To just stay in this house forever?

[unicormb]

I hate moving, HATE it. When we rented in London in our late twenties and thirties it was a constant cycle of being out priced from certain areas and having to hop around the capital to the next not-quite-so-nice place that we could afford. We did this until our second child was born, then moved out of London and bought our three bed semi, in a nice SE coastal town.

It's in a great area, v close to our DS's special school, which is Outstanding, and DD's local primary is round the corner. It's a lovely street. We have great neighbours. DH has a big garden office. We have good transport links. And we love our back garden which is bigger than the avg around here.

But our third bedroom is quite small, it's hard imagining a teenager in there. But we could go up into our loft and create a big master suite up there, as many neighbours have done (I snoop at improvements on Rightmove a lot!). We would also want to extend our kitchen out by about 2m and add a downstairs loo, as many of our neighbours have also done.

We can afford our mortgage, which is fixed for three more years. We could borrow more around remortgaging time and get some of the work done.

DH says extending and finding funds for it all is a huge hassle and maybe we should just consider moving in a few years. But I cannot get my head around moving again, it drove me insane. I love living here.

Has anybody else just stuck with the place they love and improved it? I have family nearby and we could stay with them for a while when works happen. We also have a few caravan parks around locally and could probably just hire one of them out of season for a month or two reasonably cheaply.

Yes we did this, no regrets. Everyone I know has moved up and up to bigger and better places, we're staying put no matter what. It's not even a great house, I just can't be arsed.

We looked at the difference between upgrading to get the living space we wanted and moving, upgrading won by a long way. The cost of stamp duty, solicitors and moving costs alone would have been a decent chunk let alone the extra on the mortgage.

Yes! Those are the exact things that, when I think about them, about give me hives!

A project of that size could take 6 months or so to complete, so you would effectively be moving out either way. I gutted my house out and it took 9 months, was a massively stressful affair but I love where I live.

I would personally get the house extended, and not move away, but don't underestimate the stress of that option, its much harder than moving house.

Definitely stay and upgrade if you can. It also gives you the opportunity to get the house exactly the way you want whereas moving may mean compromising or having to redecorate etc. anyway.

My aunt did her house from top to bottom recently and it took a year, so we gave a reasonably realistic idea of what's involved. We could prob get an off season caravan near where we live for around £400-500 a month and live there, the kids would like the pools at least 😂

*a week, not a mth. But also, we are a seaside town. Lots of short term lets.

Or you give the teen a loft bed or do something clever with storage, or give them first dibs on the sitting room every so often so they can have friends round if the room is genuinely too small for company.

we are never ever moving. Well. Not unless we have a mammoth lottery win; I can buy the next place outright and get it all set up exactly as we need it before moving out of this one, and then sell this one empty.

I’ll camp out in a corner of it for building works (and have several times in the 20 years we’ve lived here), booking holidays for the very worst weeks or borrowing friends’ showers or house sitting. Still less stressful than trying to arrange and coordinate exchange and completion and all the rest of it.

We looked at moving a few years ago and in the end extended to make a bigger open plan kitchen, downstairs loo and up into the loft for the teenager. We were lucky, got it all done just before prices went up and had the best set of builders ever. It took 4 months and although it was chaos and mucky we managed to stay in our house whilst the building work went on (although if you can afford to move out that would be better!) we’ve now got more space than we would have got if we moved and for less money. I’m never moving now, I love my house.

I found a loft conversion much cheaper than moving. I also found that it was very unobtrusive, I barely noticed they were there, although this was pre covid so I was working out of the house in the daytime.

I think given all the lovely things you've written about where you live you'd be mad to consider moving!

Even if you couldn't do the work to extend, it's still a bedroom and own personal space for the teen. Loft beds etc as a pp said help in this situation.

Good luck whatever you decide!

I think it's a very UK thing to be always changing. I'm in Italy in a flat that's a bit small but we'd still rather stay put than move. I grew up in the UK and moved loads. I'm enjoying staying in one place. 😌

Ours was a 2 doubles, 1 box room, family bathroom upstairs, sitting room and kitchen/diner downstairs house when we bought it 20 years ago. We started by replacing the single glazing and the falling apart bathroom, and slowly improved further over the years. Including an extension across the back of the house (extended kitchen/diner/living room with a utility cupboard and a downstairs shower room off it) and converting the attic into a large bedroom (but box room is now firmly an office - would need a built-in bed as needed 5 inches from it to build the stairs up).

