Can you give me stories where you stretched yourselves for a mortgage and never regretted it?

[Oly5]

Hi, we've owned for three years and are overpaying on our mortgage. Should be clear in 11 years.
But we've spotted our forever home and it's quite a big jump in mortgage. Would take us 20 years on our current mortgage payments.
We're both early 40s. Our plan would be to overpay that one too.
But we are worried about losing jobs etc (though do have a crisis fund). And we'd have liked to pay off early.
Did any of you do this - stretch for your forever home and then not regret it ?
I am guessing if property prices keep going up, we'll always have the house as an asset to sell and move somewhere cheaper if things go wrong!

Yes twice and definitely haven't regretted it -but you have to remember location is everything if you want capital uplift or in case you ever need to sell or let it.

We borrowed the max we could, and used Help To Buy for a further 20%. We overpaid straight away, and then I lost my job so it's been a stretch for the last year. Things are looking up again do so we are overpaying again.

We've never regretted it, our house is huge and gorgeous.

Yes, also did it twice. In our case it was absolutely the right thing- stretching just that bit extra led to us having more long term, as the price for the "better" house rose far more than the compromise house.

I'd always stretch if you can- there are options like interest only in the short term should you lose jobs etc.

We've just done this (well two years ago)- well worth it so far. So happy in this house. We have income protection which would cover mortgage payments if off for any prolonged period which helps.
We fixed mortgage for five years which has given us real piece of mind. I'd consider fixing for ten if I were you- some great deals right now. Might make you feel more comfortable if you had a set outgoing amount?

Do it!!

Thanks, really helpful!

Not what you want to hear but we did the opposite. Our house is huge and lovely but we live in a cheap area of the UK. We bought well below budget, overpaid, and paid off the mortgage when DC were pre school. We then retired early .

I think you just have to think about priorities. Do you want the fab new house with the high mortgage until you are potentially 60 or would your current house do & you could maybe go part time, fantastic holidays or whatever in 11 years?

We did, in our late 30s, went from a small mortgage, to one 6 times the size. I had sleepless nights about it in the early days, but we have an amazing (to us) house in a lovely location and now, 14 years later, we have almost paid off the mortgage, despite having had various unforeseen events along the way, including me giving up work for a while to care for the children, husband changing jobs etc.

It was a leap of faith at the time, and mortgage rates were a lot higher then, so we have benefitted from them coming down over the years (we are on a standard variable rate).

We took the attitude that if necessary and circumstances changed we would have to sell the house, or rent it out.

I'm not sure that I'd want to do it in your position. Mortgage rates will only go up making monthly repayments higher and, given your age, your income isn't massively likely to rise dramatically. It could get a bit difficult. Unless you're just panicking and the new mortgage wouldn't be that much of a dent in your budget.