Move to a cheap area... Is this life's secret?

[Pestopastamad]

I currently live in a 'nice' area in the north, which by northern standards is relatively expensive (most expensive postcode in our city).
My partner and I earn an okay combined salary, but a huge proportion of this goes on the house, it's still 'within our means' on paper, though. We both work full-time and haven't got a mortgage yet, we rent, but are looking to buy around where we live now in the next 12 months.

Lately, I've been feeling a bit fed up with our work-life balance, and weirdly I've noticed I feel very envious of the people I see at work who don't work/work part-time/ earn less than us but seem to still manage to own a house, buy what they like, drive nice cars and go on holidays.
It's made me wonder if I'm doing it all wrong and I'm questioning my decision to buy in an expensive area, when I could buy in a less desirable area for a fraction of the price and have a lot of money left at the end of the month.
I can't stop fantasising about a life of working part time , eating out constantly and travelling where I want when I want, because the mortgage would be so cheap.

Is there such a thing is a balance, finding a decent house in a 'middle ground' area, and having lots of disposable income left? Or is it a fantasy and would I just hate not living where I do now? All of my family (and most friends) live in the same postcode as we do now, and I am questioning my motives for wanting to stay around here - keeping up appearances/ what will the family think!! I wonder if this is common for those my my age group (mid to late 20's) because of the ridiculous cost of housing!

Please share your opinions and experiences...

Why dont you look around some of the cheaper areas and see what you can get? My area is not the best on first appearances and I only planned on living her temporarily but as the years have gone by I love it and we are now considering in the future finding somewhere bigger in the area as its more affordable and we are happy where we are. It's not an area with trouble but houses are old, highstreet is mostly cheap shops / charity shops so some people turn their noses up at it. It's also in the North :)

Cheap is not always best. It's like someone saying that they find Merthyr Tydfil too expensive and going off to live on the Gurnos estate at the top of the valley.
Cheap but scary!

Nice is different to naice.

You can have cheaper, low crime, not dirty and grimy but not naice, so no naice amenities like posh cafes, artisan butchers and a yoga studio.

Naice is often code for not too many brown skins. Naice is often monocultural.

Also better postcodes quite often have higher crime rates especially to do with car crime and burglary. Violence stats incl domestic violence tend to stay the same across most postcodes. Inner city and town centre have the most crime unsurprisingly with additional violent crime and more drug/alcohol offences. (I looked at a lot of stats in a few different counties when deciding where to move.)

I chose cheaper but nice, mixed economic/demographic and mixed racially areas. I then went area to area narrowing down pockets and streets that I liked.

We live in a lovely house in a nice area with good access to everything we need BUT we are on the “wrong side of the roundabout “ for the catchment of 2 very sought after schools so our house is probably around £30000 cheaper than those on the right side. We can get to the “better” area with a 5 minute walk and my dc went to a very good State Primary and are now at Private Secondary.
Buying a the right time helped but even so, areas that are less desirable on paper can be just as good and a heck of a lot cheaper

Where I live is cheap, but there are few facilities or job opportunities, terrible transport links etc. Extremely low crime. Beautiful countryside.
Depends on your needs/wants, I guess.

I'm surprised that someone as young as op and with no children yet is craving to be able to work part time. That's always something I associate with parenthood or old age.

I would move from chi chi to slightly duller area for the right house but I wouldn’t move from a low crime area to a higher crime area for any house.... particularly if you intend to have children. We moved from Wimbledon slightly further out to a dull but still pretty nice area. It doesn’t have tons of great shops and bars but it does have great schools, ( all outstanding or good) decent leisure facilities, open spaces and easy access into countryside and Central London where I work. It’s a compromise but a pretty decent one and I know in 5 years when I turn 55 I can retire and we can cash in our chips and buy something outright in a lot of different places. In the meantime I’m taking advantage of everything London has to offer.

We think about this a lot. We are currently in a cheap little cottage 25 mins outside of London which is about 7% of our take home pay. We daydream about living further out for a similar price (350k-ish) and saving the rest.

