Sell our house..?

[Cornberry]

We are in a pickle and I desperately need some good advice.

Last December hubby and I bought our first house with help from parents and scraping everything we could. It was not in the area we wanted but we thought we’d adjust and eventually move our lives that direction (we live in London).
In January my daughter was unexpectedly accepted to a school close to where we used to live. We thought we would just deal with it but the commute has turned out to be a nightmare. Hour there and back each way. Impossible. No chance of me ever working. It’s about 7 miles away. In rush hour London it’s unbearable and there’s no transport near us.
Meanwhile I have been off work sick for a few months (I have MS) and I am now unexpectedly 10 weeks pregnant and suffering from extreme pregnancy sickness as I did with my first.
To cope we have had to move to my mum’s who lives closer to the school where my daughter started in September. There is no question that we want her to go there so that is not the issue.
My mum is unbearable and despite the fact that I’m staggering about vomiting she keeps making comments about how she needs her space etc. Basically we’re not welcome here and on top of my health problems the stress is a lot to take. Luckily a mum from school who lives round the corner is driving my daughter to school with her kids while I wait out the debilitating pregnancy sickness (which last time went until 30 weeks).
Meanwhile we are living out of bags and my amazing husband is working hard to stop my mum getting pissed off with us being here while looking after me and my daughter, but we need a solution. When baby no2 comes staying in our new house is out of the question. It’s a long commute for hubby too and I’m bound to relapse after giving birth (as I did last time) so we need to reorganise everything. Here is the problem. We can’t afford even a tiny flat nearer school and I can no longer get a mortgage due to reduced pay because of illness and now pregnancy. We thought the best option was to sell up and use our capital to pay rent for a few years while we hopefully find a way to improve our financial situation. My husband is a teacher and his salary doesn’t even cover rent for a two bed flat in the areas we need to be in to make school accessible. But people keep telling us it’s a mistake to sell and if we do we will never be able to buy again which is probably true. The area our house is in won’t bring much rent and after fees and tax it wouldn’t even cover the mortgage. Plus as we only just moved in it’s not currently fit to let and we have no time or money to do anything to it. Does anyone have any advice? We have no idea what to do and despite being sick I think it’s important to address this before the next baby arrives.

And obvs get contraception sorted for when baby comes, sorry I know it's not infallible.
I don't think primary school is that important, ppl make a big fuss but if you read to children and take an interest they do well

Get an au pair whose main purpose/role is to ferry your DD back and forth to school each day?

are you hoping that your mum will see the light and swap houses with you?

www.sharetobuy.com/guides-and-faqs/shared-ownership-eligibility/
Apparently you don't just have to be first time buyers (this is London version - other areas do same thing different amounts of help etc) what you need is to have your house on market or sold) there are "second time around properties" as well as new, the point is you may be able to buy/rent in areas you normally might not be able to afford.

My husband is a teacher and his salary doesn’t even cover rent for a two bed flat in the areas we need to be in to make school accessible.

OP, you've already said you can't afford to rent near the school so where exactly are you planning on moving to?! You can only afford to live where you have bought the house.

To take money off someone for a house and then move back in with them is not right - surely you can see that?! If you sell the house, you need to give the deposits (did your inlaws help as well) back!

You are being completely unrealistic about the school and the house.

It is so sad that families are prepared to lose out on an investment, live with the uncertainties of renting, which could mean having to move every year, risking their health all this for a bloody school!

Do you think your DD will thank you for it? Do you really believe that your daughter well being and future is all in the end of getting a few years of education in that school rather than another?

Can't you see that her life, support, stability outside of school will a much stronger impact than the school she goes too. Yet you are prepared to compromise it all for just one school.

This stubborness, or arrogance about her going to that school will do much more damage than if she attended another ok school.

It sounds to me as if you're sacrificing housing security for your whole family, including your future child, for the sake of the school.

