This obsession of "moving up the housing ladder"?

[Marghe87]

I am not from the UK. Back home and in many other countries around Europe, families of 4 people happily live all their lives in a 2 bedroom flat. It is considered to be the normality.
In here, I find that people very rarely settle and houses are not for life but rather a way of climbing the property ladder to hopefully end up in a 4 bed property with garden, even for a family of only 4 people.
I have a few main questions and I'd like to hear what other people think:

1 - why this obsession with upgrading? Especially if this often means get a higher mortgage, be in more depth, compromise lifestyle etc...

2 - do you know any family of 4 who have lived in a 2 bed flat/house for life?

3 - do you find yourself wanting to "upgrade" because it is the right thing to do for your family or just to chase a society stereotype (ie: all your friends and colleagues do it so you might as well)?

Not me Marghe, I bought a tiny two bed house 30 years ago and I'm still in one that was pretty much the same price.
I can't see what the point of buying a bigger house is as it's just more to clean.
I do like a garden though as it's one of my main hobbies.

Yes I feel this pressure! We are in a 3 bed with 3 children, but 2 are of the same gender close in age. And the room is big enough we could put up a partition or fake wall if deemed necessary in later years.

Sometimes I think we could do with a bit more space but I also don't want any more space to have to clean

Mortgage nearly paid though we are relatively young and will allow us a better standard of living as we grow older, nice holidays etc

The thing is the weather is better abroad so you aren't stuck in the house for months on end . Granted Spain etc not so much .. yes I want to get a bigger house .. my ideal will be a big house with land .. probably by the time I get it we will want to downsize 🙄.... I grew up in a very big house with land and lots of animals so that's my norm .. I'd have liked that for my kids too 🤷‍♀️

Some things are different in different countries. No biggie.

Most choose the home that's right for them, that they can afford. Not much keeping up with the Jones round here.

I love swanning round my bigger house, love decorating it and having loads of people round. Nowt to do with anyone else.

OP "A 3 bed decent size house is, in my opinion, perfectly fine for a 4 people family but most would think the opposite."

is it? Especially in the South East, where flats and houses are small. So a family of 4 in a 3 bed house doesn't have much room for visitors.

as for 4 people in a 2 bed flat - are you picturing flats that are quite big? It sounds like a nightmare to me. I shared a room with a sibling till teenage years but thankfully after that we had our own.

I also think there's a life stage thing - certainly I would have loved a big house and garden at one point, and it's just me! In fact a small house and big garden would be lovely when I retire.

@Grace212 again, I grew up in a 2 bed flat (not in the UK) and we certainly didn't have room for "visitors" but that is mostly considered like a luxury rather than a main requirement to have in one's home.

I do get that rooms in here tend to be really tiny, I have noticed this.

my mother grew up in a tenement flat in Glasgow. Those flats were huge. The one my grandmother lived in till her death had a square footage bigger than many new build houses.

I live in a 3 bed semi which is perfect location wise. Only have one dc. Nice village, great garden, good transport and the house itself is nice. It's big enough for 3 people.

I'm not planning on moving even though we could afford a 4 bed detached. If my neighbours pissed me off I guess I might move but they're nice and quiet.

I know this will be an unpopular opinion on here but I dont get the mortgage thing full stop. We rent, will rent for years. Yes we tend to need to move every few years which I guess some people find unsettling, although we think we have found a very long term rental now which is exciting. All friends of a similar age (late 20s, early 30s) are taking out enormous loans, interest only mortgages to buy absolutely tiny new builds that are barely big enough to fit them, let alone when they want to have DCs in a few years. I just dont understand the rush. We have lived in some really lovely houses and places that we would never have been able to afford if we bought. Our DCs have a better quality of life now than if we had bought and in 10/15 years time we will have saved enough to either buy a plot of land and self build or buy something at auction to do up (DH is in the construction industry).