If it works now, and is in the location you want, and has capacity to extend - I would stay put.

I think it is fine to stay put if there are good reasons to do so. Not wanting to move is a decent enough reason. I had two teens in a two-bed, we couldn't move for <reasons> and so we stayed until we could. It was fine. The kids have fond memories of that house, our family was a happy family.

There is far more to life than a slightly bigger bedroom.

I bought my ideal house last year - it just needed a little extra so I have just started an extension project! Pushing out 2m at the back and adding a utility room to the side.

my perfect house simply didn’t exist in my price bracket in my area when I was looking - so I am making it!

it’s lovely to design the perfect house for your own individual needs.

i haven’t found it too stressful yes - I have a temporary kitchen and half the house is missing!

yes it is expensive - but it’s a long term investment: and like you I love my garden.

I am in the SE too in a beautiful seaside town...I moved to a new bigger house rather than extend my old lovely one and I deeply regret it. We knew all the faults in the old house but uncovered so much here that we have had to invest £1000's to get it right. Don't move...invest in the place you love and love it more than ever!!

l have two double bedrooms and one box room, it works out well as eldest who has boxroom isn't around very much, either at work, over his girlfriends or out with friends, so l am glad now l never bothered extending, we have managed fine, his computor etc is downstairs.

We did the same to our house OP. My eldest was a toddler at the time and we didn't need to move out. We had separate companies, so a loft company did the loft which included an en suite. It started in the month of March and we were in there by the June. We then had a break from building works over the summer and started our kitchen extension in that November and were finished by the following March. We've since had to have the garden patio re landscaped but that doesn't impact on the house.

I was always in the box room until I moved out of my parents. It was totally fine. I think you'd be mad to move in your circumstances. I find it hard to believe that it really would be cheaper to move once you take all the fees and costs into account?

Especially 6 months over winter!!

your place sounds great! & while it undoubtedly is stressful doing a big renovation project, buying & selling is not without its serious stresses!

plus you'll get your place so much closer to exactly what you want than if you buy somewhere.

your location sounds perfect!!

lots of teens have the box room though, it's totally doable!

We've been having similar conversations recently as since Covid we now need 2 work spaces in the house as we now both work from home most of the time, as well as imminent 2nd baby. We like our house and the area we live in as well as our garden!

Moving would double our mortgage (and probably be in the region of £35k stamp duty) and we have quite a specific search area so we've started the process of a loft extension and had some initial plans drawn up - I'm expecting the actual build to be messy and horrible for some of it but worth the disruption, we're aiming to do it next summer.

Next up waiting on an estimate of costs, expecting it to be massive and will need to remind myself of the above...!

Is it worth spending all that money on extending a semi? Do you get on with your neighbours? Will you still get on with them after the building work has been done?

We looked at other properties. Was really disappointing to see what we could get.
Extending was cheaper (though even without our house is still better than what we could find).

There's a reason people extend up and back! I live in a terraced house where the original third bedroom is 6' by 7' - a cot possibly (there should be a minimum size to call something a bedroom, and if there is, this ain't it)! So the vast majority have added a bedroom plus en-suite in the loft and extended 2m in to the garden. Now it's a three bed with office, front room and generous (for a terrace) kitchen/diner.
A loft conversion here (SW London) is £70k minimum. Extend out back another £50-75k depending on kitchen. But it adds over £200k to the value of the house, if no more (based on an unextended house £850k, Extended £1.1-1.2m).
You can live in situ for most of the loft conversion- might be the odd day without water. Extension is more tricky as you are likely to be redoing the kitchen. But plan it well and don't make changes and time renting can be kept to a minimum.
It's no brainer.

You only need to read on here about the stress that new neighbours can bring. And you'll definitely get new neighbours if you move. I'd stay put. I've only moved 4 times in my life (I'm 63) and find any prospect really daunting.