To buy new house or stay put?

[Zellie1027]

To buy a new home or stay where we are

I’ll make this as short as possible:

Current life situation:
Two young girls, 14 month aund 3.5 years.

Current financial situation:
Myself - band 6 in NHS, one more increment before I reach top of band. Unlikely to progress to band 7 anytime soon as I simply don’t want to. I work part time, condensed 28.5 hour week into 3 days. Likely have to drop hours when the girls go to school.
Husband - police constable, will reach top of pay in a few years. Will potentially do sergeant exams but not for a while. Husband full time.

Current house:
3 bed ex-council house. Never bought as our forever home.
House itself is ok, would like a better layout.
Location broadly is good, nice local village, can walk to local city, easy commute for both to work.
Where our house is actually located there is a play park directly out the back. We also neighbour onto new build flats. Flats themselves I don’t mind (although residents do smoke weed which is not nice). Where our garden fence boundaries onto the flats there is a right angle which creates a little nook where children like to congregate. They like to climb the trees planted there and look into our garden. In the summer months it’s not nice to be outside, particularly late afternoon and evening. Older children like to play out in the evenings, screaming, swearing, banging against our fence, banging metal against the park equipment. In the day it’s fine, we don’t mind children playing but I just can’t enjoy my garden when all I can hear is screaming and swearing. I hate it and puts me on edge.
We also don’t have parking. Which has been quite hard with two young children.

So the park and the parking are two major issues. Otherwise we’d probably not consider selling.

Our problem is that selling and moving means upping our budget to the point where we won’t have lots of money leftover a month. This means things like holidays will be harder to manage alongside swimming lessons, clubs, birthday parties when they’re older etc. We’d also need to use a lot of our savings which we aren’t the best at building up as it is.

Part of me thinks it’ll be fine we’ll work it out. I have a friend (and husband and young child) who are in the process of buying their ‘forever home’. Completely maxed for budget out to the point that there was potential for their mortgage rate to expire before exchange of contracts and they might have to pull out as they can’t afford the new rates.

The other part of me thinks life is too short to be constantly worrying about money and mortgage payments and does it really matter if we stay in the house as long as we can do fun things?

What would you do? Is it normal to push yourself to the limit? Or would you stay put and just try to enjoy life with a bit more money? It would be nice to enjoy living in our house more but equally I want to enjoy living life outside the house too!

Any advice?

I had this same dilemma about whether to sell our flat and move to a house, would have been over triple our current mortgage payment and maxing out the amount we could borrow.

We decided against it in the end, we desperately need the space but it would mean pinching every penny every single month with very little margin to save for an emergency. For us the extra space just wasn't worth the price (we are also both in job roles not likely to get significant pay rises in the future, if we were that would have maybe changed our decision).

Doesn't stop me checking RightMove every other day looking at the houses I want to live in 😶

It might be easier to actually lay out the figures. But I think in your situation I would definitely want to move, but tbh you’re still very much in the thick of the tricky stage. I’d be tempted to instead save some of what the extra mortgage would be (either by paying extra on the mortgage or saving elsewhere) and look to move a few years down the line, perhaps when DH is potentially a Sgt, maybe when you can up your hours more if you choose to do so.

We personally did our final upsize when our eldest was in year 5, we started our family a bit younger than most, so our aim was to get into the long term home before secondary, and it worked well. Basically, I don’t think you need to rush into the decision now, I know it can be tempting to feel pressured to be settled before primary school, but I think that’s a tad arbitrary and instead would say give yourself a bit more time by which time you might feel more certain what the right decision is.

@scoobydeedoothank you for taking the time to get back to me 😊
This seems like a very similar situation in regard to the job roles as we aren’t likely to get significant pay rises in our jobs either. Completely with you on checking Rightmove almost daily as well!
It’s frustrating as when we bought our home I never imagined that 8 years later we’d still not be in a position to move, even with having the girls.

We are also in the midst of a similar dilemma. For us though, being close to the local park is a plus. We don’t directly border on it - the entrance to it is 5 houses from ours - and we use it a lot, so it is hard to leave it. But we would love a house with more space.

Like you, we question constantly whether to make the financial push. I wish there was a magic answer!

I wouldn't put myself in the financial strain. Never.

@pdjafcwtaoa65thank you for taking the time to respond 😊
That’s really helpful thank you! I do feel this pressure to move before primary school so you’ve hit the nail on the head there! We do keep telling ourselves that we should wait a few more years and we had made that plan provisionally to do so but then the weather got better and the clocks changed, and with that the park got louder again and immediately the urge to move became louder too.

I would probably move if I were in the same situation. We spend a lot of our life in our home and it can make a huge difference to wellbeing and happiness.

@harvesttimethanks for responding 😊
We thought that when we bought the house and imagined our children playing in it but honestly the noise is quite bad it really puts me off. Everyone is different though, I’m sure there’s lots out there it wouldn’t bother!
I constantly say I wish someone could give me a crystal ball!