If we had started saving 10 years ago we would be able to buy outright in 15 years. So to me it makes total sense to rent, have a far nicer house now and bide our time until we can actually properly afford to buy. Friends of ours have just bought a postage stamp of a house, leaving behind the far bigger rental they have been in for years, they are purely paying the interest and cant afford to replace the kitchen or bathroom which are a mess or do any work to it. It just doesnt make sense to me. But then we are both self employed so have no choice but to rent so maybe I'm just embracing the only option Ive got 😂

I certainly think if you can move out of cities renting is easier. We have cats, chickens and rabbits. We just look for rural properties and long term ones where possible. Ive rented in Exeter, Cambs and Norfolk and never had issues although I appreciate its very different if you are tied to a city/town for work and are forced to rent in areas where rentals are extortionate and strict about pets and inspections etc.

I kept my tiny house and was mortgage free in my thirties, I much prefer that to a big house and mortgage.

Shadows I think your final para has answered your initial question!

I don't have an obsession with moving up the ladder. I have an obsession with paying off the mortgage. Only another 22 years to go...
I hope we won't move. It's not a massive house. 3 bedrooms. If I'm really clever I'll be able to squeeze a double into the box room when it's needed. It'll need to be a day bed thingy and I'll need to build storage onto the walls to make it work.
The location is great. Love where we live. Only downside is we have one toilet (and after childbirth related complications could really do with two).
We only moved to this house because I was suffering in the flat before due to SPD. No lift so had to struggle up the stairs with bump and then with baby.
We're lucky with our home as is on a big plot. There's space for a double garage next to the house so you can imagine the size of extension we could put in (lottery win dependent!).
We don't have a spare room for guests. They sleep on the sofa bed in the living room.

I guess some people are driven to continually upsize. But I think for the majority it’s really as simple as: given that your home is where you spend the majority of your time, you want a home that works for your family, which gives you a feeling of belonging and security. Very few people are in the advantageous position of buying somewhere first time round that ticks enough of the boxes. Going back 50 or so years new builds tended to have larger rooms and space around them to extend. Even flats had far more spacious rooms. The arrival of hutch sized starter homes and flats increased the need for people to progressively move up.

Also, given the number of threads you see about awful neighbours, and factoring in the poor quality of soundproofing in more modern builds (plus the fact that modern life has vastly increased things like amplified music, TVs with huge sound bars etc) ... it’s hardly surprising that many people want to invest in the best living condition they can. Not to mention the fact that in the past people were far less mobile in their work patterns; many people would remain in a job for life probably in the same area they were born. Life isn’t like that now.

So although no doubt some people are moving up for the reasons the OP describes, I suspect the majority are moving for very logical well thought through reasons

Shadows, I agree with you in many ways, although work tied DH and me to cities, and the only reason we reluctantly bought a rabbit hutch in London (in a scuzzy part of zone two of which we were nonetheless very fond) was because every single place we rented ended up not letting us renew our tenancy after a year in two cases the landlords decided to come back from abroad, I think and moving on annually four times was soul-destroying and expensive.

We rented when we moved out of London (again for work) for several years, perfectly contentedly, and again, only reluctantly bought the house we were renting because the landlords put it on the market, and there was literally nothing at all to rent in our village and surrounding areas, and DS was happy in his school/childminder set-up.

Renting is seen as a very odd thing to do around here, and people would say 'Oh, you live in the rented house on X Lane, do you?' as though we lived in a yurt on the village green. People continually asked us why we didn't buy a house in the village. As far as I can gather, you're seen as a dangerous outlier from local norms, insufficiently committed to the village and liable to move on, and generally not quite normal for not buying a house.

The arrival of hutch sized starter homes and flats increased the need for people to progressively move up.
The property ladder mentality is what led to the concept of the starter home and the hutch like size.

The selling off of social housing has a great deal to do with it. Look at the percentage of people who were able to live in social housing, say, 60 years ago. Relatives of mine got council houses as young married couples- houses which were big enough and had spacious enough rooms for them to raise a family later on without needing to move. Usually had huge gardens too with space for a veg plot as well as lawn space for the children to play. A far far fewer proportion of people get social housing now, a much larger number buy, and inevitably have to start off at the bottom of the ladder often in housing that is cramped, poorly built and with little outside space

Agreed, choli.

Well, I grew up in a flat. I hated it. The noise from neighbours and just the amount of people. My grandparents house was my sanctuary.
Moving into a house allowed us to keep animals we want, have a garden to enjoy with just our own rubbish around (unlike parks around here) where I know my children can play relatively safely while I cook dinner.
I love my space.

