'sensible' option or stretch ourselves?

[ducdo]

about to buy a house and torn between two - spending max budget on either, both same price to buy but one needs lots of work and other all done up.

Cannot decide if to stick with sensible option of buybungalow which needs no work or stretching ourselves and going for house that needs 10k spending on it straight away and will have to go on credit cards?

Are we mad to stretch ourselves from day 1 to go for (I think) better property, or go for sensible option ?

Part of me saying go for it, but other part is sayin we are mad and it will be getting thousands into debt and been there before :o(

If you would be happy in the bungalow, I would go for that. When you stretch yourself too far, it limits what you can do the rest of the time, eg go out for meals, days out, buy nice clothes etc etc.

With houses, I have always gone sensible. I value peace of mind re: repayments over more rooms. Especially credit card debt-very expensive.

link to houses I would go for the sensible option, puutting 10k on credit cards is never going to be a good idea never mind in the current climate.

With houses things always tend to cost more than you think and take longer than you think.

I'm a cautious one so I would go for the one that needs no work and have more disposable income.

Unless you are on a 0% credit card then why would you want to pay hundreds if not thousands more for something because you couldn't wait to save for it? I am saving for a kitchen extension and it will take us another 18 months, and we have been living here for 18 months. Couldn't put myself in debt for a kitchen.

My mate put in a brand new bathroom and paid for it on the credit card. He took 2 years to pay it off so we sat down and worked out how much that bathroom had actually cost him. He said had he known in advance he never would have bought it, he would have waited.

I think it depends on how long you are thinking of staying at the new house and whether you m ind not having a life (meaning can't afford to go out, holidays etc etc). You're saying it will cost 10k to do up the house but more often it costs a lot more. The sensible option is better just cause you can't really afford it if you have to max out your credit cards!

I would, and have, moved into a home that needed a lot of work doing, unable to spend all the money to fix it up straight away. So I had to tackle one job at a time, as and when I could afford it - bathroom one year, windows another etc. If it's a place in a good location it's worth doing because eventually you'll get the money back when you sell.

BUT

If the house that needs doing up requires you to put £10k on credit cards straight away I'd say avoid it like the plague. Either get the vendor to drop the price £10k or get an extra £10k in the mortgage. Unsecured loans like credit cards are the most ridiculously expensive way to borrow money and, if you've had debt problems before, you'd be silly to go back there.

All - this is extremely helpful, thank you!