To think our first house purchase should be our forever home?

[heydorothy]

There’s hardly any flats available near where we live. I know 20 years ago-10 years ago even, it made sense for people to buy small and build lots of equity then move up the ladder to somewhere bigger etc. It just doesn’t seem practical now.

House prices are stagnating now but obviously still very high. I wouldn’t say they’re gaining value like before at all. We have our deposit but renting currently as it is cheaper to do so while interest rates are sky high. When we do move, we’ll have our first DC to think about too.

AIBU to look for no less than a 3 bed / buy as big as we can afford to? I am neurodivergent and moving frequently causes me stress and it would be nice to just put down roots somewhere that feels permanent enough. We could buy a two bed but then we would likely have to move again, fork out for another set of legal fees and stamp duty.

It comes down to what you can afford and whether you think house prices will fall or rise.

You arent promised equity.

The sooner you are on the ladder the sooner you pay your own mortgage.

Look at it like this, in 5 years, either you'll make a saving by having waited or youll be 5 years into paying your own mortgage. One is a gamble, the other is a guarantee. If you can afford it now then the only thing you gain by waiting is possibly money.

It makes sense to buy somewhere that you can stay in for a good long while. Moving is expensive and who wants to keep paying stamp duty every few years?!

Exactly & in this current climate building equity will likely take a while.

I had a flat, but this is our second house together. I bought at a good time, and we overpaid the mortgage on the last house. As a consequence, we decided to push as far as we could to try to go for a forever house. We've been in it for 12 years now. We could maybe have got something smaller, with less needing to be done, but it won't have been in as nice an area, and I think we'd have needed to move again. Also, moving is expensive! In excess of 10k last time once you factor in stamp duty.

Do what works for you.

Buy what you can afford. If that’s a 3 bed then yes go for it. But don’t make the mistake of waiting years to be able to afford the house you want, as house prices will rise again and you’ll be playing catch up. Buy what you can afford now.

We bought a 3 bed, fixer upper as our first house because it’s all we could afford. We bought 7 years ago. What we needed 7 years ago isn’t what we need now, even as a 3 bed. Moving house is stressful, stamp duty is expensive but there isn’t one home that will see you through your entire life. If you can’t afford to move in the future, you’ll make it work, otherwise you’ll move again when you need something else from your house.

So many different questions.

To your title - well, very few people can afford to buy the house of their dreams as their first purchase. Of course, if you can, then it would make sense to.

To your "interest rates are sky high" comment. No they aren't, they have returned to a much more 'normal' rate, after a long period of being historically and unsustainably low.

If you have your deposit saved, then it really doesn't make sense to be paying rent, when you could be starting to pay down a mortgage. That is just dead money to you month after month, whilst your landlord gets to pay off their mortgage.

AIBU to look for no less than a 3 bed / buy as big as we can afford to?

No, of course not. It makes sense to buy the biggest, or at least the best you can afford. (So location can be more important than size for many people).

To your "interest rates are sky high" comment. No they aren't, they have returned to a much more 'normal' rate, after a long period of being historically and unsustainably low

It’s not normal to have high house prices with high ish rates though. After all 16% of 100k has the same impact that 5% of 300k does.

I don't know about forever home, but certainly going for a big as you can afford in an area you are happy with is always s good principle.

You can try getting a flat with the potential to convert the loft. These flats are rare

Buy the biggest/best you can afford.

Stamp duty, moving fees, decorating to your taste, changing furniture to fit new shapes all costs lots.

Most people can't afford to buy a 3 bed house as their first home, but of course YANBU if you can afford it and want to do so.

Buy the biggest you can providing you can afford the potential increases in interest.

We bought a 3 bed detached and whilst we always thought we would go bigger it's looking unlikely. We have enough room for the 4 of us and we always planned to have 2 kids. It's not quite big enough downstairs in an ideal world but it's manageable. We are going to look into an extension too which will be a lot cheaper than moving if we are approved.

