Has anyone gone for the smaller, more affordable house and not regretted it?

[Housechoice]

As above really! It’s the debate I find myself having with DH. We’ve 2 very young DC (no plans for more) and are weighing up the pro’s and con’s of a reasonable house for say £350,000 with some compromises versus a bigger ‘ideal’ house for say £450,000 which ticks every box. Location wise both would be similar area so no compromises there.

The Mortgage saving would be big by not taking out an extra £100,000, so less financial stress/worry.

I’m looking for any insights on those who found themselves making a similar decision and whether there’s any regrets either way?

What will you do with the money you save on the lower mortgage, how secure are your jobs and will your earning potential increase and how old are you?

There is nothing to stop you saving like mad and making a jump in the future.

We went for the bigger house and are regretting it now the boiler doesn't work and the decoration is taking forever, if it helps.

I have always regretted not pushing myself as, with hindsight, we both had big pay rises so could’ve afforded the bigger house within a couple of years. However we’ve had a comfortable life because of the smaller mortgage so 🤷🏼‍♀️

Now we need to upsize as kids are becoming teenagers and we are facing a huge house price jump and pay increases are unlikely to happen.

Difficult one to answer!

We did this. We moved to a house that was £200k less than ours. With young children. We could have stayed in the other house, but downsizing has allowed us huge financial freedom. People thought we were mad. Yes sometimes I would love an extra room, or for the kids rooms to be a bit bigger. But, the relief of not ever need worry about bills etc, for us, is worth it.

We always planned quite risk averse and with hindsight I wished we had pushed a bit more. We totally underestimated growth potential in our careers and future earnings, so while the mortgage is very comfortable now, the prospect of moving is daunting with slightly older DC (5-9). The houses I am now considering would have been so much cheaper if bought a few years ago and even then we probably would have been able to afford them and were just cautious.

if you think there is room for growth in your careers, I would push the boat out once!

We went for the smaller house and then got upgrades like solar which have bought our outgoings down massively. We could likely go for a much bigger house in a few years by saving like mad now that our expenses are much less - if we want to, I quite like having less rooms to clean!

We went bigger and about the same price difference as yours , im not thrilled tbh, we use it the same as the old house , there is one room that ive sat in a handful of times in 5 years. I love the loft and garage and storage but it means we’ve kept more shite than we would have otherwise . Garden is 3/ 4 times the size , it’s just more work.

i also miss my busy noisy terrace st, my lovely village is tedious .

I wish we had the extra money and a smaller house , we will move in the future
what are the compromises you are looking at?

Job security is anyone’s guess, big national employers so the redundancy package gives a safety net. Realistically future earning potential is fairly limited. We are mid/late 30’s. We’d put any saving towards savings and investments mainly.

That’s an interesting read, thanks for sharing.

Compromises range from one reception room less, either 1 less bedroom or smaller bedrooms, and generally a bit smaller living space.

Best decision we ever made. Whilst our friends are panicking about mortgage rates and working in jobs they don’t like because they need the money we’re about to pay ours off. This gives us a huge amount of choices for the second half of our lives.

We deliberately didn’t overstretch on the mortgage because I grew up in a huge house which my parents always argued about and was freezing in the winter. Never regretted it - mortgage paid off by the time we were 48 and we don’t worry about having both kids at uni at the same time. We will both retire at 60. I love my home and the financial security we have now.

My grandmother always regretted not buying the bigger house on a nicer street and 70 years later was still in the small one.

We could technically afford a much more expensive home but choose to stay in a home we’re happy in. After recently surviving redundancies, me then dh, with the processes both lasting a year so 2 years of uncertainty, knowing we would keep our home even if money got tight was a one thing we didn’t have to stress about.

I think there’s a balance and it depends how much risk you want to take, what lifestyle you want eg. Holidays, trips, meals out etc.

For context, our home is worth about £420,000 - 4 beds but we have 3 dc. We could buy a home for £650,000 but it would stretch us. Dd just started uni and we are subsidising her rent and living costing £850 per month.

We went for a smaller house, but with reason, it's a bit of a do-er upper and was a great price. However, because it was a curveball that we weren't planning on, the houses I'd been looking at and viewed some, were loads bigger and nicer.

