Would you move 150-200 miles away to be able to afford your dream home?

[bigdecsions]

Hi everyone,
As the title suggests, we live in London (not the best place in London either ) that's where I've always lived and grown up its my comfort zone. All my family and friends are here too. We have 4dc and live in a 3 bed, which we can extend to make a 4 bed. It's on a main road so parking is available on the side roads. By no means is this our dream home, but it is what it is. We've done work to it and made it in to our home which we love. Kids are at a good school too.
2 miles away would be our ideal location but it's far too expensive, anywhere around here is, is have to extend our mortgage and still only get a 3 bed but in a nicer location and most houses only have 1 reception too making it feel smaller as we have 2.

Anyway we have thought about moving further north, we've looked at a few places but all are between 150-200 miles north of us 3-4 hour drive. We are able to afford our dream home in those areas and schools are good too. But I'm so worried about loving as I've always lived here. What if we don't like it after the novelty has worn off? Has anyone loved that far just to be able to afford their dream home? I just can't decide if it's right for us to do, also if we move we definitely won't be able to come back if we don't like it as we'd be priced out. I don't want to keep changing kids schools either. I think the main fear comes from always living here.
Really struggling to decide but can't get the dream house we saw out of my head .
Any suggestions? Sorry this post is so long xx

Are your family in London? I wouldn't move that far as very close to my parents but if that wasn't a factor then yes I would move for a better house in a new city. Good luck

Manchester is great but Christ on a bike moving a teenager from London to fecking DERBY is the worst idea ever in the world. Have you been there ?????

Your life sounds lovely as it is, I promise you the grass isn't greener up north.

It's not your dream home if its 150 miles away from people and places you love, is it?

We moved from a very large town (almost city) that's become commuter belt for London to the south coast. I don't regret it for one minute, though I do miss the friends I had and wish we were closer to my family. We've got a better standard of living (I'm now a SAHM and help with DH business, rather than working full time) BUT we already lived 4hours from my family, now it's more like 6hours.

We were sort of forced into a move and we weighed up many locations based on DH job prospects, schools, house prices, family etc.

We visited our new area quite a lot to view houses, get a feel for schools etc. We have a bigger house for less mortgage in a nicer area. I have made friends and so have the DCs, but they were younger than yours. We are happy.

It is possible to build a lovely new life, but you have to throw yourselves into it. In your position, I'd seriously weigh up whether leaving behind family is worth it. We couldn't afford to buy a similar house than we moved from back in the original area, but we wouldn't want to. I wouldn't have made the move just for a larger house. The lifestyle change has been worth it for us though.

We've done it several times and about to do it again.
It's no problem for our work though and we enjoy living in different areas.
We drawer a circle on a map, blindfold and pin somewhere on the map.
last time we went from Norfolk countryside to Gtr Manc.

OP you set up sounds similar to mine.
I live in a naice area of SW London & my home is a 15 min walk from my mums & where I grew up (although parts were less nice back in the day). Even though I met my husband at uni (the only time i've ever lived away) he grew up a 10min drive from me. So we have both our families close by, I walk to my job & the excellent primary is 150 metres away. So we have decided to stay put for now & are going to revisit when looking at secondary schools.

Reasons I would like to move: I would love more space, less fussed about a huge garden but would kill for off street parking. In terms of friends what i've struggled with is 90% of our school friends have already moved out to outer zones eg Carshalton & Bromley & a large proportion have moved to Kent & Surrey although for a fair few of them their parents had already moved to those areas. I also made some genuine friends through a NCT & neighbours & again the vast majority of them have now left. Although most of them have gone to other cities eg Bristol, Manchester & Edinburgh. I would much prefer another city as opposed to zone 5 or the home counties. I worry that in the future other cities will become more popular & prices will rise there as London stagnates & I will miss out on a great property. I'm also scared for my son growing up with the threat of knife crime. Oh & I would love to be near the sea. A fair few of my neighbours/friends could afford a bigger home but just didn't want a huge mortgage & I feel the same. We have decent equity in ours & I have gotten used to the disposable income.
Reasons I don't want to move: I feel at home in London & don't know anything else. I like the anonymity of it & the chaos (although that is waning). My uni town probably had a population of about 250k & I found it too small after about 18 months. The idea of not having neighbours close is scary & I don't want to end up driving everywhere. Will I limit my children's opportunities by moving them? I don't think so but who knows. Will I feel I belong? Will I make friends? My parents are both immigrants & I know some communities can be quite tight to break into but then my friends are already spread out anyway.
It's a big decision!

