To want to move house

[Namechange20002]

Not sure if this is an AIBU or more of a WWYD...might be a long one!

A lot of things would need to go right for this to be a realistic option, but need opinions/thoughts on whether to stay put in our current house which is 30 years old, or move to a new build up the road. For info we have 3 young children.

Both houses are a similar size (4 bed detached, all double bedrooms, separate study for home working), similar price, large garden, nice area, kids would stay in the same school.

Current house is only 30 years old but is costing us a fortune. It's not energy efficient at all and currently costs £400 a month in Gas/Elec alone. On top of that there is just so much money we still need to spend to make it as nice as the new build would be.
Needs new kitchen, new boiler, main bathroom refurb, insulation in loft, front driveway needs doing, patio needs repointing, fence needs replacing.
On top of that it's a south facing garden that we absolutely hate (but someone else would love), it's just too hot and there's no shade. There's also a boiling hot conservatory that we can't even use unless we spend even more money to get the roof done or knock it down.

The integral double garage was converted into a large room, which we are using as a playroom, so yes this has been an amazing asset to have, but it just means that our lounge goes unused and the playroom feels cut off from the rest of the house. The dining room is a separate room (not next to the kitchen) and the kitchen is too small for table, which we work around, but not ideal as a family.
One of the bedrooms is huge but has a sloping ceiling, which makes half the room effectively unusable, and I just generally hate this room!
We've also lost out on the storage space that we would have had from a double garage, although there is a lot of storage space dotted around the house and a shed in the garden.

There are no other young families/young children on our road, all the neighbours are older with adult children. Neighbours are friendly but cliquey. We're very overlooked front and back. The house and garden generally is taking up a lot of time and money to maintain.

New build house would obviously cost us money in moving fees, optional extras upgrades etc (we would try to get stamp duty paid as an incentive) but the costs would be nowhere near as much as we would need to pay out for our current house, even just the immediate issues alone (fence/boiler/utility costs).
All rooms are doubles and good sizes, bedroom 2 also has an ensuite so would be perfect for our daughter as she gets older. Boys can share the main bathroom which sits between what would be their two bedrooms.
The house has a double garage so lots of storage (also double length driveway so 4 parking spaces), no playroom obviously but a huge kitchen/dining/family room along the back of the house. It also has a bigger lounge that would actually get used. House isn't overlooked at all (front or back), east facing garden which is perfect for us.
I feel that the maintenance of the house and garden would be so much less for us in both time and money.

So...WWYD??

You are being unreasonable = stay where you are
You are NOT being unreasonable = go for the new build

What's the energy rating of the new house?

Sounds like a no-brainer to me.

We moved into a newbuild just over two years ago and it is as you say, all new and super insulated resulting in v.small utility bills.

Good sized plot, well designed & constructed, generous sized rooms (with nice high ceilings), plenty of storage, more than sufficient private parking & garage, nice sized garden.
Having previously owned houses built in the 1930's, 1950's & 1970's, I know which I prefer.

New builds get a bad press on here but if you do your research and buy a well designed house from a good builder they make a whole lot of sense.

Not sure yet on the new one, but our current house is energy rating D with potential for C if we got the loft insulation done

It sounds like you really want to move. All your positives are around the new house. How long will it take to sell your current house?

You sound convinced, OP. What is stopping you?

If you can sell your house -
Go for it.
But our house is slightly older - loft and cavity wall insulation - makes a huge difference- and you will still need ti do this to your new build
A 30 year old house is still very modern
Double glazed?

I would stay where I was and spend the money on improvements but it does sound like you have already made your mind up.

What does your partner/husband/wife think?

Not sure yet on the new one, but our current house is energy rating D with potential for C if we got the loft insulation done

Well this is the key thing to find out by the sounds of it. Because it could be that gas/leccy does just cost a bomb for a big family in a big house and this other place might not be much cheaper that way.

You don't say (unless I missed it) if you can comfortably afford to move to the new place and you're not making your current house sound like a great buy. Why would someone buy your house and not one of the much better new builds? If the numbers all stack up and you could offload yours cheap enough to someone who couldn't afford the new build and didn't see the issues with yours, then that's viable.

