Baby due May 2023 - move house or stay in flat?

[Sxp842]

Hi all

we are expecting our first baby in May 2023. We currently live in a spacious, first floor (no lift) flat, with 2 beds. My partner and I both work from home. His office is the spare bedroom, and I use the dining area of our lounge/diner. We have a table in our kitchen to eat dinner.

My question is whether we should sell our flat now and buy a bigger house (probably 4 bed), or wait until mid 2024 when baby will be just over a year old. We have just had an offer on our flat, but it’s a bit lower than we would like (although not bad given the current climate). If we don’t accept the offer we will probably not try and sell until mid 2024.

I won’t qualify for enhanced mat pay but I’m still hoping to take the full year off (I will only get maternity allowance)

considerations in favour of staying in the flat

• if we sell now, we would live with parents until we found a new place. It’s a very kind offer, but we would rather not live with parents when baby first arrives (don’t mind when I’m pregnant or baby is a bit older)
• Not sure how long it would take us to find somewhere decent. There is very little on the market now. We would need to complete on the purchase before I go on mat leave in May 2023 as getting a mortgage may otherwise be tricky.
• we are on a very good fixed rate mortgage which doesn’t end until Nov 2023 so we have a year of cheap mortgage payments (and I won’t be earning on mat leave, and i am the higher earner). If we sold/bought now, then our payments would go up by at least £1000 due to current interest rates (which would be affordable with our savings/some parental help/returning to work earlier).
• Current mortgage rates and property market is a bit mad at the moment. Things may have calmed down by mid 2024 so that may be a better time to buy/sell
• our flat is in a lovely area (we couldn’t afford a house here!). It would be a nice place to be on mat leave and I think has lots of baby groups etc and family feel

in favour of moving:

• we are worried that we may not have enough space in our 2 bed flat and so a bigger house may be better, especially long term - although if we moved when baby was just over a year would that be ok?
• we live in a first floor flat with no lift so would have to negotiate stairs
• the spare bed would have to be used as a combined nursery / office when baby moves out of our room - not sure how practical this is? (Although it wouldn’t be forever)
• if we accept the offer now then we may make a bit of a ‘profit’ if prices decrease next year when we come to purchase
• when I return to work we will have to go back to our current wfh set-up with me in the dining room and partner in the study (/nursery). Not sure how feasible this is? Although it would hopefully only be for a few months and baby should be at nursery during the day

we are both on the fence about this. My partner is leaning towards selling now because he is worried about space and thinks we could make a profit by selling now and buying in early in 2023. I’m leaning towards staying out until mid 2024 because I think we can just about make the space work until baby is 1 and by then the market may have stabilised / won’t be as bad as it is now, and I’ll be earning again.

any views would be much appreciated!

That’s actually really good point about carving out space and time for your relationship. I imagine it’s easier to do that in a bigger house where you can more easily separate adult zones from child zones.

i guess also it might be difficult to work from home in a flat if there is a baby crying etc, or for one person to get enough sleep if baby is crying and the living room is next to the bedroom. Although I don’t know if a house would make much difference to that

You don’t go from zero straight to toddler weight overnight though, you build it up so gradually because you’re doing it daily, to the point where you don’t even notice the increases. Carrying shopping is also entirely optional, buy online and it’s only stroller, baby and changing bag (I hate slings so always the stroller for me) which is more than doable if you’re reasonably fit and healthy. I also used to live in a non UK city where 99% of the housing stock has substantial raised ground floor entrances so flat or house, everyone is carrying their stuff up/down the stairs, and it’s a complete non issue.

Definitely not! The last thing you need with a new baby is no local friends and building work and solicitors and estate agents etc. Move before DC starts school if you must. Stairs etc can be solved with slings, mail order and staging everything to the car boot if you have one.

Everyone else in our NCT group had recently moved or did so while the babies were new. We thought they were mad!!

Also we live up 22 steps so I know what I'm talking about. You do have to be organised.

I know you said it's either move before mat leave or afterwards, but just for another perspective, I moved from a 2-bed flat to a 4-bed house when my first baby was 4 months old.

The first few months in the flat were completely fine with a baby. My husband was WFH in one bedroom and I'd be in the living room or out for a walk with the baby - this was during lockdown so life wasn't super exciting. Really small babies, as in pre-crawling, don't take up much room at all. We had the pram in the hallway, a bassinet in our room, a little play gym in the living room, bouncy chair which we moved between the kitchen and bathroom, and that was it in terms of additional floorspace.

However when the baby started crawling and walking and playing/chucking toys around we were really grateful for the extra space, and we managed to fill a 4 bedroom house with stuff very quickly when we did move. Looking back we were bursting at the seams in our flat.

You'll need to tell your mortgage provider that you're pregnant anyway, and when you expect to go back to work and your expected childcare costs as well, so when exactly you move might not make too much of a difference to your mortgage offer. We got our offer in place when I was about 30 weeks pregnant and the lender asked for confirmation from my work that they were expecting me back after a year and I'd be paid the same salary as before.

Also there are a lot of options now for workspaces by the day. Everyone round here works in the 'adult lounge' at David Lloyd...

Stay put!!!

I'm another one who used a sling/baby carrier until my DD was near 18 months.

After that she got a balance bike and scooter, and she was off....

We did have various buggies but a baby carrier/sling made it easier to carry DD on public transport as we always got on, and in the supermarket.

Do you have a garden? I had my babies in a large flat with a garden, that made a big difference.

Out of interest, why?

We had a small garden when ours were small but they were totally uninterested in it as babies. It came into it's own once they were walking

well by babies I didn't just much under 6 months, mine were moving at 9 months. I stayed there for a few years. But when they were very small I still liked to sit in the garden & push them back & forth in the early evenings for example.

So we don’t have a garden (which is one of the reasons we were thinking about a house) but we do have nice a river walk outside our house and a park which is a 20min walk
away.

I had a park at the end of my road so 100 metres away, still loved my garden.