AIBU to buy the house?

[WatchingBenidorm]

Firstly I am fully aware that this is a very first world problem that we are extremely lucky to have.

I’ll try and keep this short. I would really like opinions as I genuinely don’t know what to do!

It’s me, DH, 3 DC age 10,8,6.

Current house is nice size 4 bed detached, open plan kitchen diner, living room, 2 bathrooms and one en suite. Medium size but very manageable garden (big enough for shed, 8 seat table and chairs, 12 foot trampoline and a climbing frame with a little grass to spare. Off-street parking for 4 cars. Lovely quiet road, great neighbours and a short walk to primary school and to likely secondary school. DH works from home, currently in the garage but if we stay we are planning to swap the shed for an outside office building with storage. We did a huge amount of building work in 2017 including all re-wiring and new boiler so no work to do for the foreseeable.

We have no mortgage on this house.

A house locally has come up for sale and we love it. Absolute tip of a house, the entire place needs re-wiring, re-plastering, all plumbing works done, new kitchen, new windows, new floorboards in some rooms, around £25k worth of work on the roof alone. A lot of the light switches are marked ‘do not use’. There is only one bathroom, plus two separate toilets and one of the three toilets does not work. Most of the house is not double-glazed, what has been done has mainly been nailed to the inside of the existing window. We could still walk to both schools but would be a longer walk (25min as opposed to 15).
BUT it is a massive house, 6 large bedrooms upstairs, 4 reception rooms downstairs so we would have the possibility of older relatives moving in if needed later on. The plot is just over an acre and has the most amazing garden, part lawn part woodland with some very rare trees and a mass of bluebells at the right time year. I am a forest school leader and looking to qualify as an outdoor therapist to work with adult and young people and this would be perfect for that. One side of the plot borders a community farm project which looks after 14 acres of protected land, so lovely open fields and no chance of this being built on.

In order to buy house 2 we will need to take a mortgage again. Our builder estimates £250k to do the main works required to make it safe and suitable to live in. So we would be borrowing around £300k. This is affordable but repayments would obviously have an impact on our day to day lifestyle. Plus every spare minute would be spent ‘doing up the house’ to minimise cost of getting professionals in.

Would you buy the dream house (that is currently a nightmare) or would you stay put in the safe, risk-free house and enjoy lots of disposable income and saving for the future?

Lease land or buy a patch of woodland nearby and stay in your comfortable house

Tbh having done something very similar to this it sounds more like half a million than 250. If a reputable builder is prepared to sign a jct for 250k then do it but you’ll likely bankrupt him in the process.

Roofing
wiring
new heating system - likely to have to be underfloor to future proof you for air pump even if that’s not what you go for now.
plumbing
cost of bathrooms
cost of kitchen/utility
cost of hard landscaping (drive/patio)
likely to have to insulate all walls with thermal plasterboard or similar to meet building control expectations
joinery costs (doors, architraves, skirting, joiners themselves on £250 a day)

Takes up so much time and headspace and leaves you broke.

I see so much risk aversion in the responses, it makes me wonder if people just get comfortable or have so little miney spare they cant conceive of improving their own situation so are reflecting that negativity on you.

Mns is weird; there is always lots of we earn 300k but wouldn't feel comfortable with a mortgage of more than 100k etc. when most people because of age have to borrow at least their salary once over! And having a mortgage is not necessarily a huge risk in itself.

In your last post you have decided against it thank goodness. All that money and time can be spent on lovely family holidays and activities instead. I know a couple of people who did up wrecks needing huge renovations and it was so stressful. Both times the DH got completely obsessed and spent every single minute for years of their DC's lives. One couple ended up divorced the other, the wife got really ill with all the stress.

I'd do it. Currently doing similar to our current house. Yes, it's been challenging at times. But now when I stand in my beautiful kitchen. It was worth it.

I'm also nosey and would love to see it!

I wouldn’t because I think it would be too much sacrifice for the children. They’d be spending the rest of pregnant and some of secondary having to live with the impact and changes to lifestyle and parents who are constantly working on the project, that they’d probably be roped into as well.

