DH won’t move house

[sellupandgo]

I’m not sure what I’m looking for here other than some empathy if anyone is in the same position?

It’s a simple enough story - DH and I have lived in our current house for over 10 years. We are both 40 and have young children. I’ve been wanting to move for a while now - don’t like the area and house not fit for purpose. DH always brushes me off when I suggest it. We’ve got really awful neighbours and I had it out with DH recently saying we absolutely had to get away. He could see I was really upset so he finally agreed! But since then he’s been dragging his heels - won’t put the house on the market, dismissing every house I’m interested in. I’ve come to the realisation that he’s just gaslighted me and has no intention of moving. What can I do? I feel so trapped and powerless. I can’t very well force a move without his consent seeing as he owns half of the house.

Also it’s dismissive to call it a sunk cost fallacy when it’s presumably 10s/100s of thousands you’ve invested on doing up a listed home and not something to be written off lightly and forging on to incur more costs by moving. It does sound like you go to the extreme to dismiss inconvenient points of view to make your stance unassailable. Taking a more balanced view might be more productive.

Even DH agrees with me on our house’s failings. We live in the country yet our son doesn’t even have somewhere he can kick a ball. The house is right on the road, we have nowhere to park our cars…
I feel like we have all the downsides of rural living (no where near a city etc) without any of the advantages. We had no children when we bought this house - our circumstances have changed over the last decade.

What point of view am I dismissing? It will be galling if we do lose money on the house, but we can afford to move. With a listed house the list of jobs that need doing seems to get ever larger, not smaller. I think it was a mistake to buy this house, but we can’t turn back time. We have to make the best of the situation, and I don’t think punishing ourselves by staying here is much of a plan.

In a few years, will your salary be closer to his and so make you able to take on a larger share of the financial burden? Presenting him with a plan for you to take on more of that burden might make him more amenable to a move. If he's been the main earner for years, maybe he's considering reducing his working hours - have you discussed this with him?

But since then he’s been dragging his heels - won’t put the house on the market

This doesn’t need testicles to do, you could do this.

Glad you are taking action.

I can see why you want to move. The parking and nowhere to kick a ball around are daily issues. Don't know what the neighbour problem is as you haven't said but I would find it hard to continue living by difficult neighbours if you were already unhappy with the house.

I think you should get a couple of agents in the value it and get all the details on what percentage they take, their terms and conditions and decide which you think is the best fit. Then sit down with DH and show him all the stuff. Explain that staying here makes you unhappy. That you understand it's expensive and a pita to move, but that it's worth that hassle for peace of mind. And that you will take on the lion's share of the work involved in getting the house ready for viewings and organising viewings for houses you are interested in etc. and that you can get people in to pack as well as move your stuff. You could have a good declutter before moving so you don't take crap with you etc. emphasise the upsides, acknowledge the downsides and build a good case.

Good luck

He sounds a little bit like my partner. I would just get on with it. Get 3 estate agents around and get the one you like to start marketing the place. Start booking in viewing of new places and tell him what you are both doing. Treat it as a done deal. But don’t expect input until your place is sold and you need to put an offer in.

That said I basically knew my partner wouldn’t stop us moving if I wanted to go so I was pretty confident he was on board overall and wouldn’t stop the process- he just didn’t particularly want to be involved in the day to day.

It took an ultimatum to get my husband to pull his finger out! We had lived in our old house for 19 years - it was fine, but but he moaned constantly about too many neighbours, and noise, he was traffic (we were on outskirts of a busy town). He just kept looking at houses online, and then not being able to view as we weren't sold. Eventually we put ours on the market, so got buyers and still kept dithering. I e viewed our current house and he was still not sure. I told him that he had to either stay in old house and stop effing complaining all the time, he was or get on with it, he was as I was getting pissed off with the whole process. He decided to move which was then a whole other thing for him to stress about, but but all over now! Thank fuck!

But then you don't get more of a vote than he does either. Neither of you has more say than the other.

But I get that its a real predicament for you both and I see both sides of this. I totally see why you want to move, but I also see why he doesn't.

