To never move from my starter home?

[namechange59482]

We bought our house 6 years ago as a starter home. It's a 3 bedroom terrace with a garden. The third bedroom is a box room so is tiny. Since we have moved in we have had two DC a girl and boy.
It's in a good location for us very close to schools and reasonable distance to both our parents.
With it being an old house there have been a few issues and we have had to spend more than we wanted. We have now discovered another issue which is going to cost us.
I have looked at the market if we ever move we atleast would want 3 reasonable sized rooms and to stay within the area. The issue is whilst we could possibly afford the mortgage of a bigger house it would be our absolute maximum. At the moment we have managed to spend on this house because we have the equity to occasionally borrow abit and also have been able to save. We will definitely need to borrow for this latest issue.
I feel it has come to the point now we either move or spend. I do feel really we have no choice but to stay here. If we choose to sell the buyer would probably try to knock a lot off the price. I'm also concerned if we did move there is no guarantee the new house wouldn't have its own new set of issues.
The thought of how much we have may now spent on this house to move in a few years also seems ridiculous.
Would stay put in these circumstances?

I hear you saying what you would like but not what is best for the child who gets the box room . Once you are a parent you can’t just go for what you want - there’s always other people to now consider .
if you can’t find a way to make the box room bigger then I would move. Or put yourself in there and let the kid have the bigger room as that’s where they spend all their time .

I did this too.

I don't see the point of large houses especially with high energy costs.

A lot of people buy large houses because they want to show them off to other people.

@IvorTheEngineDriver a lot of new houses have several bedrooms of that size- and they don't count them as box rooms either !!

A friend of mine in a small terrace with a 3rd bedroom like you describe - IIRC only about 8 feet by six, did manage with a son and daughter until they left to go to university - both incidentally to Oxford.
Obviously she’d have loved more space, but it’s a relatively very expensive area so they made it work - I dare say by relentless, regular decluttering.

I live in London. Not using the box room as a bedroom is a luxury. Most families I know have children in a box room (if they are lucky enough to even have a box room).

The issue here is the tiny box room, so someone gets that, and often the youngest gets screwed. For some reason folks think oh the eldest deserves or needs it more, which is silly.

the thing is I’m not sure you can afford to move, that’s the issue. So if you cannot realistically afford it, then stay put.

We are in a similar situation, and decided not to move. The location is perfect for so many reasons and we can't afford to upsize here we would have to move further away from school, DHs job and the train station for when I need to go into London.

We are building a 'garden room' so I can move my office out there and the kids can have a hang out area. they are currently sharing a room as I need an office. They're happy with this for now but I can see that that is going to change soon as they want their privacy. So one of them will have the smaller room which is 10x8.

When people say teenagers what they actually mean is two adult sized children and their clothing, coats and shoes become adult sized from around 13. As the only female in this house my shoes are a size 5, the men in this house, ie Dh, Ds1 and Ds2 have shoes either sized 10s or size 11s and they have more than one pair each obviously. Your children will need a place to do their homework too so all things considered you have to work out if this house can accommodate that.

We did move when the children were in primary but that was to get into the catchment of a good secondary. We considered the above when moving and chose a house that had space for the children away from us that wasn't their bedrooms.

Even if you never intend to move, keep an eye on the housing market just in case something happens that means you need to move. My friend has a box room for her youngest who is 16, he spends half his life at other people's houses as it is easier to fit 6 man sized children into a bedroom big enough to accommodate them rather than his box room.

@namechange59482

My apologies if this has already been answered but do you have the headspace to extend into the loft? If so you'd gain quite a bit more space (extra bedrooms, bathroom/shower rooms, study?).

If that's possibility that might work better for you than effectively starting again elsewhere? 🌹