If a project was the only way to get on property ladder, get stability or someone else was doing all the work then I’d say go for it but it just seems like much too much sacrifice for the kids and I doubt it would contribute to any happy childhood memories.

I know you’ve already made your decision OP but thought I’d chip in.

Right now you have ample bedrooms and house is perfect, you have scope for saving for the future, be that for pension, investment, kids Uni fees, kids weddings and kids house deposits.

If anything similar in a better state would be financially out of bounds, relatives moving in is a certainty (and they’d give you inheritance from their properties), and you’ll definitely go ahead with your training and new venture with a higher pay packet then consider the house. If all of these boxes aren’t ticked then don’t consider it as it’s not worth it - the outgoings for this house on a monthly basis would be vastly greater on top of the new mortgage, and the amount of time taken could be better spent with your children.

It's often not so much being risk averse as knowing that it's going to be stress beyond belief. If I could go back in time I wouldn't have had anything to do with the fixer upper we did. It was over 6 months of living in a building site, more problems than were originally thought and too much money spent. I didn't feel any sense of achievement at the end , just relief. The next house we bought was new, I just couldn't face doing anything to another house. It's taken me 30 years to want to do anything major, and I'm being very careful with what I am doing here. It will be a line in the sand for me. This much and no more.

I wouldn't say I'm risk-averse much. I emigrated to a country I'd never set foot in for example. But I wouldn't do this in a million years! Your life sounds pretty comfortable, why put yourself through years of msiery and expenditure voluntarily?

Sorry you're facing this dilemma but you've just made even more confident in our recent decision to buy a much smaller property than we had hoped but it's got the most amazing outdoor space and garden for us with lots of potential to expand the house if we want to. You can make a house bigger but you can rarely extend the garden.

There must be some middle ground for you but I'm another vote for don't buy it.

We left London and fell for the romanticism of a big garden. It's bloody hard work,, costly - any equipment has to be on a commercial level, which also has the downside of being too heavy for me to manage so we've also had to get a weekly gardener or spend every weekend full time in the garden to try . Tree surgeon fees are a regular and expensive feature. Fencing, watering costs also on a massive scale just down to the sheer meterage.

The house is old and can't be retrofitted for insulation beyond a certain level. My kids are only a little older than yours and we are already contemplating how eye watering the running costs have become and what that would do to our pension years.

I would qualify and borrow/lease land if that's the fantasy. It's also nice to think of your parents moving in with you when they are hands on with grandkids and good company. Not so much when they come with substantial healthcare needs. Maybe look for a property where they can live independently in adapted accommodation long term.

£250k is a LOT of money for "doing up" a house.

The plot sounds amazing but I would have a look at getting a couple more estimates for the work.

A friend of mine did something similar and bought a 6 bedroom house which required a LOT of work but with beautiful grounds. Complete rewire, roof falling in etc... They don't regret it at all.

They spent money doing up one bit of the house first, that they could then live in, then gradually sorted the rest of it out.

The house had an annex that they rent out as an airbnb property which helps pay the mortgage. That way they aren't short of money each month.

I'd look carefully at the finances as you also need to be able to live.

@WatchingBenidorm - have to agree with the others and say no to buying that particular house at your current stage in life - instead keep looking for something that better fits with your family situation. I can totally see why it seems like the end result would be the dream, but I think the family as a whole would suffer and potentially be fucked in some ways by the time you got there.

Unless your builder is your dad or partner, you cannot trust them. I remember Madonna taking her builders to court and I said to DH - this is what puts me off renovations- if Madonna can’t get her builders to work to plan, what Hope do the rest of us have!!

Just no.

Oh no! I was so hoping you were going to say you were ignoring everyone's nay-saying. I'd buy the project house like a shot - it sounds absolutely fantastic. Though I am one for renovations - a finished house would bore me to death. It will cost more than you think it will, but the end result would be incredible (and it's never a bad idea to add value to a property). 25 mins walk to school is a positively good thing for children. My DC have only ever lived in renovations, and only one of them says they are definitely going to live in a new-build when they buy their own house.

