To ask you about living in a bigger home?

[BocolateChiscuits]

DH and I own a 3 bed house, we have a 1yr old DC, and I'm pregnant. We bought years ago, and the house was quite dated and neglected when we bought it, so over the years we've done a fair bit of work, and now have it how we like it.

Thing is the house is perfectly formed, but all the rooms are small. The 3rd bedroom is a box room, the kitchen is a little galley, it's just a stride from the sofa to the tv, and we quickly feel squished if we invite more than 2 people round.

Meanwhile our incomes have grown since we bought the place, we've built up equity, and could afford somewhere a bit bigger in the local area (which we love) . But it would be costly.

So I'm wondering, given that we don't really need somewhere bigger, is it really worth the cost? I have fond daydreams of DC having plenty of room for playing, and inviting family over for big meals. But maybe by saving money by staying put we could afford lovely days out and holidays or treat family to a big pub meal all together instead.

So I wanted to ask MNetters' experiences. If you have moved to bigger home has it made your lives happier or easier? Do you regret it, or are you pleased? Does it take a lot more time in terms of cleaning? (We have a rota for non day-to-day stuff, that takes us about 30mins each a week - so not bad.) How about maintenance?

(Disclaimer: I know we're very lucky to own a home and to be in a position to consider buying a bigger one. We're in the middle of a housing affordability crises in the UK, and lots of people are struggling. Apologies to those people for posting this thread. It's so "first world problems", I know, it is just something I'm really curious about.)

12 years ago we had the choice of moving to a bigger home, more land etc. or paying for education. We knew we probably wouldn’t be able to afford both. We chose schooling - no regrets so far!

We have a big house - 4 big beds, playroom, utility room, 2 bathrooms, massive kitchen diner etc. I love it.

Pros
Easy to have people stay
Enough individual space
Storage space
Easy to do playdates
Never feels crowded
Never looks messy (even when it is)
Makes cooking enjoyable as the kitechn is gorgeous and spacious

Cons
Impossible to keep clean and tidy
Taking forever to sort out all the rooms - can't afford nice furniture in all the rooms
Expensive to heat
Expensive to maintain (Victorian) so less money for holidays etc

It's amazing and i love it. However it's not the best area for secondary schools so we may move, which will break my heart.

We have just one DC but moved to a 5 bed house when he was 1.
I massively appreciate having more space especially because it means that DS (who is a very physical/energetic toddler) can run indoors. He can even scoot in the kitchen (altho i'm unsure about whether U should allow this!), admittedly not very far.
It means on rainy day we dont feel cooped in.
Also, it means I can very easily have girlfriends over to stay the night .. or even friends with kids. This is a godsend now that I cant go out so much (due to DS)

Sorry I meant unsure about whether I should allow scooting indoors!

You sound absolutely lovely!

I think you'll get a lot of responses saying "move" because most people on here live quite nice lives where nothing much goes wrong, so indebtedness isn't a big deal.

I'm going to give you the opposite view - my parents both had cancer while they were of working age, my Dad in his 30s. The fact that they hadn't moved up to a big house allowed him rest and time to recuperate. It allowed them to have jobs they enjoyed, and to make career changes when they became unhappy. My Dad changed his job in his 30s, at a time when that was unheard of!

There is a trade-off here that isn't mentioned very much on this site, which is time against money. Refusing to stretch yourself in housing terms means that you can have more time to do the things you want. DH and I have kept our housing costs very low and we will be taking an entire year off in 2 years to travel the world (sabbaticals from work, so we'll hopefully have jobs to come back to).

If you are happy where you are and do not feel claustrophobic and aren't planning more dc I would be tempted to say holidays and days out.

You can enetertain in most houses if you want to and a loft conversion would be a great playroom when the dc are older.

What you can never get back are adventures and holidays with young children, special days out and happy family memories. You will also have savings that will insulate you from at changes in the economy making you safer and more resilient.

Also smaller houses are cosy and inspire conversation and being together. Children are not hidden away in far away playrooms.

We live in a very large period house and we only use just a quarter of the space the rest is collecting dust and costing money to heat.

You might find you spend your life cleaning rather than enjoying your home!

When moving look at the future dreams of playing in a bigger garden or large family meals are great but also look at where you are buying what schools the children will go to, whats transport like etc - but its very stressful and understand what the costs are moving home will cost 10's of thousands, consider if you stopped working and how your income would go down.
Lots to consider but so long as you both agree - go for it, iam so happy where i live but its because i am happy, not because the house is big.

Does your house feel too small now?

We moved from a 3 bed to a 6 bed (expensive area to a cheaper area) and I always felt cramped there if I had swung a cat i would have knocked it out in most rooms. We acknowledged it was too small a couple of years in so knew quite early on a move would have to be made.

Now we have bucket loads of space and it is heaven, I can properly dance around my kitchen!

The downsides are: a bigger mortgage, more stuff to fix, heating costs are huge, council tax is double, we have a cleaner and it takes longer for her to clean. We definitely have less money left over at the end of the month. For us its worth it as we are happy to pay the "price" of having extra space.

