Does anyone regret moving to a bigger house and higher mortgage?

[Elsbells22]

Does anyone regret buying the bigger house?
we have a pretty small mortgage less than 100k left to pay off and monthly payments are around £700 a month so manageable and in turn because we don’t have a massive outgoing on the mortgage each month we have spare money to go on holiday or eat out etc and not have to worry.
But I’ve never thought of this property as my forever home, we are quite cramped. Would love an extra bedroom, dining room, utility room all things we don’t currently have.
So my question is has anyone done the big move to the better home and regretted it or taken the financial hit but thought totally worth it?

Absolutely worth it. Our mortgage jumped from £600 to £1200 initially and then £1800 by the time Truss had her fun with the economy. Still absolutely no regrets. My home brings me joy every day. It’s not the part of my life I’m willing to compromise on. I will have a bigger asset at the end of it, but we can always downsize when the kids are grown if we want to free up our budget, I doubt we will though.

How cramped are you

And how much of a financial strain would it be

There would need to be a balance

There would be no point moving to a bigger house if you were then stressed about money

But then don't live cramped and always arguing if there is money on the bank

We moved from a flat to a house last year. Only a mile away but I love it. We went from 4 years left on the mortgage to 30 and I honestly don't care. We can always downsize again down the line if we need to.

No regrets! Went from mortgage paid off on a flat to £4K per month mortgage (in London so normal three bedroom terraced house not a mansion, and shorter mortgage term).

So so worth it to have a garden, extra bedroom, and loads of extra living space. Also now in decent secondary school catchment (DS still at same primary).

No regrets here either! Went from 8 years left on mortgage to 30 years, but we plan to downsize at some point when we retire. It’s such a joy to have lots of space and a lovely garden. Why not do it if you can afford it?

It’s worth it IMO. However I think there’s some evidence we may be at the start of a house price crash, so I wouldn’t do it now if you’re worried about affordability or think it’s a short term move.

We didn’t massively increase the mortgage, but extended its term, which meant we were still paying it off longer. Don’t regret having a nicer home, but sometimes regret not having that disposable income earlier.

I think it depends on how much you would have to compromise your life. If you can still have holidays, and eat out, but just less frequently or at slightly cheaper places, than that’s fine. If it means a total blockade, and you have to watch every penny, then you’ll regret it.

We are in a similar position, having the same debate.

We have a small 4 bed (1 double, 1 single and 2 box rooms / offices). Two rooms downstairs. One small bathroom that is cramped with an adult and toddler in there.

To buy even a slightly bigger house (hallway, utility, 2 doubles, 1 single and 1 box room), we would be looking at a minimum of tripling our mortgage as these homes are now well over £500k by us.

Financially it would be doable, but it would massively impact our lifestyle and day to day financial comfort. We like going on holiday, eating out and coffee shops. We would have to stop all this if we moved. Never mind sinking potentially £60k into moving costs and all the redecoration, new furniture, appliances, etc we could fit into the new house, which feels like a lot on top of the extra mortgage.

It is really interesting to see people say they don't regret this. Would be interesting to understand how much you've had to sacrifice for the extra mortgage payments in the short term. That's the bit I'm struggling with.

I think it depends, do I regret moving to a bigger house with a growing family, absolutely not.

More space is always great and you will also feel the benefit. However if you have lived in your current home comfortably and you dont have a significant change, why move? Do you really need a dining table? Having lived without one, will you use it or will it be a dumping area? Who will use the extra bedroom or will this become a dumping area? I have utility room, its a fabulous dumping area for washing and cleaning.

Personally if you have lived comfortably in your current home , I would urge you to save the money, look to retire early and think about travelling rather than taking on an unnecessary mortgage.

People have been saying this for a decade, I’ve bought 2 houses in that time!

For us the jump in house was quite significant, 3 bed very small new build to a large 4 bed detached so it was a big upsize in terms of lifestyle. Thankfully, our careers have gone quite far in that time so that hugely helped. If we were on the same salary now on our current mortgage it would be much, much tighter, doable, and still non regrettable I’m sure, not not as pleasant!

