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?

I went for the bigger house and no regrets. Downsides are it's much more expensive to heat than the flat we moved from, things break more often as there's more to break and generally things are more expensive as tradespeople see you have a bigger house so charge more. However the pleasure of having something I'm proud to show off is irreplaceable. We have generally found the money as the house has motivated us to take overtime/ extra shifts at work and family has helped out. Things do just work out if you have faith.

The bigger house was just out of reach. We borrowed £10k from my parents to get it, and it's big enough to be our forever home, saving us from moving again, which would have cost way more than £10k. It felt like a big mortgage at the time. 10 years on, the value is up, and the mortgage feels very manageable now that we've had a few pay rises and job moves between us. It was a stretch in the short term, and we had a couple of rubbish holidays in the early years, but it has been great in the long term, but neither is it so big we couldn't end our days here.

We chose a bigger house with lots of work to do on it. Living in a work in progress is not fun but we have absolutely no regrets. Great sized house, quiet street, garden not overlooked by any neighbours, ideal house for us even if our 80s bathroom and 90s kitchen will have to wait to get renovated.

I could have gone substantially bigger and more expensive but chose not too and it’s made a huge impact on my life

In term if

what I can afford to do - holidays and the like
How we coped when DH had a spell of redundancy
how much it costs to heat and maintains
how much effort it is to keep clean in a normal week
how nice it feels -cosy.

once there is enough room , any more doesn’t really give you much. Enough means enough cupboards to stuff things in. An extra downstairs room would just sit empty almost every day - what’s the point of that ?

I am really happy with the choice I have made
yes it’s cramped if all the family come up for a BBQ but everyone copes and has fun any way

We did this. DH is very risk averse.

I’m 50/50 on whether it was the right decision. On one hand, we’ve never had to pinch pennies which has made life more comfortable, including being able to reduce my work hours when my son became ill. We were easily able to soak up a big interest rate rise post truss mini budget.

On the other hand, I do sometimes feel the lack of space has hampered us a bit and I sometimes wish we had stretched ourselves a bit more. The kitchen is too small for a table, we don’t have room for guests (not necessarily terrible) and the garden is about 50% trampoline.

So I don’t know what the answer is!

Bigger house = more tidying, higher bills and maintenance

I’m house hunting and looking for a smaller house

We went for the smaller house. It would sometimes be nice to have somewhere bigger, especially now DH works from home most of the time, but it means we can both work part time, and when DH is made redundant (about every 3 years in his industry) we don't have to worry about him getting another job immediately. Ironically this has done wonders for his salary, as he's been able to wait for the right job, rather than taking any job just to stay afloat. I'd do the same again.

👍🏻

I'm so glad we went for the minimum we needed rather than the most we could afford.

A couple of years ago our lowish mortgage rate ran out. Our monthly payment increased by £400, on a not huge mortgage.

Next time we buy I'd want to be cautious again. If interest rates went up a few percent, the highest earner was unemployed for 6 months, could you manage?

Surely it depends on the nature of the bigger and smaller houses. If, for 2 parents and 2 kids, the smaller house is 3 decent bedrooms, 2 reception rooms plus a decent kitchen diner and everyone has their own space as they grow, it's a different proposition to the smaller house being 2 bedrooms and a box room, one reception room and a 7' by 11' kitchen, as is typical of so many new builds.

I’m glad I went for the bigger house. We could never afford the house we are in today if we had not pushed ourselves a decade ago. The difference then was £200k and now is more like £600k. The knowledge that we can downsize is pretty reassuring too.

No why? Just means more space to heat, more furniture to fill the space and more cleaning.

We went for the smaller one and didn’t over stretch ourselves, now it’s paid off and it’s a great feeling

We went as big as we comfortably could but managed to pay off our mortgage fairly quickly. We're happy to have the extra space, but I wouldn't want to stretch so much that it would ever be likely to feel like a struggle to keep up with the mortgage.