If you can afford it, do it, I don't know many people who regret getting a bigger place unless something happens and they can no longer afford it.

I love space and always feel happier with more of it.

But I grew up in a 3 bed semi, it was pretty small but did have a garden. It was walking distance to the city centre as well so amazing as a teen. My parents still live there now and at Christmas it gets crowded fast. My mum always talked about "when I have a big house" but she was a SAHM for years and years so I guess that was what she chose. If we ever visit parents of friends etc with big houses she gets secretly upset pretty fast. Would it be nice to have people over more? Sure! A study for my parents? Would have been great. Did me and my brother even notice we lived in a small house? Never....

I have a 3 bed semi detached house (just me and 3 children as I'm a single parent). We have a large kitchen dinner that can easily sit 10 people around the table. I have twin boys and they share the huge front bedroom. Our sitting room is large.

I love entertaining as I can't go out a lot as my kids don't see their father. I love our house and space. We never feel on top of each other. When I left my ex husband I shared a bedroom with my daughter and we were cramped. Space equals happiness for me.

I have a three bed semi for my three and the boys have the master bedroom to share. I would go for a bigger house but would not be able to afford to go anywhere with them. If you can still afford to do this without being down to the last pennies I would definitely upsize.

A playroom sounds amazing if you have the room!

Moved to a much larger house when my twins were nearly 3. Needed loads of work but I loved the extra space from the start. It seemed to make family life so much easier.
They are both at uni now and we thought about downsizing but will stay for now as they will probably come back home after uni and the space will make this easy

Cons of a big house are the heating bill, the amount of hoovering and the fact that no one can bloody hear you when you're hollering about something.

Can you bung an extension on OP?

My personal 'thing' is to get a house in a good location with a good garden. I think gardens are really important to play. It is also easier to play inside if you have a larger house. Otherwise you can end up sitting round watching TV.

Space and spaces to be are fab. Our house is fairly big but will be even bigger when we've renovated the old farm kitchen and added a fifth bedroom. I grew up in a small house that was beautiful and tidy but couldn't help being closterphobic as we got bigger. Now I love that there's different rooms for different things.

We moved from a 3 bed townhouse to a 3 bed 3 reception 3 bathroom huge kitchen, utility room, garage & big garden. Yes lots of maintenance & im looking into a cleaner while DC are small ie until school as I plan to remain part time & then i’ll have the time. More space & a toy room has done my mental health so much good. No regrets

My house isn't particularly big (although it was double the size of out old flat) but we have 30 internal stairs.

I fucking hate stairs they are bastards to keep clean.

I dream of hiring a one off deep clean team and starting again. We don't seem to be able to keep on top of it.

Watching with interest! e have 3 dc and a large 3 bed semi, we are lucky enough to have quite a lot of equity so we think could probably move somewhere quite a bit bigger for about £30k on the mortgage. But we can extend for about only 25k as dh and my dad are in the building trade. so not sure what to go for! Dc are quite small atm by it’s going to get cramped as they grow

We moved from a 2 bed semi to 4 bed detached and seemed massive for a while but we are not so slowly filling it with crap!

I love our house. We have one DS who is 5 and 2 cats. It’s fairly modern, about 20 years old and has 4 beds and 3 baths upstairs, a really big kitchen/ dining/ sitting room, a separate sitting room, downstairs loo and a playroom. It takes some upkeep- we have had new windows and new bathrooms in the last year which were expensive.
We have a cleaner fortnightly- I do a bit of cleaning but wouldn’t want to clean the whole place myself every time!
We like having friends to stay and over for dinner and play dates. This our main social life at the moment.
A lot of our friends live in similar size houses but I notice that older houses have much bigger room sizes so that’s something to watch for.

If you can afford it, it's money well spent but for one extra bedroom and a garage we have effectively just paid £100k and increased our outgoings by around £800 a month in total. Council tax alone is £500 more.

It sounds like your current house is fine for now OP but will likely start to feel too small as your children grow. I'd get through the high childcare cost period when it's nice to keep your other outgoings low if you can and then start to look for somewhere a little bigger. Ideally you would benefit from bedrooms big enough for toys/homework for each child, another bathroom and more living space (we like open plan so one big living space is what works for us, others like a kitchen diner or two receptions).

We've just downsized as we doidn't use all the space we had and it was a fair bit of work on upkeep but that's with one child off to university. Having a decent amount of space for the years when they had loads of toys, wanted to have friends around or play noisy computer games was important.

If you really have the money then do go for it. But the costs of maintenance, heating, cleaner (?) etc will all be higher. We've moved into a bigger house after an inheritance and we are all loving it (2 teens who shared a bedroom til recently)

Are you likely to have another DC? What about school admissions, is your current home well located for that; is there a price premium around popular schools?

Are you and your DH happy not to have a lot of stuff, including “large plastic tat” for the DC?

We used to live in a 2 bed flat with no garden when we had 1 DC and it was fine, but moved to a big house (in the sticks) after DC2. I do like all the space and have tried to resist accumulating a lot of stuff (challenging with DH around!) but really hate commuting, it’s been detrimental to my life.

I dislike entertaining so that’s not a factor for me!