It may be tricky though, as 'newish' (eg 30yo) houses tend to fall between the appeal of brand new and period for people who have a choice, and it doesn't sound like yours will be a steal as, despite the issues you have with it, it's a big house and a buy will have to have decent chunk of cash but also not mind the lack of kitchen diner and the other stumbling blocks that make it not the dream.

So if the ratings and the sums stack up, then absolutely, it sounds like a move worth making. But if they don't, then you're still in a good house and the main thing to sort is the insulation and any other way to get those bills down.

If someone could wave a magic wand and we’d instantly be in the new house now, I would say yes do it! What’s making me hesitate is the general faff and stress of selling the house and organising the move. I’ve only ever moved before to progress up the property ladder, never to just move to a very similar house in the same area. Also a lot would need to fall into place for it to happen, so I don’t want to go all in and say yes let’s do it, for it then to not work out.

When me and DH sat down to do a pros and cons list we were surprised at how in favour of the new house it was. It definitely gives us things that our current house doesn’t and solves all the areas we don’t like about the current house.
The only positive for current house is the playroom. As the children get older would we regret losing this additional downstairs space, or do teenagers prefer to spend most of their time in their room or out of the house?

In terms of selling our current house, that is one of the unknowns. Could we sell it in time and at the right price to get the new build house we want.
On the surface our house would be very sellable. It’s large and looks nice, it doesn’t immediately look like it needs a lot of work. Also areas that I hate other people might love, like the south facing garden and the conservatory.
Areas that bother us now we didn’t give much thought to when we bought it, such as the sloping ceiling in the bedroom and no garage.

I think the best approach might be to continue with the process of enquiring re: porting the mortgage, what incentives house builder will give, what our house would sell for etc and if we can go with their “smooth move” scheme.
We might stumble at the first hurdle, but we won’t know until we try.

I personally wouldn't want a new build and find the idea of doing up my kitchen etc the way I want it much more attractive. However it seems like the new house offers you everything you want so I can't see why you wouldn't go for it. We are about to move to an objectively much less nice house but it is perfect for us and cheaper. It has definitely been a massive faff trying to sell etc and the thought of the actual packing is stressful (though have a secret hope it will force DP to properly declutter!) but given your long list of pros that will soon outweigh the moving hassle

Is it a Linden house you are hoping to buy?

We've recently moved from an objectively desirable house (it sold v fast) into an area and house configuration that suits our family so much better. We still compare/contrast how much more comfortable our day-to-day is in the new house compared to the old one.

It sounds like this would be a similar experience for your family, so why not work to make it happen? Good luck.

@pinkdelight has wrapped this up perfectly I would say. I was reading your OP and thinking to myself why would anyone want your current house with the way you describe it, it sounds terrible 😂. But as others have said, you do seem to have made up your mind, though if you decide to sell, for the love of god don’t show people round yourself with your beautifully descriptive dialogue about your house 😂.

I am of course joking with my tone there, but OP, is there anything else you can do to turn this into a home you love, as simple as getting insulation and then a bit of decorating, maybe some cheaply sourced home furnishings to change the look, and get some plants/trees and a nice awning for the garden. I say this as someone who only after three years of despising our home, bought in a rush in 2021, when the market was crazy, has only just started to love the place after making it our own, with planting the garden and changing the look. It’s worth some thought anyway.

Yes I would definitely have to work on my sales pitch 😂😂

I do like our house, and if we ended up staying then there’s definitely things we could do to make it work better for us. What I’m struggling with is the amount of money this would take (more money than we have), when there’s a house nearby that’s affordable and seemingly has everything we want.
The new build that we’re interested in has recently had its price dropped to an affordable one for us, any future houses of that type on the development will definitely be out of our price range. So our option is go for this specific house or stay put.

I think you’ve actually summed up exactly how I feel when I think about living in the new house. Our day-to-day life would just work so much better in the new house: the layout, the position of the garden, the privacy.