We're the type of people who spend a lot of time at home with wfh and home-based hobbies, so it was worth the extra money to have the room to stretch out as comfortably as possible—but before this house, we lived in a much more limited space and were happy there, too.

There are so many factors to consider that any random person's experience may be of little help deciding what's right for your family.

Me 🙋‍♀️

After a couple of good promotions for me and my husband, we started looking for bigger houses with an en-suite and a guest room and office rather than one or the other. Decided it wasn’t with the extra 700-1000 a month and 10 years longer on mortgage so stayed in our 3 bed.

We have 6 overseas holidays booked in the next 12 months instead. I’ll take money for memories over a larger home all day long, especially when a bigger home could mean more financial worried so less enjoyment of it.

I am a big believer in stretching hard when you are young and can just sell up and start again, than doing it when you are 30 plus and have kids and different responsibilities

We had a bigger house. You spend a lot more in a bigger house. It costs more to run electricity, heat and so on; more roof, more windows, more gutters, bigger garden etc. More on tax, more on mortgage interest ect. But also - you buy more because you have more room, you have bigger parties etc.

We are now in a smaller house (but not a small house) in a very good area. It is fully paid, there will be no big, unexpected bills, and the property is very manageable.

We feel like we run it rather than it running us!

We went for the bigger house. It gives me everything I need in a house and I love it. The day I have to downsize will break my heart.

Bigger isn’t better except for when hosting parties or having lots of teenagers over. It’s exhausting to keep on top of and you lose precious time in there. Cleaning is exhausting. Got smaller if you can manage.

We went for the smaller house and the spare cash meant we could pay the mortgage off early saving us a ton of interest. We used it to build an extension which gave us the space for older teens. We have no regrets 🙂

We made a conscious decision to look at homes that were at least £100,000 less than the max the bank would have agreed to loan us. We ended up with one around £110,000 less than the max they would give us.

Reason being that this would mean we would still be ok if one of us lost our job (which did end up happening to my partner who earns the most, took him about 10months to find another) or some other life changing situation came up. We also made the decision to aggressively overpay the mortgage as and when we could, with any pay rises being funnelled into the mortgage too, so no life creep when we got pay rises.

i know that is quite an unusual way to work it, but we only have a couple of years left now, meaning we will have paid it off in 10 years rather than 35years and I think the saving on the interest works out as something like a £70k saving over the course of the original 35 years.

we could have stretched ourself for a more expensive place but so glad we didn’t, and we love what we have And no plans to move.

Yes, me. There have been times when it would have been nice to have another reception room or a utility room, but our mortgage is smaller and that means we’ve been able to give the kids more in terms of holidays and things and we aren’t scraping together every penny each month. We also have two children and they’ve never complained of a lack of space. They have their own bedrooms, that’s the main thing that they care about.

We stretched almost a decade ago when kids were v small and I have no regrets. It has been a wonderful space for them to grow up in and we have loads of equity now and could easily downsize and be mortgage free if we wanted to.

We really use our house though, we enjoy gardening and cooking, having big family meals and get togethers, having the kids friends over to play and hosting birthday parties.

I have a friend who is very happy in her smaller house. She prefers going out to gigs and plays, is constantly socialising outside of the house and doesn't really enjoy pottering about in the same way we do.

So I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. I do think the economy is a bit dicey nowadays so I would stress test your figures and lock in for as long as possible on a fixed rate.

Smaller house than we can afford here and no regrets. We’ve set aside cash for university for our kids and our pensions are healthy so we can retire early. We have lots of holidays and spare cash

Affordable house here. No regrets. Low mortgage plus with energy bills rising I'd hate to heat a mansion.Can have holidays and more security as a result.
Work hard so no time for DIY etc anyway.

We did (even more extremely so than you - some of the houses we considered were literally twice what we paid for the one we now own). We had no children at the time but knew we wanted children. No regrets - the lack of financial pressure has meant we've had much more time to spend with the kids.

The house is big enough - we don't feel like we're on top of each other - and we're saving for an extension which will hopefully give us a bit of extra space when the kids are teens.