Sounds like options are:

1. Move back to the house, change your childs school and speak language 2 at home, with support of a Saturday school.
2. Once baby arrives, take out a loan to get house 'rental ready', rent it out and rent a place closer to language school. Get a job (now possible due to reduced commute?) to make up the difference. Think you'd be mad to do this but not quite as mad as...
3. Give up home ownership, potentially for the next 2 decades as you put your kids though school in an untenably expensive area and be at the mercy of landlords/the rental market. And anyway, once your home equity is exhausted what are you going to do!?!

Or how about option 4...

Move out of London entirely to somewhere where your husbands income is higher in proportion to housing costs. Nice village/local school. Speak second language at home and send them to Saturday school.

What about transferring to the other schools linked to the Lycee?

Presumably if you sell your house, you won’t have that much equity because you will owe the deposit etc back to your parents. It’s not a sensible time to sell, and it’s certainly not sensible to sell when you may well never be able to buy again.

With a teachers salary, and you being ill, I can’t see that you have a particularly good chance of your financial position changing dramatically in the next few years.

The only sensible thing is to move schools. You simply cannot afford for your daughter to go to that school. Presumably you had a plan for if she hadn’t gotten into that school, and you had seen nice schools near where you bought?

In the kindest way possible, you and your partner have made a series of very bad choices so far. It may well be worth ignoring your initial instinct on these things (ie sell up and move etc) and really taking your time to decide. I suspect you will come to the same conclusion - you need to move schools. It’s not fun or sociable to be so far from your school and friends etc anyway

Doesn't the Lycee still have fees though? So how can the op pay that?

Actually, if you have a house, I'm guessing you have 3 bedrooms? You could get an au pair to do the school run. Even if it's only 2 bedrooms, perhaps you could sleep in the sitting room for now? It's not ideal but it would give you some breathing space to look for other options rather than rushing into something you might regret.

Agree with other posters who say move out of London altogether. There's loads of great places to live that are affordable on a teacher's salary and have good schools and a good family environment.

One teacher's salary supporting a family of 4 in London sounds unachievable to me.

Everyone is assuming that the school is the Lycée - not necessarily, there are loads of 'foreign' schools in London.
Not sure if you are still reading OP, but I'd like to offer my opinion. I know where you're coming from OP - I do a longer than usual commute to school for my children for similar reasons, and I know plenty of families who have selected a particular school and send their children to it, even though it means that young children leave the house at 6.40am to get there. So this type of commute (and sacrifice of a parent's working opportunities to facilitate it) is quite normal in my experience, and I recognise that desire to ensure that your children are equipped with every possible skill to keep their options open in the future.
The key difference in your situation unfortunately is your health. You can manage any temporary solution, for example a new baby, but if you are frequently not able to do the commute in the long term, and you don't have the finances to employ someone to do it for you then the long commute is just not feasible.
You could keep life simple, transfer your child to a school near you, and find other ways of delivering the language skill, for example - saturday school, spending the time you'd have spent commuting watching TV in that language/ coaching it yourself, start a social group with other families with similar language etc.
Best of luck with the pregnancy, I hope you feel better soon.

You are fixed on the school being unchangeable. What age is your dd? Have you considered what will happen when your baby is born? Will you want them the baby to eventually attend the same school. It sounds like you are focusing all your energy into trying to solve an impossible problem. Try to step back and realise that you may solve the problem by being more open to exploring all possible solutions
Maybe if you could formulate a long term plan it will help you to decide what step to take next. For example would a long term goal be to try and move out of London and find an alternative good school in a more affordable area(for housing) Your husband, as a teacher, has the ability to work anywhere in the country,

If you think the house you bought is a complete mistake you need to look at the most sensible way to achieve your long term goal. I'm thinking if your daughter is still young, the school issue is much less important than you might think. Which school your Mum prefers is not relevant but you do need to look at the needs of the whole family not just focus on trying to achieve something that is not affordable to you at the moment and may hamper your chances of achieving the goal in the future. Otherwise your health may suffer and your husband is liable to be more stressed and risk his own health.

By compromising now you may be able to save time and money and stress for you all and prepare for the next stage of your daughters education.
You are saying the changing her school is not an option but it is and especially if she is young she will thrive wherever you choose.