Im definitely more in favour of moving than staying (which I think everyone’s picked up on) it’s just seeing if we can get the logistics of it all to work now 🤞

Not to pee on your parade but they won’t allow you to reserve a new build until your house is SSTC so don’t set your heart on it. Get yours on the market quickly or you may not even have the chance for this to be a decision.

We'd be looking to use their smooth move option, so you can reserve while they instruct an estate agent to sell it quickly. You get 4 weeks to sell, then if it doesn't you would need to agree a price drop and you get another 4 weeks.
Needing to sell ours quickly is a big sticking point in everything needing to align for this to even be an option. Houses our size don't tend to be the ones that fly off the shelf!

We have been through the same situation, but we upgraded so much that we were able to part ex (needs to be 30% more rather than a sideways move). There are a few who have has the easy move on which have fallen through and been re marketed around us.

The higher end of the market is where selling has become really tough.

What is stopping you from just putting your house on the market to see what happens? You can always take it off if you decide/it doesn’t sell. We have actually just done that because the market is slow where we are but that might not be the case for you, it sounds like there is a lot going for it.

the only thing I would say is we did have a new build, things went wrong all the time and when it came to selling it was a pain because why buy a new build someone else has lived in when there are so many going up and you can buy your own and get the specs how you like. So if it’s not for you in the end I think it can be quite hard to move on (but again that’s just where we live atm)

I think it’s because we would only really want this one particular house on the new development. It’s been on a while and they’ve reduced it twice, so it’s now affordable for us. So if we didn’t get it then we would have to just stay where we are for now. If we go with their smooth move scheme it allows us to reserve it straight away and buys us some time to sell ours, so it stops someone else reserving it while we try and sell.

Another issue with where we live now, which I didn’t really go into, is the neighbours. We moved into a group of houses where all the neighbours are long term friends, it’s all very cliquey and overbearing. I’m a very private person, extremely introverted, and I find it so hard to deal with on a daily basis, it’s quite draining. So if our house went up for sale we would be endlessly questioned, and then if we ended up not being able to sell and had to stay here…it honestly gives me anxiety just thinking about the comments and the gossiping. Along with the house itself, it’s a huge reason why I want to move away, and the new house seems to be in such a private position.

A new build today will be very well insulated (walls, floor, loft) to comply with the latest building regulations. It should be rated A or B on its EPC. Probably the only energy efficiency improvements which could be added would be solar panels and/or heat pump.

"and you will still need to do this in your new build"

No you don't.
A new build is built to comply with strict insulation standards and the insulation levels are very high.

Just an update for anyone that’s interested…we went to look at the new build house and have decided to stay where we are. The house felt significantly smaller than ours and I think we would definitely regret giving up the space we have now, particularly as the kids get older. It’s also at the edge of the estate and close to the main 40mph road that runs next to the development. We have cats and there’s a huge risk of them venturing that way and getting knocked down. So overall not the house for us.

Plans are underway to change things in the house to suit us better.
I moved the furniture around in the bedroom with the sloping ceiling to put the double bed under the slope, and it’s massively opened up the room, so a nice easy fix there!
We also looked into converting the conservatory roof to lightweight tiles and it wasn’t as expensive as we’d been thinking, so we’re booked in to have that done at the end of August and will take out the internal sliding door between the conservatory and current dining room to create a lovely large room that leads out to the garden.

With the conservatory becoming an actual usable room we then also have a solution to reconfigure the downstairs to work better for us. This would involve knocking down an internal wall, so will need to investigate the cost of this to see at what point it will be feasible. But we would be able to do that without needing to touch the kitchen, so could just get the kitchen replaced at a much later date.
So the new opened up dining room/conservatory will become the family room, which will be lovely for the kids to have the doors opening straight out to the garden. Current playroom that feels cut off from the rest of the house will become the office room. Current office (which is next to the kitchen) will have the wall knocked down to become the kitchen/dining room.

Then as and when we have the money we’ll do other areas like the front garden, main bathroom etc. Things I can’t change, such as the neighbours, I just need to change my mindset on that. We could definitely be a much worse situation than having neighbours that are “too friendly”, so I’ve given my head a good wobble on that one 😂

Sounds like a great result. Good luck with it!