I keep reminding myself it's for the best in the long run, but every day, this being my house? Gaaaaargh.

Affordability always comes first. No point having a mansion if you're eating pot noodles every night and can't put the heating on. But if you're planning on staying for a number of years? Get the biggest house you can comfortably afford.

We went for the bigger house but we have a big family so it’s worked out. I wouldn’t upsize with teens. They’ll beat uni before you know it and then your house will be too big.

I live in Scotland where stamp duty is double what it is in England so going big early if you think you might need the space at some point really pays off.

We did though more because we didn't get round to moving. Pluses are mortgage paid off and no rush to downsize after retirement. Minuses are lack of spare room and realistically if any adult dc stay at home for a long time the space is too small for them to live a proper adult life with bf or gf regularly staying. But then we have more cash to help them with a future deposit, and if they don't stay at home or come back we won't be in such a big empty house, so it's swings and roundabouts.

Smaller house and no regrets. We extended up and sideways. We also paid off the mortgage by 40 and retired at 60, which might not have been possible in the larger house.

We did this when ours were small (6 and 3) omg we regretted it so much! We outgrew the house VERY quickly, consumed everything, impacted our quality of life and ended up paying a fortune to move. I am team stretch all the way now, especially as we still had a lot of income growth to come at that time (wages to come, and savings in childcare etc). We have not regretted our upsize EVER, even with interest rate rises, it still feels the right choice to prioritise our home.

Yes I think this is the crux of it , it’s less about having less disposable income and more about having choices and more freedom , you could potentially drop days at work , retrain , take time out , take a new job that you would enjoy rather than because it has the salary you need. Have a slower pace of life if you wanted to.

The way this government is taxing property, I would always go for the smallest house I could cope with.

Council tax is only going to increase as are energy costs.

It also means that you don't have to downsize later on.

I don’t regret it because we had plenty of wriggle room, holidays, dinners out and retired early.

My house is small and affordable! It's a three bed but one's a box room really. We will never move if we can help it, it's a lovely quiet close full of lovely oldies, very well kept, we're on the end and we came into a monetary win which means we are mortgage free. Our mortgage was under 200k at this point but I will never want to go somewhere bigger and get a mortgage again, I consider myself REALLY lucky and remember how I used to worry every month about mortgage payments even though I never missed any. If we really wanted I'd consider putting an extension on the side or going up into the loft and converting it. I would always reccomend living somewhere affordable and making the best of it. The only person who judges my small house is my SIL and she judges everything lol

Although I will add, we compromised on location to get the house size while still maintaining a reasonable lifestyle. No regrets.

We did. Smaller house than we could have afforded but in our dream location.

We used the extra cash to pay an extra 10 percent on the mortgage during the tie in period and put the rest into savings. Just as the 5 year tie in period was ending both our jobs were threatened with redundancy simultaneously. Piled a lot of our savings into paying down the mortgage as much as humanly possible and tightened our belts like mad. We carried on overpaying on the remaining mortgage. We have had a not very fun 2 years in terms of going on big holidays etc but we totally cleared the mortgage this summer and because of where we lived we made the most of the local amenities that we had moved for(forests and beaches etc). DH managed to get a new position just before his contract ended and I managed to hold onto my job so we are now ploughing the money not being spent on a mortgage into building up our savings again.

I am so glad that we didn't have a huge mortgage hanging over our heads when the interest rates are rising and our jobs had unexpectedly become unstable. The overpayments originally were because we were expecting interest rates to rise. That way we weren't used to having the extra money and we would have reduced the capital we were paying interest on when it happened. We didn't expect the job situation suddenly exploding but had we both ended up unemployed at least we had a roof over our head.

I suppose we went for the stretch option. Ended up buying something for about 20% more that our original maximum budget. So far, I am so pleased that we did. But we went on to have a third child (all aged 5 and under) so the difference in going from a three bed plus loft room, to a proper four bed, has made a big difference. I think we would have outgrown the smaller places quickly and then found it difficult to move. Obviously, a spare bedroom would be lovely but a further stretch would be difficult and we are very happy here.