@whattheflipzthis is my worry too. I think the conclusion I’d come to was it was silly to do this until some friends (and others previously) were buying and seemed to be maxing themselves out. And it made me wonder if that was normal

@BewareoftheLambssee this is the other argument! You spend so much time at home you want it to be happy and comfortable. It’s such a dilemma!

One thing re. the noise from the children - in my experience this is not a permanent thing. Children grow up and then hanging out there is no longer the thing they want to do. I have had it where I live that one summer there has been noise that has bothered me, but the following summer they have moved on to other things. So unless there is a turnover in children all doing that, I would be inclined to wait it out.

@Zellie1027 Have you considered giving yourself more time to make the decision and trial the budget you'd need to live with to move?

Changing schools for a young primary child to a better school/area shouldn't be a blocker. With how slow house sale/purchases are, you're also unlikely even if you decided right now, to get into a new property before late summer at best.

In your shoes I'd be tempted to work out the household budget you'd live on if you were to move e.g mortgage (and use cushion higher rate e.g 6 or 6.5% to really test this) plus any increases in council tax or energy etc and trying living this way for 6 months and saving the difference. This will allow you stress test how this budget would really feel without the commitment with the added benefit of growing savings or creating cash to reduce existing debts/outgoings.

We are considering moving due to similar noise issues and are also struggling on whether to increase our mortgage by so much. We are starting to think being happy at home is worth paying more for

I would be looking to move - you shouldn’t be feeling anxious in the place that should be your sanctuary. But equally, to mortgage yourselves to the hilt would also be stressful. Your salaries will go up but then bills will keep going up.

We don’t know your location or any figures but can you find the cheapest 3 bedroom house you can even if the location is less than ideal? Also the property market generally is flat - have you crunched the numbers and looked at your local market to estimate the likelihood of your house selling at the price you need it to? I’m being realistic when I also say that some potential buyers - like myself - would be put off by having a park very close as well as new build flats.

That level of noise would really bother me too, so I totally understand! There’s a big difference between a bit of background noise of kids happily playing in the distance versus a bunch of raucous, swearing kids encroaching on your personal space constantly.

Same! We bought in 2019 with the view to stay 2 to 5 years before moving to a house, then COVID happened and the prices increased everywhere, so a 3 bed semi in the area we live in now rarely comes up within our budget.

Our DDs are slightly older, I think I've resigned myself to the fact that we won't be able to move until they are past the school years so we can move to a cheaper area where we don't need to worry about schools. Luckily they are both settled in good schools where we are, we are just on top of each other 😁

For me personally, the environment I am in is a game changer and good neighbours (I mean this in the loosest, broadest sense) can’t have a price on.
I lived for six years with neighbours who we realised we’d made a massive mistake pretty much the same month we moved in, and the stress on us as a family with two young kids was immense. Our next home didn’t tick all boxes but the peace and well being from
having like minded considerate people living around us has been wonderful.
I have noisy teens now but I would never let them affect other people’s enjoyment of their home and peace of mind by being total nuisances because I’ve been there. Similarly barking dogs, revving car engines and just being twats basically.
We make normal noise but aren’t dickheads. So many people in life now just don’t give a shit about others. Sorry, I feel quite strongly about this as those six years were like being in a prison!

I moved in your situation only when I had my third child. I love our bigger and garden, but it takes so much maintenance. We have been in it 7 years now, and if I had stayed, we could have actually paid off the mortgage by now, if we used all the money we have paid off our new mortgage, and our savings.
My husband has been made redundant, and I am struggling to progress and earn more in my work, so having no mortgage would be incredible. As it is, we will both have to work somehow for at least another 10 years.
We had no choice, we needed a bigger house. But do you?

I think I’d move considering the children’s ages, as they get older it’s easier to increase your salary. less childcare costs once they are both on school.
But only if you can buy in a good location with good schools.

@sonjadog we’ve been here nearly 9 years now and unfortunately it’s the same every year. Even this evening there were some children by the tree next to our garden banging sticks on it and some in the park banging against the metal swings. Not the end of the world by any means, but it’s just the start!

@SybilEsmeGytha I think that’s a really good idea and honestly I’m not sure why we haven’t considered that! Would make sense and give us the opportunity to save that money or put it into the mortgage. Thank you 😊

@Mirrorxxx I think noise is such a deal breaker. You can live with so many other things but noise can really lower your mood

There will always be kids using that park. If you try to sell up then do it in the colder months to minimise the chances of potential buyers hearing the noise.

@topcat2026 we are in the South of England so our house is probably worth about £310k and to get what we’d want to make it worth moving we’d probably be looking to spend about £400k. I’m going to have a look at a proper budget calculator tonight.
We did actually look to sell in 2021 and our house sold on the first day of viewings so I’m hoping, if marketed right, we wouldn’t have too many issues finding a buyer! But it is a concern knowing that we find it off putting and that others probably will too!

@harvesttime thank you! It’s actually good to know others would find it hard too! Sometimes I think I’m overreacting and I should just learn to live with it!