To ask if you'd rather live in a massive house in a crap location, good-sized house in a good-ish location or diddly house in a fantastic location?

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First of all let me just make clear I'm very blessed to have a house at all! And very grateful. I know people have bigger 'problems' - this is just a lighthearted thread really.

I'd bet we'd all probably like to live in a massive house in a fantastic area - but that's reserved for people with a lot more money than my family.

At the moment we live in a good sized house in an goodish area but I'd absolutely LOVE to live in a quaint little village...it's a long-time fantasy. However on our budget it would be a diddly (quite crap) house. And DH would be very, very reluctant to downsize. I wouldn't mind so much.

We have good schools, little crime, nice community etc but the suburbs just make me feel a bit sad. I don't think I'll ever really properly love it. Does anyone love where they live? Or is the grass always greener?

We have one DS and another on the way though so I suppose things like a nice big garden are important - again, wouldn't get that in the posh village.

What are everyone else's preferences?

Really numerical?! How funny! Does he like it there?

What Altinkum said. We've a nice house in a 'rising' location but the community and our neighbours are what swing it for us.

I just love the beauty of my homes location - endless National Trust and Woodland Trust on my doorstep and I can run for miles and never be on a road. My house is a new build one-off 5 bed down a country lane and I love it although looking to extend it even more.

Medium house in medium area definitely . I think that's the (excuse the pun) happy medium

When you have little ones, the space at home is very important. Great if you can have it. Once they're older, you will be able to do all that kind of thing and you might not miss the big garden so much. If it's a nice area, then great. Location is everything, but if the place you're in is already quite good, losing a garden or a bedroom might be a bit drastic.

That sounds like you can't do without space, and I know you can. But I can't say anything , because I fled the town for somewhere halfway round the world for more space. :)

We have a good sized house, in an ok but not perfect location, I would love to live in a better area but then we couldn't afford school fees, and we would have to down size, that I couldn't do, space is very important to me, we entertain a lot, we have friends and family stay over quite a bit, and have 2 spare double rooms both with ensuite. We compromised in living here.

I don't like living in a built up area, I wish it were more rural. But its way cheaper, we have pretty much rebuilt this place to suite our needs. I don't think I can do all that again, and lose a chunk of space in the process.

Location every time - and, sadly, I speak from bitter experience.

Some years ago, around the height of the property boom, Dh and I sold our modest 2 bed town house, and ploughed everything we had into a barn conversion that we'd fallen in love with. It's the most amazing house, five bedrooms, three receptions, 32ft kitchen, floor to top-ceiling windows - we bought entirely emotionally, with no thought to the practicality at all. It's very rural, with views that you could only dream of.

Three years ago, we relocated to the South East with Dh's job - and have been renting down here with a view to selling our 'dream' home. Nope, nobody's interested at all. It's in North East Lincolnshire, the local schools are fairly crap and there's high unemployment everywhere. I can't believe we didn't do our homework on that front - we just fell in love with it and went for it, but it's become a bit of a millstone round our necks.

So, yes - location every time.

Location location location.

middling middling for us. Too small makes us shouty. We figured out that when we were renovating and living on top of each other while another part of the house was being torn apart. It was stressful renovating, but much more stressful being in one or two rooms like sardines.

Goodish house, goodish location. I live in London, and could just about afford a studio flat in a central, zone 1 location, but I prefer my lovely three bed flat a bit further out. Appreciate this becomes a different question when you're outside London though, particularly in the countryside, because of the transport, relationship with your neighbours, etc.

We are buying this year and we have been surprised to discover that for us is neither location or house, but schools and other kids.

We have seen some bloody lovely houses, ones that we have both fallen in love with, but then sat on the street at school home time and not seen a single other child - so the house gets discounted

I've always said that I didn't want to live on an estate - but have realised that it is what is best for DD. Shes an only, and I don't want her isolated. I want her to make lots of friends and have the same kind of childhood I did.