Move schools. I live in London and it is normal for foreign children to go to the local primary, not the French school or the German school etc. At secondary level some may move to, say, the Lycée. But most didn’t. It’s really not necessary at primary level.

This is not worth it over a school unless you are going to continue the entire education in the other language. I have friends whose children had foreign aupairs, went to a foreign language school and so on- basically the only ones that have gone on to speak the language are those whose parents fully committed to speaking it at home (or OPOL) and they would have learned anyway. If this is your language- they will speak it, if it is not, then primary in it won't be enough so you need to find a way for 13 years to stay in that more expensive area and that's not doable.

We'd all like our children to attend brilliant/great schools, I,m sure one of mine would flourish in a lovely private school near us but I can't afford it so I've bought a house and we suck it up!

OP you sound batshit. You want to risk the relationship between you and your mum, your husband, your child and your (currently) unborn baby.

Why is this magical primary school worth loosing everything over? Why is it worth the extra stress to your nearest and dearest, the financial and housing woes? The realistic chance that your child won't be able to maintain friendships with these children due to the traveling distance and never get to make friends with children near where you actually live. How are you going to manage when the baby is old enough to go to school and they are at schools with an hour+ drive between them?

If you loose all your money now, how are you going to help your DC if they need some extra tutoring at secondary school so that they can pass the important exams and potentially go to university?

It would be different if you were living with your mum because you suddenly has to be near a particular hospital
Or if the school were the only one in the county suitable for a particular SEN.

However, your problem is due to a series of bad decisions you made,
worst of which is choosing a school where you can't afford to rent or buy nearby

Buying a house where your OH has a long commute was also unwise:
That commuting time might have been used instead for paid tutoring, enough to pay someone nearby to transport your child.

Another solution is that he does Saturday morning tutoring,
or something else that brings in enough to pay someone to transport your DD
He'll be knackered, but that's what can happen when you have to compensate for serious mistakes

The school change is the only option in reality. You are wanting things that you simply cannot afford, so you have to adjust things to what you can, that's life and everyone knows it.

" Not to mention that she’s away on holiday a lot, she has plenty of space for us, and also my mum absolutely wants my daughter to go to this school."

Fucking hell!

Can't understand why you moved in the first place tbh if the school is the be all & end all for you.

You absolutely didn't have to move in with your mum, you could have sent your daughter to a local school.

Rent out your property and use rent from that to rent closer to Dd school?

It is unlikely you will get your second DC into the school if you now live so far out of catchment. How are you going to manage with your 8 or 9 year old in one school and 4 year old in another?

Rent out your property and use rent from that to rent closer to Dd school?

The Op says she can't afford to move nearer the school.

This school fixation isn't worth collapsing a bought house, relationship with mum, making yourself ill and making a tiny baby travel 2 hours or more a day, plus your dd won't be able to sustain friendships out of area. I have a secondary school age child who travels 2 hours a day and it's really taxing, it's not worth it for primary and given you would have to give up secure housing to do so.

Swapping a bought house for rental would be literal madness. Rents are higher than mortgages and you have to move with 2 months notice. It's an incredibly destabilizing way to live.

Every child has a right to an education and a right to an adequate home.

It sounds as though you have an adequate home where you are not currently living and you would be unlikely to have one if you moved to the area where the school is located.

Your child would likely have an adequate education in either area.

I think, to meet everyone's needs, you would be best going home and looking and other schools and maybe out of school activities that may cover aspects that the foreign school cover. If you are unable to move to the area where the school is based, it may be harder for your child to make friends in the local area and establish herself into the community- although I'm aware that many children do.

OP, if your DH is a teacher, is he primary / secondary / in the private sector? What scope is there to get her into his school higher up the allocation as a child of a current teacher / get a reduction in fees because of her dad. He may be the best chance to get her into a different school that you're happy with.

If your mum was adamant her DGD should go to the foreign school, will she pay for the taxi each day, from your house?