I think you should expect to go way over budget as nothing goes to plan. Plus, if you are going to make a dream house then you won’t want to scrimp on the finish.

it all depends on your risk appetite. Could you move into a caravan on site to start with and so rent out your current house to offset any mortgage costs. Assuming that you intend to rent anyway then you could set up early with tenants.

OP, how do you expect an helpful answers without telling us your household income and how much you’re borrowing altogether. How much the house is and what is valuation once the work is done.

These kind of piece of string questions will
only invite the unhelpful answers you have been getting, trying to talk you out of buying your dream house.

If you want decent advice, give more details.

In your position I would be incredibly tempted by the fixer upper dream home scenario, if the mortgage repayments had enough headroom to account for interest rates continuing to go up.

That said, what if you committed to spending the money and doing the work, and then one of you got ill? Sorry to be such a downer but what if one of you had a long recovery from a car accident, or found yourself in a situation where you suddenly needed regular dialysis. Hopefully these things would never happen but your long term planning needs to take into account the rough as well as the smooth.

If you could live in the house for six months without doing any work, and afford it on one income, then definitely go for it. If you could scrape by, then probably go for it. If I've put cold chills down your spine, stay put in a house that sounds lovely. Maybe get on the waiting list for an allotment?

You literally describe living in the perfect family home - and being mortgage-free to boot! And then describe binning all that for a bigger house where you'll spend all these childhood years ignoring your DC and working on the house, then by the time it's done, they'll be the age to ignore you and then move out.

I mean, I like a meadow and a big house as much as the next person, but nah. Enjoy your perfect family life and being in countryside you don't own.

Again thank you for all of the responses. Everything that has been said has been rolling around in my head so it’s really good to get your opinions and experiences.

To answer some questions -

We would have to sell current house in order to buy this one.

We would be able to stay with parents during the worst of the work (we stayed with them for some of our previous work, they stayed with us during theirs).

I fully trust our builder, he is quite literally one in a million. He did our previous work and it was completed in the proposed timescale literally to the day, and the only increase in costs were down to us. I am aware of how unusual he is! He has estimated 250k to do the worst of the work, 4-500k in total but above the 250k can be done over time.

We would be paying £825k for the house. Taking into account fees and savings, we couldn’t afford it on less than £300k mortgage. This is affordable for us now and would still be if rates go up a couple of %. If they get close to 10% maybe not so much which is clearly a big concern.

I am obviously not quite ready to let go yet, I’ve booked a viewing with my dad today to get his slightly more experienced take on it - fully expecting him to say don’t touch it with a barge pole! But a little part of me keeps saying what it..?

I absolutely would... you have younger kids so you guys must still be young. So you will stay in your house forever because its "safe"? Then what? I understand why everyone on MN is considering financial security above all, but you are clearly feeling itchy in your house which you will inevitably move, so why not now when the perfect one comes up?

It sounds like you know the extent of what needs done, and have, as much as possible, avoided any nasty surprises in terms of costly fixes. Viewing is a must, you might see other issues that weren't apparent in the listing. A second viewing with your builder would be very wise too, if you still like it after the first viewing.
DP likes houses in need of work, and would happily buy one. To be honest, I would too, but we have 2 very young children and getting the work done around them would be too time consuming and difficult. Our compromise is he gets to buy rentals in need of work, and maybe we'll buy one for ourselves when the kids are older! DP does it more to make profit, but it is a good bonus - if you buy and then do ever sell it you'll make a fantastic profit if it's move-in ready.

So what is your household income and what would be the monthly mortgage repayment? How much do you expect the finished product to be worth?

Being mortgage free is very freeing. It removes one of the biggest stresses in your life.

What does your partner say? Are they happy taking on the burden of a mortgage again?

How old are you both? Are either of you looking to drop hours at work?

When I had a mortgage, I would worry every month about paying it, and while my wife wasn't working the burden of it fell on me.