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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

2 bed or 3

124 replies

Happilyneverafterrr · 12/08/2017 09:00

Sorry posting here for traffic as tearing my hear out trying to make a decision.
DP and I are buying our first house on a shared ownership scheme. we simply cannot afford to get on the property ladder without doing it shared ownership.
We have savings.. our choices are
1- get a 2 bed, have plenty of spare money to buy furniture etc.. however will 100000% need to get a 3 bed in 5/6 years time.
2- get the 3 bed - this would use all of our savings however our families have kindly offered to help out a little bit. Monthly payments are £120 higher but we wouldn't ever have to move.

The 3 bed seems so much better because we would never have to worry about buying again however £120 extra a month would be nice and I begrudge paying for a room we won't use yet!?

I don't know what to do and am really struggling to make a decision. Neither of us are high earners atall but we are very sensible with our money and don't owe a penny.

Please fire away with your opinions :) Thankyou

OP posts:

simon50 · 12/08/2017 12:40

Happily... Thanks for that, that was meant to be 34 years not 44 (I just feel that way!)

Best bit of advice that I was ever given was:-
Never buy the best house in a so so road... Always buy the worst house in the best road you can afford... Always did that until I got divorced (as I didn't want the hassle of another renovation) and we were always able to have houses far above our income level.

AryaOfWinterfell · 12/08/2017 12:45

Another thing to consider is are SO houses available to first time buyers only?
If they are then when you come to sell your 2-bed would you qualify for a SO 3-bed? If you have to buy a 'normal' 3-bed on the open market would you be able to afford that in 5 years?

rightwhine · 12/08/2017 12:45

5/6 years seem like a long time but it really isn't. It goes in a flash. Go for the 3 bed.

Kardashianlove · 12/08/2017 12:46

If you have DC and want to go part time you may then not be able to get the mortgage you need for a 3 bed.

BeyondThePage · 12/08/2017 12:47

From our local leaflet on shared ownership:

"You will normally be eligible to purchase a
property with one more bedroom than you
currently require, for example, a couple
with one child would be eligible for a
three-bedroom property."

rightwhine · 12/08/2017 12:48

Also you'll have decorated and got it just how you want it then you'll have to move which you may not be able to afford to do unless you've saved that £150 per month anyway. Vicious circle.

SkafaceClaw · 12/08/2017 12:50

We are in a shared ownership place - selling them is a tricky and rather slow process as everyone has to be screened for the right criteria.

I would go for the the 3 bed!

lidoshuffle · 12/08/2017 12:55

The Help to Buy website says, "With the Shared Ownership, Rent to Buy and Intermediate Rent schemes, there are no restrictions on the number of bedrooms allowed."

TheNightmanCometh · 12/08/2017 13:09

Before you make any decisions OP, you need a good long look at the T and Cs. Don't buy it without knowing about things like could I have a lodger.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to buy the 2 bed on SO if you can't get a 3. But that will depend a lot more on factors specific to you, your locality, the property. Are you in the south east by any chance? If you're in a cheaper region already and you're using SO to just buy in a dearer area of a northern city, for example, then no I wouldn't go for the 2 bed SO. I'd go for a less desirable suburb. Whereas if you're in London, that option may not be open to you.

Original poster

Happilyneverafterrr · 12/08/2017 13:13

Simon that's great advice love that :) these properties are both on the same new build estate in a nice area! We will see what happens re buying the 3 bed as a couple! Thank you so much everyone for your help and advice!

OP posts:

Mammylamb · 12/08/2017 13:38

Another for 3 bed here!! Moving house costs a fortune!

ThePants999 · 12/08/2017 14:36

What are property prices doing in your area? If they're falling, as they are in much of the country, consider not buying at all yet.

IggyAce · 12/08/2017 14:50

Definitely 3 bed. 14 years ago we brought our 3 bed, it was a stretch as it was at the top of our budget, but two kids later and I'm now a sahm I'm glad we did because we haven't needed move.

ElfEars · 12/08/2017 15:00

I went for the two bed 5 years ago and regret it. Even with just one DS we have nowhere near enough space and moving is so expensive! We will be making sure our next house is our forever home.

BackforGood · 12/08/2017 15:13

SOmeone has demonstrated the base maths to you upthread - it will cost you more, in total, to move than you will save in living there for 5 years.
However, that doesn't take account of the STRESS of selling and buying at the same time. Even if it didn't save money, I'd still go for the 3 bed. Don't worry about furniture - people give furniture away all the time... freecycle as well as friends and family. What you can't get there you can get for tiny amounts in the furniture charity shops, the local newspaper, gumtree and facebook selling sites.

