To ask if you love your house and could imagine staying forever

[valianttortoise]

Or if various bits of it endlessly stress you out and you want to escape one day

And is this what you expected when you moved in?

I love our home but fear our children will outgrow it. I would love to be able to go somewhere bigger for their teenage years and then return once they’ve moved out.

I hate this house. I hate every brick. I hate every blade of grass. For over 20 years I've said that if my wife died before me, I would demolish the house and sow the land with salt.

Well, my wife HAS died, and I'm still in the house. But the big problem is, where would I go. I've got to live somewhere, and I will soon be 80. I have no energy. I need money from the sale of the house, so demolishing it is out of the question.

I like the neighbourhood, I like the neighbours. There is a retirement home close by, very fancy, expensive, but the average resident is 83. If I move in with a bunch of people older than I am, I will become elderly prematurely.

So, I'm still here. One of the big regrets of my life is that I've never lived in a decent home.

We've lived in our house for 14 years. During our time it has had a new roof, new windows & exterior doors, rebuilt extension, new kitchen & bathroom, new heating and a complete rewire. It is now warm, dry, secure & comfortable. In a lovely village, overlooking pasture & woodland.

It's been the perfect family home for ds to grow up in, plenty of space, but will be too large for me when he leaves. I should really downsize.

The trouble is, by the time I've paid stamp duty & moving costs, and then sorted all the inevitable problems of a different house, I might as well stay where I am.

Gosh, what a sad situation. But you like the area and your neighbours.

Can you identify what exactly you dislike & change it. Cheaper to refit & redecorate than move. Change the colour scheme, swap the rooms around, have some fun with it. 😊

Coming from a life of constantly being moved when a kid 22 moves in 17 years I knew when I found the house and area I wanted I wasn't moving. Found it about 15 years ago and will never ever move again. Hubby and I even know what we will do to it once kids up and go to make it better for when we get old lol to stay to the end

It sounds like you might be the rich one if you’re paying £30k in tax if you move.

What is your house like now @valianttortoise

i love my house now (15 years) and a similar age but not sure could be here forever

@CanadianJohn with respect the average age is 4-5 years older than you which makes you the age. You hate your house what is the risk

having seen my grandmothers move into retirement villages with flats I will definitely do that far better than a nursery home which both avoided and the warden onsite was vital. Also much much easier to do the sorting for my parents than it was when DH Dad died and left a great big house to sort

For me is there a move before that I think yes when the kids move - we moved here for schools etc I would like perhaps somewhere else in between

I also dislike the phrase “forever home”: I find it toe-curlingly twee and it’s unrealistic to expect to be able to foresee the future.

I love my home, although there are many things I would like to improve upon in it. But mainly I just can’t face the stress of moving again.

I absolutely love my house, it’s my realistic dream house (I say realistic because I could certainly dream up more 😂 but it’s the kind of home I’ve wanted for myself since a child). It gives me great pride, and despite being here for 5 years I’ve said to myself at least once a day “I love my home”.

I’m not sure we will be here forever though due to the area, we’ll certainly see out raising the kids here because its perfect for that and we moved for stability for the kids, but I’m not sure it’s where we see ourselves being in the next phase of life. I wish I could pick it up and move it elsewhere!

What I’ve always disliked is the concept of ‘going home’ when home refers to your childhood home, not your current one.

Maybe partly because we moved quite often when I was a child & also my parents moved several times once I’d left home, so there’s no one place I’d pick out. But it somehow feels very sad to think of the place you live in not being properly ‘home’.

Finally being able to buy my own home after divorce & years of renting & lodging was an enormous thing for me & I want it to be forever. I know exactly what you mean about not wanting to go through all the stress of moving again though!

My house is great and we are very lucky to live in it (inherited from family, couldn’t afford it otherwise) although it does need work.

However when I retire I want to move to central London and spend my days walking to all the cinemas, museums, theatres, parks and cafes. A Bloomsbury townhouse would be the dream but realistically probably a flat!

