacted.

When you say “dream house” is it really or is it the only option and you want to move on?

you are restricting yourself by school- I know that’s important but there are other good alternatives if you are happy to look in different areas.

re mortgage- you and DP are the only ones that can answer if it’s affordable. You should always plan for one of you not being in work for a while. Can you manage?

it’s not only about that though- you are in a small flat now, a bigger detached house and garden is going to cost quite a lot more to “run” and maintain. So ensure you budget for this. Electricity for example.

Add up all the extra bills: council tax, energy, water will all be higher. Maintenance and decorating will also be more expensive.
Personally I would look for a semi rather than detached and keep the outgoings lower. Worrying about money is horrible.

Personally I would go for it, your home can make such a huge difference to your life and wellbeing. Also, it's not a crazy amount of your income by any means, it seems very doable to me.

Yes, we did. The key for me is whether you expect your income to go up soon and outgoings to go down? I think 29% long term is doable but restrictive. We had two years of about the same %, and also paying two sets of childcare fees. But then my husband got a promotion, I started a higher paying job, the kids started school, so it’s far more manageable.

It sounds like your quality of life would be significantly better so I would go for it. We were terrified but glad we did.

29% of £1500 doesn’t leave a lot.
29% of £15000 and you’d be grand even with a large payment.
For me it’s more about how comfortable you’d be living on what’s left rather than focusing on a %

Some really useful things to think about, thank you 😊

Most of the semis round our area are more expensive than this house (makes me think there must be something wrong with it but I can't see anything glaringly obvious from the Rightmove listing!)

The thing I keep thinking about is how much space we will have when the kids grow up. I always want to have a home for them here, especially if they decided to go to a local uni they could stay at home. But 4 adults in our flat is going to be squashed, especially as both the other bedrooms aren't very big.

Realistically I think I know that financially it's not a good move right now, on paper 29% isn't a huge amount of our income but we've been focusing on saving an emergency fund, then have a plan to pay off our debt, me learning to drive and then seeing where we're at. It just feels like that end point is waaay in the future and present me just wants more space 😭

I suppose it entirely depends on your
income and other expenses.Our mortgage is 25% of take home pay. We still manage to save 2.5k per month.

What about secondary schools? That's more important than primary for location of house surely.