I think it’s kids that will scupper our plans. Generally expensive areas are expensive because of good links, low crime and excellent schools. If we were less precious about where we sent our kids to school I’m sure we could find a cheap place, but I think we will just compromise on size instead.

We have toyed with moving to Belfast as DH could work from that office for the same salary, however he worries about what opportunities he’ll have available at work after this role if his search is limited to NI. He’s 29 and still very hungry and ambitious.

Am sure experiences are different in the North, but here the London commuter belt is a well trodden path so I think cheap and nice is somewhat of a unicorn.

When we bought a house 15 yrs ago we bought at the same time as our best friends. They bought in the 'naice' area and we bought in the bad part of the not as nice area next to them. We both paid £160k for 3 bed houses. We are both walking distance to the shops and things, but we are more central so have better buses.

Our house was much more run down needed stripping out but was a lot bigger, their house was ready to move into but a much smaller house.

15 yrs on we have extended up and out and now have 3 kids in a now 5 bed house, plenty of space etc.

They are struggling with 3 beds and a small house and 2 kids

Yes we live in a not so nice area, with some not so nice characters. But not had any problems, once the door is closed is who cares what's going on outside ?

Also in those 15 yrs our salary has increased and now the mortgage is more affordable even though we have taken out extra to pay for loft and kitchen extension, and we have more disposable income than our friends

Location location location!

It's cliché but it's true.

We were very tempted by the cheap house prices in a certain London computer town... until we looked at the crime stats and saw it's one of the worst places in the whole country!

Having said that, I see you're not planning on having kids, which makes a huge difference! If you don't need the area to have good schools, be safe, family-friendly, etc then you can definitely find something decent for cheaper!

Yes it is. We live in a cheap county, lovely village location, outstanding schools, amazing restaurants and pubs around us, lots of parks and open spaces, lots to do etc but it isn't in a "main" city - London, Manchester, Birmingham etc.

I have lots of friends with huge houses but we live in a quite spacious three bedroom semi which has more than enough room for us and rooms we don't really use. My mortgage will be paid off soon (we will be mid 30's) then we'll have lots of options with what we do.

I'll have most of my working life with no income going towards a mortgage unless we decide to move at some point (maybe to a house with lots of land rather than a bigger property) but it would be amazing to not have a mortgage anymore. Mortgage is about 15% of joint income.

So many people buy houses for show but I don't think there are many 4 people families that need huge 5 bed detached houses.

We also don't drive fancy cars and have never bought brand new cars.

But I do get a lot of stick from people about how many activities we do/holidays we go on.

I'm surprised that someone as young as op and with no children yet is craving to be able to work part time.

Why would you want to work full-time if you didn't have to?!

That's my view anyway. DH loves his job and would work six day weeks if he could. My ideal is 3/4 days a week at the moment - as I need the money and social interaction of work but not on a daily basis

Why don’t you rent somewhere cheap? You can save the difference between that & your current rent and try out living somewhere less central.

We're in Manchester, the area we lived in a new build house would have cost us £230,000 3 bed semi. We decided to look a 10 minute drive away, moving us closer to the city centre, closer to better schools. We bought a the same house type for £180,000 (built by a different developer but same layout and bigger rooms). We're so much happier where we are, less crime, closer to my family (DHs family never bothered with us even when we lived on their doorstep) and my DD goes to a brilliant high school.

I definitely reccomend looking at your options, our mortgage now is the same as it was living in a 2 bed terrace with no garden in our old town.

Someone said to drive around an area where you wish to buy late at night! Then you can see what its like at its worst.If it is cheap there is usually a reason that people dont favour it .Could be social problems ,bad traffic ,parking issues ,Schools and so on.I think looking at other peoples lives is difficult because they may have help from family members /inheritances /second jobs whatever .Think about whats right for you.Bear in mind that if you were looking to have a family in the future ,you may spend more time at home and less likely to go out and so on .Still like to meet the person at your work who doesnt work though!("feeling envious of those people at my workplace who dont work/work part time /earn less than us)!"