That's interesting. DH's parents bought their house in 1962 and MIL still lives there. DH left at 18 but does think of that house as "home" although he also thinks of our house here as "home" and that in France as "home".

My parents divorced when I was 12 and lived in two houses until then, mother moved to another with husband 2 and then another with husband 3. I therefore have never thought of my mother's house as home and I find that rather sad.

We moved when the DC were 16 and 19. I think they regard our house as home but not the area. I'll have to ask.

@EmpressaurusKitty

Maybe partly because we moved quite often when I was a child & also my parents moved several times once I’d left home, so there’s no one place I’d pick out. But it somehow feels very sad to think of the place you live in not being properly ‘home’.

I agree: while I don't think moving house all the time is ideal, I think people overstate the value of a single family home. I think it makes people over-dependent on a single location.

We moved five or six times between my infancy and my leaving home and in some ways I think it was a good thing: if I'd only ever lived in one place I think I'd have lacked resilience when it came to building my own life.

Making somewhere you wouldn't necessarily have chosen feel like "home" is an important life skill for young people who, let's face it, are never going to have a "forever home" from the getgo.

If we had loads more money, I'd like somewhere bigger. I do love my house though. The location is perfect and I like all the neighbours. I suspect we'll move one day but I think I'd be happy here forever.

I bought my flat 3 years ago. I thought it was perfect, and the location was and still is. But...I knew within a few weeks that it was not the place for me I didn't realise the top floor flats drip on to my courtyard. And if its not dripping from rain (and it rains a LOT here), it's from the a/c units. Drip drip drip, constant. Infuriating. It's also darker than I thought - I viewed in spring just before the leaves were really coming out.

I've spend good money updating it throughout, but Im still annoyed with it so have got it on the market from next week. In fact, it's picture day tomorrow! I'd happily buy again in the same complex though, just higher up.

Our house is great, but over the past decade the immediate neighbours (only 3 other houses on shared drive) have got worse. We’ve made the effort to create a lovely home… but want to move because of the awful neighbours. Makes me angry thinking about it.

My house is very desirable but I no longer want to live in the area and want to move to a town 55 miles away.
I resent keeping the garden tidy and spending money on routine maintenance. I have no interest in changing any of the rooms - all decorating is done however.

I'm just waiting for a couple of things that will probably be sorted in the next year or so

I just moved house on Friday, and other than a few things that need repairing, I really could imagine living here forever. It's a gorgeous house, and will be even more gorgeous once we've decorated it to our liking.

That’s interesting too.

Maybe if I’d lived in the same place through my childhood & my parents had kept it, I’d feel differently.

I’m always jealous of those American shows and films that have their childhood bedrooms preserved, I’m sure it’s not common, but I’d love to go back to my teenage bedroom when visiting my parents!

I made a mistake above, they bought it in 1960!

DH's bedroom is untouched. His books and toys and all his exercise books are still there. He's 63. It also hasn't been decirated fkr over 60 years and the curtains are 60 years old. It's bizarre - the house that time forgot.

I love my house.

I hate the area. It’s a shithole but it’s the only place we can afford.

If we moved to a better area, we’d have half the house for same money and it would need doing up.

We had to move 150 miles across the country to be able to afford to live in this horrible area, nowhere else we could afford after 20 years of renting in London.

So we are staying.

I love our house, we have been here 10 years and I still smile when i pull up on the drive. It. Isnt perfect, there are things I would change (larger bathroom and a walk in shower for example) but it works for us.

we won’t stay forever though. My DH has had itchy feet for a move for a few years but we agreed to stay until youngest finishes college which is next summer. I imagine he will really want a change then.

Not sure that place exists, tbh. Only difference is what they get drunk on!

Your first sentence is lovely, made me smile. 3 months in (though we’ve owned the place for 2 years while we tried to sell the house!) we feel like that. Hope we’re still as happy as you in 10 years.