It is a difficult one when you both want different things and one of you will need to back down or compromise to some extent.

I wish there was an easy answer. You say he has agreed to move though so it does seem he is willing to come round to your way of thinking. But I think you need to sit down and communicate and it may well be that your compromise is that YOU sort everything out. You do the clearing, the house staging, the estate agents, the solicitors and take that stress away from him if he is really against that. Your hope is that as the process goes on he becomes more excited to make that move and have a nice fresh start somewhere. At the moment it seems he can't see beyond the 'faff'.

I empathise about the neighbours. We are terraced and mine on both sides are horrible. Especially the alcoholic woman on the right. She's the noisiest person I've ever come across, and has suddenly found thousands of pounds to keep getting noisy works done, despite not working.

I don't understand how your husband has gaslighted you, though. He might not be on board, or on the same page as you, but gaslighting means manipulation / twisting the facts to make someone think they're going crazy, as I understand.

Also, I don't think there's really any such thing these days as a "good area with good neighbours". That used to be the case, but I haven't seen it since the 90s now.

I am guessing you're terraced, and for that you have my every sympathy, if the neighbours are also shit on top of that. It can really make life unbearable. However, we've lived next to old people before and thought "yay, no noisy kids!" and then their grandchildren come to stay for months on end. Or a young, quiet couple, and then she gets pregnant. People's situations can change and it's rarely good news for the neighbour.

You are a team. Not one earning more.

Apply to channel 4 love it or list it

That sounds exhausting, especially feeling like he agreed and is now quietly backing out. Wanting to feel settled and happy where you live isn’t unreasonable.
It might help to step back from specific houses and talk about what’s really behind his resistance — money, schools, fear of change?
If he truly doesn’t want to move, then it’s about finding a compromise so you don’t feel completely unheard.

It reads like you eventually extracted an agreement to move from him that his heart isn't in. Nothing you've said here suggests he actually wants to move at all. To that end, calling it gaslighting is a bit much. I suspect his version of the discussions would look pretty different.

So it's difficult, because there's no compromise here. But ultimately, the one who wants the status quo usually wins in situations like this. I suppose it depends how far you're willing to try and force the issue.

Moving house is a massive PITA. It's a huge mental and financial load.

Would he think differently if you agreed to take the lead? Doing the paperwork, liaising with estate agents and solicitors etc? Doing the bulk of the viewings?

I think you are being given a hard time by pps @sellupandgo If you are unhappy in the house that you have basically outgrown (no outside space for young DCs would be a complete non starter for me) when this was never intended to be your forever home then yes why not move. Even if you don't get the money back that you have spent on it, (not everyone does by any means) you have lived there for ten years and it shouldn't be a reason not to move.
Get the estate agents in and start the ball rolling. Good luck.

That would be a good idea except you can't fashion outside space out of nowhere!

People do get cold feet though, however honest and responsible they are and a house purchase is a massive thing. It has to be right for your family and, at the moment, it’s only right for you.

Waiting for the right house to come on the market before listing yours quite often isn't logistically doable, unless the house you want to buy is so awful no one else wants it. I would never view a property unless I had an offer, too much heartache if you fall in love with somewhere and it sells before your house does.

I admit I’m a bit confused about how it will all work out, I’ve never bought a house in a full chain before (always stop-gapped with rentals in the past). Our requirements are so niche that it could be a very long time before we find a house we want to buy, so I’m not sure how it would work to get our house under offer before we start seriously looking!

But you said in your OP the house is not fit for purpose, yet you’d be happy if it were somewhere else?

I imagine she meant if the house is fit for purpose - the garden/parking/neighbours are not.

@sellupandgo you will need to be on the market before you can view or make an offer.

Even with new builds unless part exchanging you need to be proceedable as in under offer to reserve.

Chains are a nightmare.

What exactly is making you want to move?
There are good and bad neighbours everywhere

I meant the property as a whole including the outside space. The house itself is really nice, and an adequate size for us, which is what’s making this decision to move so difficult!