We've just made an offer on a 3 bed semi in the small town 10 mins drive further out from our Midlands city. Its costing us £2k more than we've sold our 2-bed terrace for.

Our current house is very close to a train station, but apart from that it's just about the current town being more trendy and popular. Schools in the new town are actually better, so we are trading up massively.

We have a 1 yr old and my husband is a full time dad (and studying part-time), so we had to be careful about increasing our costs. But this just seems like a fabulous compromise!

we did that. we live in an 'ok' neighborhood. it's safe but not posh. we don't have fancy restaurants or cafes nearby (more takeaways). But we are not fond of going out. Our mortgage is so much smaller. I went p/t (we have 2 DC) it's all a lot less stressful and we have a better quality of life (and more money too).

If you're happy with late night walks and driving around being OK, then to me it sounds worth it to save 50k and about £300 a month.

Someone makes a good point, though, about whether you'll actually want/be able to to spend your new disposable income in the area you live in. Personally I like being able to walk easily to nice cafes and restaurants; if I had to get the bus or tube everywhere (we don't have a car or want one) I'd feel a bit 'stuck'.

We live on a cheaper area than my inlaws, more out in the sticks. For the equivalent sized house we were looking at £40-60k more than what we paid. I would seriously consider your future plans though. This is our first house and we expect to move in 2 years or so to be in a better catchment area for high school. If kids are on the agenda at some point I would be aiming to buy in an area where the schools are good. If you intend to continue renting and kids are a long way off I would definitely rent in a cheaper area. Save the difference and put up a bigger mortgage.

It sounds daft but check the difference postcodes make! I moved 2 miles out of my northern town to a beautiful farm but because it has the "wrong" postcode, it was about 200k cheaper than it would have been in the "right" one! Same access to amenities, transport links etc. It's worth doing some research

This is exactly what we did. We had a small 2 bed semi just south of Manchester in a very desirable area. When it came to us needing a bigger place we would of been looking at £400 plus for a 3/4 bed. We decided to move to a market town just 20 minutes south of Manchester when i grew up. We bought a 5 bed Georgian town house for the same price we sold our 2 bed semi! The town has excellent connections to Manchester, Liverpool and Chester and in the 12 years since we moved prices have rocked here now because everyone is doing the same. Best thing we ever did!

You are young. Generally speaking, houses on better areas increase in price faster than those in less desirable areas.
If the price difference between similar houses the the 2 areas is now £20k, in 10 years it may well be £30k. which could make a big difference on the house you move to next.

Check what the schools are like in the not so desirable areas before you do anything.

Maybe even try living there for a while - you could maybe find a cheap Airbnb for a week.

I've been thinking more about it today and especially after some of the comments here I think it's the way to go. I have a few areas in mind, and we'll carry on doing research before we buy.

For the PP that asked why part-time at a young age, it's because we believe that work-life balance and good mental health is so important to long term happiness. If we can afford to, why not? It allows us to live the life that we want, instead of working until we are pretty much 70 just to live for the weekends!

I'm wondering if some of the new developments near to us will be up and coming too, as there seems to be a lot of young buyers/young families moving into these areas especially with government help to buy incentives. I'll have to look into it, but perhaps we will be lucky!

Opt for a midway area, consider commuting and think about what makes you happiest.

I agree re: comments on social housing.. I lived in these areas for 10 years and nearly had a nervous breakdown due to horrible neighbours and that can't be fixed so choose carefully.

I'm on 30 hours per week, travel 3-4 times per year not including weekend breaks and have a good social life. I live in an ok area between the best and the worst, my house is affordable and now the kids have grown up and are rarely home I have the life I've always wanted.

We considered moving to a bigger house this year but nixed the idea as our finances would all be tied to the house and out standard of living would disappear.

You're right to have 2nd thoughts about expensive areas.... they're not worth it IMO.