When the children get bigger, hopefully the sale of this house will give them some help towards buying their own (which neither me not my husband had). Then I'll happily move into a flat with a bacony where I can switch my heating off and live off everyone else's heat.

I also think the way we live now plays a part. The trend for big sociable areas means that if you then want the additional study/utility/snug as well, you have to extend or move up.
My house is perfectly fine size wise now and luckily has scope to extend out and up if we need to. The only thing that would make me move is schooling (our nearest school has had a really rough patch that concerns me). I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that though as I love my house and have always felt very lucky to have it.
I also do think about would it work when the kids are teenagers and then adults. With the way it’s going, many kids are living at home much longer and I’d like to think my home would always be suitable for us all to live under the same roof for as long as we need to.
Interesting thread, certainly made me think about my views on home ownership!

There are a whole host of other factors too, which have more or less of a bearing in different places.

Our culture here is relatively unsociable- people like having their privacy, and often don't want to have contact with neighbours, for instance, so detached houses appeal a lot.

People move large distances from family, so need spare rooms more often to keep the contact- if you all live within a few miles of each other that's not a thing.

Also we think of family wealth in relatively small units- a couple is a financial unit which acquires property as they can afford it, and sells it on for retirement. In other places the family as a financial unit is much larger- there will be several properties owned across the wider family, and people may move in and out of them in different combinations, but are less likely to sell them off and buy others. This goes hand in hand with cross-generational living. An older person may move in with their adult children, for instance, and perhaps their newly married niece moves into the now vacant flat. One sibling marries and leaves home, the other marries and moves their spouse into the family home alongside the older parents. This is possibly connected to more geographic mobility here than in some places- no point moving into your gran's flat if your job is 500 miles away...

Also in this country we value property by the number of bedrooms rather than square footage, which encourages lots of tiny bedrooms, and less flexible accommodation as a result. Much harder to share bedrooms if they are poky.

We are also keen on owning our own stairs (why???) so use quite a lot of internal space for that, and we value a tiny house more than a more spacious flat, which again encourages "starter homes" I think.

I'm sure there are tons more reasons too!

Also in this country we value property by the number of bedrooms rather than square footage, which encourages lots of tiny bedrooms, and less flexible accommodation as a result. Much harder to share bedrooms if they are poky.

This is very true. We only have two bedroom in our apartment (US) but my sister was flabbergasted at the size of them. When I visit the zUK or Ireland I find the bedrooms claustrophobicly small. Just about room for a bed, nightstands and a chest of drawers in most of them.

As a kid, I lived initially in a two bed flat with two siblings. But those bedrooms were huge - My dad built us a bunkbed that was double bed width, and two beds long (so my brother and sister had a bed each on the ground, with a divider between, and I had the raised bed with a bed sized play area at the end.) Then we moved out to a semi in the suburbs where we could each have our own room, but those rooms were bloody tiny.

As an adult, my partner and I have been living in a 2 bed flat for the last couple of years. We're looking to move soon, because we want somewhere with a garden and my partner's parents have offered to pay, so we don't need to worry about a mortgage. We figure under those circumstances it makes sense to get the most space we can, to future-proof against any family growth down the line. If we were forking out the cost ourselves we'd probably pick somewhere more modest and then look at upgrading if circumstances required it.

(My partner grew up in a huge house in Yorkshire, with a small forest for a back garden, so is a bit baffled by the size of London homes.)

I don't get it, either, the whole 'ladder' idea seems very narrow and outdated to me.

We’ve upsized in the past but purely because British houses are tiny and poorly laid out. Out first house was only 1000 sqf but had three tiny bedrooms and a whole three loos? We’re currebtly renting at a very cheap price a lovely flat 2000sqf with a very normal 1 bathroom and not particularly inclined to buy again.

flats in Europe are way bigger (and usually offer better standards) than here in the UK.

Not at all. Europe is a big place with lots of different countries. All depends on where you live of course. Inner city, suburbs, country village, etc.

Mine is 60 sq. metres. It's fabulous though, yea, much better standards from the ones I've been in in UK. (Pretty much old buildings which never seem to get upgraded).