Stay or Move - That old chestnut.

[Homer28]

Hi - hoping for some advice from people who have taken the plunge and regretted it.. or not!
My husband and I are currently early 30's, 2 kids (9 & 1), no real childcare costs and living in a 4 bed semi that costs us £600pcm with gross salaries combined at £82K.

We are in our home around 7 years so at that stage where it really needs a bit of investment/TLC. We bought when we were earning much less and interest rates were much less with the thought of eventually moving but now that we are at the stage of having that conversation we are running scared!

We have good bedroom space but our downstairs isn't big. It works for the 4 of us day to day just about but when it comes to entertaining or birthdays or even having family round at Christmas things are cramped.

We have been looking at houses at around £1,000pcm + increased rates & light and heat, furnishings and can't seem to decide whether its worth moving.

Anyone else made the move to a bigger house and regretted no longer having that £500 per month that they used to be able to use for other things?

We do like our weekends away/holidays/ability to go for a meal out spontaneously without having to worry/budget too rightly and wonder if we will regret moving.

Is extending the ground floor an option?
Is it a ground floor layout/usage issue that could be rearranged?

(tbh I'm struggling to imagine how a conventional 4-bed semi could lack entertaining space on the ground floor - or are you using one of the ground floor rooms as a bedroom? or, are the bedrooms split over two upper floors?)

Are you me? Our situation is almost identical 😂

@DogInATent quite easily - our 4 bed was originally a 3 and had a bedroom built over a garage. We can entertain 2 additional adults 2 additional children reasonably comfortable around our table in what is a very narrow kitchen diner. Our living room has to accommodate all the kids toys, sofas, office space and musical instruments so we only have sofa seating for 4 - which means we don’t ever have extra adults over really. So I can’t ever do the big family Christmas that I’d like to do with 10 adults and all the kids etc. there’s no where for them to go without sitting on the floor etc.

Yes it is a 3 story so on each floor there is a very spacious bedroom, a small bedroom and a toilet.
The ground floor is a normal sized living room with double doors into the kitchen. The kitchen is small. We have a table and 4 chairs but you would be hard pressed to get a bigger table in to seat 6-10 people.
Then a utility & WC. We could extend but we have a classic new build garden so it would eat a lot of it up. I also wonder if the costs and hassle of extending vs moving would be worth it. The difference between our house (180K) and a house we would upgrade to (300K) is a lot in terms of extra space downstairs.

@Hollyhead Do you feel like you are constantly daydreaming about moving for mainly "entertaining" purposes but it seems like too flippant a reason to move and have to shell out extra money when the day-to-day living can mosey on perfectly well? Possibly not just entertaining purposes, I try to talk myself into it being a good all round investment for downsizing in years to come and all that malarkey.
I am so conflicted!

Yep absolutely! And actually out bedrooms are not that big and we have a 1.6x1.6m family bathroom and no en-suites, so we don’t feel we have have over night guests either (box room also now an office). I think we’ve landed on a half way house option for now which is we’ll try and stay and make the house as nice as possible. Our parents are still young enough to still really enjoy doing all the bigger entertaining so we’re just going to lean into that for now and reevaluate in 2-3 years. But I think we’ll also want an en-suite even more once we have 2 teens in the house!

@Hollyhead Our parents are the same and recently hosted our daughters 1st birthday as we just didn’t have the room.
Yeah we are evaluating now as our house badly needs a refresh/some new furniture so I don’t know if it would be sensible for us to consider again in a couple of years 🙈
Should have posted this one in AIBU for the traffic lol

Similar but different. We almost moved 2 years ago - own a 4 bed detached house which we have already extended downstairs but following Covid we both now wfh and needed an extra study. Following a couple of unsuccessful bids we decided to build a garden office. Between that and our extended downstairs space we decided we had everything we needed and have stayed. We probably could afford more (salaries and mortgage more than yours though) but now glad we didn't as we're now looking at private school which wasn't on the radar before. We released equity for the garden office and did the kitchen at same time. So if improving what you have is an option I'd do that. Remember stamp duty alone to move will pay for quite a lot!

If you can afford it, I agree it is a good investment. It’s nice to have a house to downsize from.