So DH and I have put aside our dreams of a country cottage for now and are looking at far more practical options. Hopefully we can still get into a village, just not the ones we really want.

Location. We live near excellent public transport which means we can go anywhere easily. We can also walk to butchers, fishmongers etc and to parks. Great when DC were smaller as we could walk to playgrounds, nursery etc and now they can do things independently. House size less important as we didn't have DCs to never see them when we are all at home.

I live in one of those 'soulless' new builds on a big development & have to say its the best decision we made. Lots of young families all moving in at the same time means people actively trying to make friends, there have to be good public transport links as that's how these places get planning permission, we've had street parties for the last two summers and the

(Sorry) place actually does have a soul! Plus we're surrounded by fields and although the house may not have the period features every seems to be obsessed with, it is warm light and actually designed for family living. Plus if anything goes wrong I phone up& someone comes to fix it for free!

I'm struggling with this at the moment, though from a different perspective. We moved from a flat in Central London to a house in zone 3, basically for DS's sake - our local schools were pretty bad, we couldn't afford to go private, and DH wanted a garden for DS to play in (ha bloody ha, given the summer we had last year). My head knows perfectly well it was the right thing to do. The local schools are good, we're near public transport, our house is pretty enough (but modern so the low ceilings feel oppressive: our old flat was in a Victorian conversion), and DS is in a good nursery at the moment.

BUT I hate suburban life and once you've moved out of town ever-increasing house price differentials mean you can probably never go back. I'm crying inside at the thought that I"ll never live in town again. I just have to accept that it's not all about me and get on with it.

Massive house in fantastic location, thank you.

Compromise. So good ish wins.

We had good house in a good location. Moved to an equally good house in an amazing location.
We went from having the biggest house around to being in the smallest house. Even though they're the same size iykwim.
Location really is key. Which is what i remind myself when i see the mortgage statement!

We live in a largish house in a goodish location (if that makes sense ); for many years we lived in a beautiful home in a lovely 'village' location but quite honestly unless you were big on gardening/self sufficiency etc there wasn't a huge amount of things to do (and yes, I did get involved in every community group possible). It became a pain to have to get the car out to buy a pint of milk and for children growing up it was difficult, they had no independence at all. Equally for anyone older, on their own, without a car it was very, very isolating.

We now live on the outskirts of a small town and it is great that children can walk on their own to school/to the swimming pool etc etc.

LtEveDallas makes a good point, when you are a family you do need to consider the needs of your children; we also have an only child and so this sort of small estate location is ideal for us. Of course when DS leaves home we will have to choose between a city apartment which I would love or a rural cottage for DH .

good-ish house in a good-ish location. We are on an estate so nothing attractive and its a box house BUT its a big box house near a lovely village with lots of bars/shops/restaurants and great schools. Great houses in the same location (but off the estate) are a good £100k more so that is no gonna happen!

also excellent public transport and links to the city. We did live off the estate (but still near by) in a smaller house on a side road. Although the location was better my DS was too far away from friends, couldnt walk to school etc. For the moment the priority is him, we get our choice with the next house!

I've had all three and I can definitely without a doubt say that you should always go for location over anything else.

Because you can always improve (or extend) your house but you can not improve the location/area.

Jocktamson. I'm so sorry you are in such a position. I must admit if it were not for us being gazumped we would be in a similar position. We fell in love with a very unique property not far from where we live. I actually know the couple living there now, as their daughter is friends with our youngest.

Their property is worth approx £200k more than ours And they are beginning to regret ever stepping inside. They want Thier daughter to go to private school and plan to downsize to fund it. The property market is still awful here.
Thankfully our house isn't unique, however it is top end of market for the area so our prospective buyers market would be very small.

Wish you lots of luck with selling. Xx

We have a massive house in a location that terrifies most of my friends. BUT the local authorities are pumping money into the town because it's so crap ATM and we're getting a new train line next year so I reckon if we sit tight for a year or two we'll do well out of it.