Ime teen like city life.

If you don’t really know the area the houses might be cheap because they aren’t in the nice parts of town, you need advice from locals.

Can you do rightmove links to possible houses so local posters can tell you what it’s reallt like?

I couldnt move away, my family and friends are too important to me to move several hours away.

I would. I moved 450 miles to live in a nightmare house in a cruddy city so 250 miles for a nicer house is nothing. It takes us 7 hours to drive back for weekends to see friends and family at our old area... much easier to get to London for you when you miss them. See what the kids think...

DH and I are both from London and couldn’t afford to buy a decent family house in our wildest dreams. Standard 3 bed semi’s are about £900k where I’m from in zone 4 London. So we moved to Bristol (which I believe is the second most expensive city??) and rented for a few years to see if we liked it enough to buy. 3 bed semis are £300k around here but turns out we prefer Cardiff which is only 30 mins away from us now and is £200k ish for the same size house. We definitely would not have bought a house before moving though as you just never know an area before living in it. We found new jobs, found a house to rent, joined fb pages of the local community to get to know what kind of people lived there (I’m Asian and DH is African so we were really worried about moving out of London due to racism etc) and lots more. Really immerse yourself in the idea of it before you go but ultimately, it was a good idea and was worth it because we did eventually find our dream area and have just bought our dream house. As much as I miss and love London, you couldn’t get a shoebox there for how much we paid!

We moved to Italy, then France, now Spain. Barcelona. Considering moving to Bilbao, despite DH"s family being here and having friends here. We've been here 27 years and this is the first year we're going back for Christmas.

If you want to move, move. Don't let anyone guilt you. If your friends are good friends and your family fair, then they'll travel to see you, not expect you to do all the travelling, 50-50.

@RedRec glad you've settled now, I know what you mean though

@madcatladyforever definitely not looking for rural even I couldn't do that never mind the kids. Looking at other big cities

No, no and no again OP. I agreed to move to where DH was from as we would be able to build our dream house. The house is everything I ever wanted and the views are breathtaking and yet there's rarely a day that goes by where I'm trying to figure out a way to move "home" (300km away) family and friends are everything and I'm so sorry we moved and our DC won't be growing up beside extended family (DHs family aren't close)

Also where we live now is quite rural and the nearest town is crap and I so miss the hustle and bustle of city life. I went shopping in a major city last weekend and it became so stark to me how cut off I am from everything, it felt great to be back in the "world" for a day.

I try to count my blessings and make the most of things but I feel sick with dread when I think that I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life here

On the plus side it's been a valuable lesson in the pointlessness of materialism. It means not a jot without family/community etc.

@Drabarni that sounds brave, I take it no children or schools involved ?

Oh and another thing - Baby sitters! We have no one to watch our kids and I'm secretly so jealous when I hear my mum is babysitting for my sister or my aunt has popped in to take my niece out for a couple hours.

I've had to move three times for work (twice because of redundancy). It has always worked out absolutely fine and I am really glad I have lived in lots of places in the UK. It's given me a much wider range of experiences. I say do it.

Yes. But i would still need to be near a job a town and an hour away from at least one friend while i tried to build up new acquaintances. So, yes, but i dont want to isolate myself either

@eeksville yes I would kill for off street parking too. I'm close to carshalton would like it live there or surrounding areas but it's an increase of quite a lot of more mortgage but not more space. You may guess where I am begins with a c ends with n? It's so hard isn't it?

If single and my job would transfer.

I’d not expect a partner or children (older than pre school age) to have to move for my wants though.

@Verily1 from my Mumsnet research it seems the areas are nice. I'll post links

Derby is not very big and Nottingham isn't massive. I would've thought your best bets if you want to move to a cheaper but still large city with a good job market are Leeds and Manchester, and you may want to consider Birmingham as well.

@flyingspaghettimonster oh no, why did you move ? Scotland ? Kids are ok about it to be honest but I guess they don't really know what to expect

@haflump I'm Asian too, that's true about renting but I don't want to mess about with schooling , my eldest is year 9 now so can't afford to

@IceCreamAndCandyfloss my dh is totally with me to be honest he actually started this.