MaverickSnoopy · 12/08/2017 16:21

If you are eligible then 3 bed. We bought 2 bed S/O pre children and were only allowed to buy 2 bedrooms as we didn't have children.

The situation you want to be careful of is this. If you don't buy anything at all now and wait to have children then all of your childcare costs (pr part tine working) will be factored into your mortgage offer.

We wanted to avoid this so bought S/O 2 bed and stayed for 5 years and had one child. The house went up in value by £65k in this time as so when we sold we got 35% share of that (the portion that we owned) plus what we had paid off the mortgage. We then had enough money to buy a 3 bed house outside of S/O and was able to afford child 2. We fixed into a five year mortgage allowing us scope for getting through the childcare years without our income being scrutinised.

I appreciate that we were lucky and we timed it well. It was fairly recent although of course we aren't in the same position as you are now in the current climate.

My best advice is to try to plan out your next 10 years, rather than just thinking about this purchase. When we bought our 2 bed we very much felt that we had achieved everything we wanted to achieve. Then one day I had a light bulb moment and thought how the hell are we ever going to afford a 3 bed!

simon50 · 12/08/2017 17:15

BackForGood... Has made a good point re furniture, if your not too proud there are so many good places to get 2nd hand stuff these days.

When we bought our first place in 1983, every penny we had went on doing up the house and so the whole place was furnished with 2nd hand stuff, the only thing that was 'new' was a dining room table and even that we got cheap as it was in 'Habitat's casualty corner' as it was shop soiled !

I was also very lucky as my wife was as practical as I was, she made all the soft furnishings, she would go to the fabric sales at places like Colfax and Fowler and Osborne and Little and pick up end of rolls etc. She also knew how to stage the house for the market, all the things that these tv house selling shows tell you to do today, we were doing in the 80s.

Gwenhwyfar · 12/08/2017 19:04

"We are in a shared ownership place - selling them is a tricky and rather slow process as everyone has to be screened for the right criteria."

If you had to move for work and couldn't sell, could you rent it out to someone else or is that against the rules?

Gwenhwyfar · 12/08/2017 19:13

"the extra costs of heating, council tax, water , insurance etc. "

Council tax I get, but a spare room wouldn't need heating all the time and I don't see how it would use extra water.

RedBlu · 13/08/2017 09:53

Gwenhwyfar - nope, you cannot rent out SO. You can apply to rent it out but if they allow it, it's only for a short term, I think the maximum is a few months.

So if you need to move away you either have to sell or keep paying the mortgage.

SO really only works long term, and I assume the fact you can't rent them out is so you cannot profit from a scheme designed to help you get on the property ladder

TurquoiseDress · 13/08/2017 10:06

Friends of ours are seriously looking at SO at the moment, one thing that has properly put them off is the clause about not being allowed to let the property out.

They are from overseas and might decide to go back home one day (no current plans) and the fact they would not be able to let it out, like any other homeowner, is a major negative factor.

Gwenhwyfar · 13/08/2017 11:40

RedBlu - renting something out isn't always to make a profit though, you could set the rent so that you just break even. That has really put me off shared ownership as I don't want to be stuck in one place forever. I lived abroad for a while and the situation there was that if you moved within 5 years of buying you'd have to pay a lot of tax, whether you sold it or let it out. So I never bought there and I'm in a worse financial position now. Don't know what to do really...

RedBlu · 13/08/2017 15:10

I understand that if you could rent it out, it wouldn't neccessarily mean that you would make a profit but I would imagine that is why the rule about not being able to rent them out is in place. Around here our mortgage and rent totals about £600/650 - to rent the same size house/same layout on this estate is £900 a month.

The no renting clause could be an issue if you don't intend to stay in the property long term or don't staircase to 100%. For us it works as we knew we would be living here for the long term and that we were going to staircase to 100% which means if needed we could rent it or sell as normal

Gwenhwyfar · 13/08/2017 18:35

"Around here our mortgage and rent totals about £600/650 - to rent the same size house/same layout on this estate is £900 a month."

Yes, of course, you usually make a profit by letting out otherwise people wouldn't bother. What I meant was why not just have a rule that you can let it out, but only if you don't make a profit rather than just banning letting it out. Seems a bit mean to me to say that because you're in a shared ownership you can never move somewhere else to get a better job or something.

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