Is a fabulous house worth it? Opinions please

[twilighttwinkle]

I’ve NC’d as it’s quite outing, I’ve spoken to friends recently about it and at least two of them are on here.

My family is Dh, and 3DC (9,7&1). We’ve seen the most wonderful house, really lovely. It is however in the middle of nowhere. We love it so much and all want to move there but I’ll just bullet point the facts to save lengthy sentences. The main considerations are:

I’m just starting to learn to drive but can’t yet. There’s no shop or anything, it’s very rural. Dh drives and WFH flexibly so can always get us about but I most likely won’t have passed by the time we move so that’s a consideration.

Local primary is tiny- don’t know if that’s good or bad!

Moving there means I’ll never have any kind of decent job/career. I did well at school but didn’t go to uni and have only had jobs minimum/slightly above minimum wage. I don’t actually have much ambition for a few logistical reasons so it’s more of an acceptance thing; I’d be lucky to get a job in the local co op (10 mikes away).

Dh is quite a bit older than me and this is my personal hang up; the woman who owns it is a widow and it’s sat on the market for 1.5 years at much lower than the HR because they cannot shift it. I couldn’t live there on my own so it feels like I could potentially get stuck there.

The kids love the countryside and want to move away from the city. I’m the only one who likes being in the city but DH&DC1&2 would love to be in that location.

Any advice would be so welcome!

Not for me. Amenities outweigh it

no way

long term happiness in a house comes from the community and connections, not just from the size of the house. and being somewhere you can walk / bike to school and friends and community makes that so much easier and more sustainable.

the people I know living in big rural houses have kids stuck to their devices (because friends aren't nearby) and have to drive everywhere. city or town kids can develop independence much more easily.

Agree with this. I live rurally and my dc did love it as children but as teenagers, no. The travelling distance just to see a school friend, the buses etc. The one still at home is learning to drive and so needs a lot of lifts, and that can easily mean four hours of driving (an hour each way, twice, to drop off and collect again). The one at Uni now gets bored and fed up at home. It can be quite lonely for teenagers and young adults.

@AnonyMumAuDHD so true re later. My parents moved when I was at uni so I no longer had a reason to go back other than to see them. At 18-21 you want to see mates and go out etc
I live near a city and have great transport links and as such can totally see my teens being in and out of our house for a good ten years yet!!

I know someone who took exactly this deal, they got loads of space and thought it would be like being on holiday every day. But they can’t walk anywhere, partly because of the distance, and partly because there’s literally no pavement outside their house. I think really you should design your life so that a normal week is as stress-free as possible. I don’t think living in the countryside does that.

And yes to the community thing, we live in a market town with trains to London and buses to most of the nearby towns and cities (albeit infrequent for most of them) but it has meant the DCs can get to school independently, have a reasonable chance of finding PT jobs that they don't need lifts for, can usually either walk or use public transport to meet friends, go out for the night, go shopping whatever, and we can walk to shops, sports centre etc. Even this set-up has proved frustrating for the DCs at times as teenagers though, the public transport has its limitations, our small town is "boring". But also really importantly we are surrounded (loosely) by people we know, we aren't in anyone's pockets, but we have a network of friends and acquaintances, I rarely leave the house without seeing someone I know, we have people we can ask for help with pet-sitting (teens have all done it for each other's families), babysitting, recommendations for tradespeople, liftsharing for DCs activities, and general friendship. Plus we can be in open countryside in 10 mins on foot.

Sounds absolutely dreadful. Go and see some more houses!

You have to love a house for it to be a dream house. We live in a house much like this. No near neighbours. 5 acres. I just hear owls and foxes at night. Our local primary has 80, next closest only 30 students. Closest supermarket is about 15 minutes away. I absolutely love it. It’s wonderful! We have an incredible lifestyle, lots of walking and river swimming and wild camping that we can just walk to out our door. We camp in our fields in the summer and have campfires. I have chickens and pigs and a beautiful garden. We have a wonderful community, much more so than any house we’ve lived in closer to people. Rural communities really look after each other. It truly is idyllic.

But it was what we all wanted. I can drive. Dh and I both have good careers that support living quite remotely. Our dc love it. Country kids are not town kids. None of ours as teens are pining for big cities and bowling alleys and cinemas. They ride their bikes and go swimming and hang out at each other’s houses and go to the beach and play sports. I do have to drive them places, but it’s really no big deal as we have to drive ourselves places, so I just do the food shop when I drop them off in town and then a friend’s parent picks them up. My teen went and camped in her friend’s garden last night. They aren’t out clubbing, nor would they want to be. But your kids do need to be self sufficient. If they need lots of entertainment instead of being able to entertain themselves, it will be harder.