I think had we gone for a 2 bed we would still be in the position of not being able to buy bigger and we would be massively struggling for space in the long run.

Our first house was a 3 bed. I wouldn't have bought a 2 bed either. I wouldn't necessarily think your first house should be your forever home, but I'd look for a 3 bed minimum if I could afford it. You won't outgrow it if you have 2 kids.

The house we are currently in is a long term buy - at least 15 years.
We had to consider primary and secondary schools plus links to London.
OP what life stage are you at? Do you have DC? Will you need to factor schools or commuting?

Anyone with any financial sense leverages themselves up the ladder until they get what they want.
Buying a forever home as your first purchase is a fairly daft notion for most people.

You are probably not able to make the decision now on a so called forever home.
Time and events will decide for you.

Anyone with any financial sense leverages themselves up the ladder until they get what they want.

Nonsense, for many the ladder doesn’t really exist anymore. Stamp duty costs are a big factor

Buy as big as you can without overstretching your money, look back in history at how the bank rate went up. Since my first ‘forever’ home I have moved countries 3 times, I would never have imagined that then but nothing can be guaranteed.

We bought the cheapest house around with a 3rd bedroom. The 3rd bedroom was ridiculously tiny, it needed a lot of work, and the area wasn't the best but these compromises were what made it affordable.

Financially and practically it actually would have been better to get a "better" 2 bed. The amount of work we had to put in didn't really pay back when we ended up having to sell soon after anyway. For me having that 3rd bedroom brought with it a sense of security that I really valued so it was worth it, but for a lot of people it probably wouldn't have been the right decision.

We bought a 5 bed because we could afford it and we loved the house and loved the street. It was a great price and we are very happy here. I have moved 18 times between uni and moving around for work. I am never moving again. We are gradually doing the house up to our taste and enjoying the process. My partner was messed around by his buyer to such an extent that we never want to put another house on the market.

In the 60s many couples moved into either parents' Bose in order to save for a deposit.
It's nothing new.

The late 70s/early 80s saw couples buying their first homes straight away ... for many.

The demand of women, and rightly so, meant that women's salaries were included in the mortgage applications.
The downside of this was that higher spending power meant higher mortgages which resulted in higher prices.

Now women want to stay at home for a lot longer, but house prices are still unreachable.

There needs to be a massive sea change.

If the question is partly a financial decision, it's worth doing some calculations. Remember that there are two ways in which you "move up" the ladder as a homeowner: a big chunk of your mortgage is actually returning to you and paying off your loan, and house prices consistently increase in the medium to long term. This means that generally you end up with a tidy lump sum in your hand when you sell and are looking to put a deposit on your next place. Yes moving costs money but generally nothing like as much as what you got back by paying your mortgage and house price rises. I'm on my 3rd place, it cost nearly three times the purchase price of my first, but I was able to put down a deposit pretty much equal to the price of my first flat (which I bought in the 2000s on a 95% mortgage!) simply through paying back my mortgage and house price increases. And I wasn't even particularly lucky with the housing market - at both times I bought when house prices were high. Probably the best "investment" I made was to buy places that were well within my budget then overpay the mortgage.

Buy the best house you can afford.

People don't buy small and move up because it's the done thing, they buy what they can afford.

Do you have the deposit for a more expensive house? Can you afford the larger mortgage?

Husband and I have moved a lot and were mid 30s when we bought, we went straight for a family home. Not sure if it's forever but if we moved it would be likely because we are relocating

I'd say do what you can to make your life easiest. I also hate moving, only bought twice (I'm 51 first house bought in 2001). When our kids got a bit older we ended up remodelling our house because I didn't want to move, Both kids ND and probably DH too. We're all looking forward to move somewhere else as our forever home when they've finished college (about 7-8 years probably) and then we all want to relocate to the countryside - currently in a lovely desirable area but it's busy ... we want quiet