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 absolutely love our home. We have renovated and had an extension in this last year so it's (almost) perfect now!

It is a gorgeous Victorian terraced in a lovely village with fantastic walking right from our front door and some great country pubs and within walking distance.

At some point in the future I would love to live by the sea though!

The house we’re in was always supposed to be a ‘starter’ house and I didn’t even love it when we bought it, it just got us out of our rental and on to the ladder. And it’s in a great area. We’ve been here 8 years, I imagine we’ll be here another 3 just savings wise but the next house I really, really want to love it!! I have a lengthy wish list!

Argh- not sure- think I’m in a toxic relationship with it. I love it and it ticks all the boxes but the renovation stress is major. Also it’s not a house to be old in so I think it’s 20 years and then it’s someone else’s and I’m downsizing to a modern lock up and leave.

Too much renovation stress with my house. It has a lack of storage so we have chests of drawers everywhere for now and I long for built in storage for our things. I think the house stresses me out but we are stuck. It is also draining our finances through the renovation and bills because it is expensive to heat.

We live in a big, old and objectively beautiful house that many people would want, but I dream about a smaller new build that is done.

DH and I downsized 5 years ago from a very large 4 bed house to a 3 bed apartment, with balcony, roof terrace, lift, great views, nice (quiet) neighbours and 2 minutes to public transport. Walking distance to local shopping (I'm in a European city). We were 58 and it took ages to persuade DH to move from our big house, which I had never been happy in. He has no regrets whatsoever about downsizing now. I love it in this flat. Love it love it love it.

But now we're in our sixties we know the writing is on the wall. We live in Europe, and with our DC (annoyingly) settled in the UK, and elderly parents getting evermore frail, we know that we should move back so we're planning to do that in the next 12 months.

Just need to find somewhere we'll be welcome - we've lived overseas for 40 years and have no clue how to fit in to current UK life. The classic expat problem - moral of the story, don't stay overseas so long!

God, no. Moved here because it was practical for a second toilet. Knew I wasn't that keen on it.
Hate it, my horrible neighbours were off with me on day 1, hate the lack of parking, hate the skanky fly-tippers. I think of it like a cupboard with beds, not a home.
I really don't know how I will afford to move. But the thought of living here for the rest of my life breaks me.

I suspect that my current house is our "forever" (I'm not sure if other people take that to genuinely mean forever, in my mind it means a big chunk of your life, such as 30s-60s) I would love to upsize once more (get an extra bedroom and a bigger garden) but realistically the area I am in the jump between a reasonable 4 bed to a 5 bed with a big garden is huge, think £700k to £1.5m type jump. It seems silly to move and spend all the money on costs for a house that really isn't much better or would still need loads spent to get it to where we want. So yes likely will be here for 20+ years at least.

I love it and I manage my expectations: there will always be something I want but it will always have drawbacks so I'm choosing to be happy.

We could buy bigger. Pros are obviously space, easier to host and possibly equity in future.

Cons are cost, extra cleaning, less money for fancier life now (currently we could go abroad every summer without thinking about it). Getting more space also means a longer commute for everyone for work and school and may write off DD being able to walk to secondary which I think is important for her independence.

It would also probably be a temporary home until DD chooses a permanent location to live as an adult, at which point we would move anyway. We are also not really committing to UK. Considering selling and travelling in early retirement to dispose of assets early.

We also have the weird factor of having the smallest house out of our friends but the biggest out of our families, so sizing up would mean our "big house" would suddenly scream mansion money to our family (which is practical and still a normal house but embarrassing to me)

Not committing money now means we have more choices of e.g. private school or moving catchment or just buying DD a house when she is ready, so upgrading isn't the previous choice right now.

Plus I love our house. It is a perfectly good size, we just can't e.g. have chickens now! But chickens come woth outdoor cleaning and so the cycle of procrastination continues!

I'd never move, it's just a huge expense and hassle. Our house is far from perfect but we moved around a lot before settling here and my kids have grown up here so this feels like home now. The idea of starting all over again doesn't appeal at all. We live in a really good area and we'd never get anything as good as our house for the price round here because it's ex council and that keeps the price lower. We have a big garden that I love and would never get that if we sold. We've been here 20 plus years already.

My home is fairly basic, but it's good enough. I never really thought about moving.

I love my house but hate my neighbour so sadly will be forced out before long :(

We moved 6 months ago, with 2 kids under 3, into what I hope will be our home for the next 30+ years. It needs some work doing to it to get it configured to what we want long term, but the bones of it are good and we are sooo much happier than where we were before.

I would like to stay in it as long as possible. PILs have recently downsized, right at the time when their kids are having kids, and we are now too many people to all fit into their house, yet that is where everyone still wants to gravitate to for big family get togethers. I hope to stay here long enough to have grandkids running around, but I guess eventually it will be too big, the stairs too difficult to manage. So probably at least one more move before I pop my clogs.

Really like our house, spent a lot of money on it, the location is great. But frankly at some point it will be too large for the 2 of us and also I want more garden when I retire.

We bought our house with the intention of paying off the e mortgage early, renovating it to our exact standards and tastes and staying here forever. That’s exactly what we’ve done and providing we don’t divorce or something else cataclysmic happening then we’ll love our lives here. We’re in such a fortunate position to be in a house that’s exactly how we want it, all paid off and the lifestyle that affords us and our son in terms or travel and materialistically that it would be madness to give that up!

Yes, the concept on one home being 'forever'.

Regardless of if you have 3 dc, 8 dc, or are childfree, unless you have an unfortunate accident or terminal illness or something like an aneurysm / stroke / heart attack that kills you young, then all of us will age. What may seem idyllic at 30 is likely to be challenging at 80.

There are regularly threads on here from people wondering how to mange rurally when they are no longer able to drive, for just one example.

We have moved quite a lot. I really like the location and style of our current house, so we may not move again.
However, I see a home as a base to come back to after work, holidays, days out, etc so it doesn't matter if we move or not, as long as we get to be out and about exploring other places, and the house is meeting our needs, we will stay.

If I thought this was our house for keeps, for the rest of our lives, I think I'd be plunged into a deeper house-depression than I'm already experiencing! But then I think the concept of the 'Forever House' is twee and unrealistic, like others here. Things change.

I loathe moving and we accumulate clutter and Stuff with appalling rapidity, so moving isn't going to be easy but I cannot stand thinking we might be here indefinitely. It's damp in as many ways as it is possible to be damp, and I've developed neuroses about the many ways in which I fear it's falling apart. I even suspect we have some subsidence. Therapy would almost certainly be cheaper than moving but nobody would buy it like this in any case!

Maybe, when we finally manage to raise the money to fix everything that needs fixing, I'll feel better about it but I doubt it. We've only ever been able to spend money on fixing things and maintenance, not on making it 'better' (new kitchen, extension, etc) which is a good way to start to resent a house. I do try to focus on the pros, especially when I'm lying awake at 3am listening to creaks imagined and real, or wondering if the leak is leaking - it's beautifully situated, the location is lovely, the neighbours aren't bad, it's fairly safe for the cats and my kids are settled and happy here. And we are lucky to own, rather than rent. The cons, on the other hand ...

I love my house, kept it in the divorce and DP then moved in. It’s small and modest and I have no interest in extending it though I enjoy updating it. When I’m older and if DP dies before me (he’s a bit older) I’m tempted to get a flat with a balcony or little garden, nearer to a train station, and cast off a lot of clutter to live a more simple life (and spend the equity.)