Absolutely not. Driving will very quickly turn into a chore and your kids won't like it once they are teenagers.
And beware of tiny primary schools. If your child doesn't get on with the very few children in their year group, there is literally nowhere for them to go to make other friends. Tiny primary schools also tend to have mixed aged classes and don't cope well with any kind of SEN.

I would never choose to live somewhere where I couldn’t walk to a shop.

I think you should keep looking.

Absolutely not. We have just got rid of our house that was like this, and I couldn't believe our luck that we had managed to sell it. We now live in a town where the kids (teens) can walk to meet their friends, can walk to their secondary school, can walk to the station, can get a bus to the next city etc.

If you could drive and extremely strong earning potential / earning a lot, maybe, but not in the circumstances you describe.

I was a SAHM and thought I would never be able to work again because of where we lived and it was not a good feeling.

(Also, local village school which was tiny ended up being awful for DC so we moved schools, which was absolutely the right decision, and then I had to drive them to get to the primary they ended up thriving in; and the worst thing about the secondary school was the bus trip)

No. They can drive to "the countryside" and take walks there every weekend if they are so keen. Do not consider anything like this until. at an absolute minimum, you have passed your driving test and have a couple of years' driving under your belt, so you can make a good assessment of how you would feel to have to drive everywhere.

And then stay in the city anyway as it offers so much more for your budding teens.

My parents did this when I was a couple of years older than your eldest, and it was awful. They thought we would love the massive garden but what does a 13 year old do with no friends on a patch of ground, really? And for the next 5 years?

It might be ok for a few years but not "forever". Once the kids get to high school they will probably hate it. They will miss out socially. If DH goes away you might feel scared at night. Small primaries have more cons than pros; there's a smaller pool of children to befriend, often mixed year groups in classes, lack of funding, lack of sport teams due to lack of players. All of my advice is from bitter experience so I would say: location is always more important than the house itself.

I haven't lived rurally now for seven years but we did when the DC were born.
Nightmare to get anywhere and you have to do play dates that means driving .
Do Ocado deliver? can teenagers get a pizza? We now live in a hamlet of a large village. It's two miles from the town. We picked it for it's village shop and bus routes. We have village doctors and the hospital closed by.
I would never live without facilities again. We've turned down perfect houses without services
It's not good to be isolated when you're older either. You could become ill. I did.
All this escape to the country is a lot of work with DC. I wouldn't do it if you can't drive.

Don’t buy a hard to sell house in the sticks. If you don’t like it or split up you are screwed.

Oh no that sounds like my worst nightmare - especially if I can’t drive. You’re going to feel really isolated as an SAHM and honestly the kids will end up hating it when they get older, what teenager wants to be stuck in a house in the middle of nowhere. Don’t do it!

This sounds like the ideal setting for a holiday house! Not where you’ll live all the time. You can’t have a career, you don’t drive, perhaps it’ll be hard to make local friends, you aren’t sure about schools…

Not if they can’t sell it like the current owner

Also we moved from somewhere similar a few years ago and regret we didnt do it sooner.

The comments are making me laugh 😂, they are clearly very city/town centric!! There are plenty of people - with kids - who do live like this and absolutely love it.! Country kids are not city kids!

However, the fact you can't drive is a massive issue, you definitely have to be able to drive if you want to make it work.

Absolute priority should be learning to drive, forget looking at houses, learn to drive. I find it staggering that women particularly put themselves into positions whereby they lack autonomy.

It is a vital life skill, what happens if overnight your husband is unable to drive, it happened to my wife, however I have been driving since I was 17. You and your children are totally reliant on your husband, change that.

Close Rightmove down and focus on passing your driving test.

It sounds an awful location to me and I drive. Often countryside houses are cheaper for a reason, being amongst people and shops and activities is appealing. Time saved on school runs, activity runs, shopping, seeing friends. I wouldn’t want to do it, but do you? Would you be happy alone all day without being able to leave? Ideal for some…

Absolutely not. You will be lonely, isolated and so reliant on your DH to drive you for the near future. You need to prioritise getting into work, and that means being able to access workplaces easily. If your DH is older you must be able to support yourself and your family, even if there is life insurance etc, it won't last forever. I think it's unfair for teens to live rurally, it curtails their independence.

How will the kids get to secondary school?

You say DH is a lot older and you fear being widowed young/living alone. How far to things like a hospital/urgent care/GP surgery?

We have 2 relatives who live in locations like that. Fabulous with young children, not so in old age or with teens. One of ours is an hour from the nearest medical help - very very scary in an emergency (he had a stroke). The teenagers hate it and are grateful that their school offers flexi boarding so they can see friends.

This is what stuck out to me most from your post OP:

Dh is quite a bit older than me and this is my personal hang up; the woman who owns it is a widow and it’s sat on the market for 1.5 years at much lower than the HR because they cannot shift it. I couldn’t live there on my own so it feels like I could potentially get stuck there.

This fear would haunt me, from day one of living in the house.