We are in a similar predicament to you, but with bigger numbers which terrifies me.

Our mortgage adviser has run the numbers and said we can afford what we want, but.......I feel like it would be at the detriment of enjoying life.

Big mistake for me. We went from a 2 bed flat, mortgage free to a 4 bed house with £1000 mortgage and really regret it. It's too big so feels less safe, more isolating, there's more cleaning and maintenance, and it feels the wrong 'fit' for our lifestyle.

We didn’t buy a bigger house and are now mortgage free (with a lot of cash savings as no mortgage) but I do regret not buying a bigger house. We don’t actually need more space but it would be nice to have more space. For the moment, it’s too much expense (SDLT) and hassle to bother with, but if we’d bought bigger at the start it wouldn’t have been. I still check out what’s for sale locally every other day but I’ve told myself we should stay put for at least 5 years more, perhaps then being able to move mortgage free again.

We are in a similar position. Very cramped in our house, which we renovated with plans to extend. Extending would now cost more than moving, and while we could financially afford to move, we prefer having more financial freedom!

It’s a dilemma in my head though……

I'm glad I took on the bigger mortgage before kids, as it meant there was no pressure to move when they came along. I would love to move again for more space now they are getting big, but it's not currently on the cards. But it's all perfectly livable, which it wouldn't have been if I hadn't stretched in the first place.

I guess I come with a cautionary tale . We mortgaged to put on a big extension to give us more room downstairs . It was great while kids were growing up . Then a crash came, redundancy and we had to go interest only for awhile . So now instead of being almost mortgage free we are left with a big mortgage . And house is now too big but no downsizer property available or if they are , are hugely expensive due to competition.

I don’t regret it per se, moved from a flat in London to a detached house outside of London and doubled the mortgage. Money wise it feels like a lot, it’s maybe 30% of our net salaries for context, which is quite a lot. But we have young children, so we are home a lot, like to host a lot, have family and friends come to stay. And it’s so nice to have the living space, playroom, utility and garden etc like you mention plus spare room for people to stay.

I think it depends how much of your lifestyle is at home, how old your children are, and what percentage of salaries it will be and what that leaves you leftover

We are in the process of upsizing from very a small 3 bed semi to a 4 bed detached. Our new monthly mortgage payments will increase by about £1k so our disposable income will definitely be impacted and we may have to sacrifice take aways and be more mindful with spending but we feel we are doing the right thing.

We currently have lots of disposable income which is great but we always worry about lack of house space - i’d rather have less spare cash and live in a house I love where we can finally have friends over etc.

It depends how tight it would be. We doubled our mortgage for the house we’ve just moved into. I don’t regret it per se, but we were definitely a lot more carefree about money before we moved. Overall I’d definitely say it’s worth it, but that’s because we had the financial wiggle room to still have what we consider a decent life (albeit a cut back one) while rebuilding our savings/spending on the house.

We didn’t sacrifice much - we moved at a point where we had just stopped paying nursery fees (£2k per month), my pay went up (went PT to more than FT), and we’d been saving beforehand. So honestly while we had about six months of being very strapped for cash around the time of the move (we moved by ourselves with a Zipvan because we couldn’t afford a removal company), we’ve been fine since that.

Totally resonate with a lot of the responses.
To make it worth moving it would be a considerably bigger mortgage payment each month. My child is still a toddler, we have three bedrooms but third bedroom is tiny and currently used as an office come washing drying room (would love a utility room) but it’s also safe, has a big garden, we’ve done a lot to de clutter recently so feeling a lot better about the space we do have.
Childcare costs won’t be forever and maybe once that chapter has closed a new house would be more affordable.

Extension or going into the loft?

Personally I’m 50/50 on this. We went from a small 2 bed to a 3 bed 3 bathroom, and whilst we hugely appreciate the extra space with 2 big dogs and hopefully future children, sometimes I think about how much the £500 monthly increase could get us, like nice holidays and days out and particularly saving for maternity leave and nursery fees

We moved from a £360k mortgage to a £630k mortage. I love my house. Always been obsessed with period properties and renovating them. It’s something I take huge pleasure in.