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?

@scoobydeedoo it’s really disheartening isn’t it! I can’t believe how much the property market has changed. I hope you’ve able to move at some point

I’d move. Having moved from a house we didn’t love to one we absolutely do love, it’s worth every penny of needing to spend a bit less. We are happy here, we go out far less as we bought a house with a gorgeous garden, we bought a big swing slide type set for the kids and we love it, just sit in the garden a lot growing veg, playing, bbq’s even when it’s not that warm etc. If I think about spending money I don’t need to, just thinking of enjoying our home stops me!

@ADifferentKindOfMum annoyingly our actual neighbours (we are end of terrace so only one connecting) are lovely and we get on really well with them. I think if we didn’t we’d definitely have moved by now.
That must have been really hard for you living with neighbours like that! Can I ask how you checked the neighbours in your new house were better? It’s always a worry of mine that you just don’t know until you move in! Completely agree though, noise is normal but it doesn’t take much to be a bit more considerate!

@sorryIdidntmeanto that must be hard to think that you’d have paid it all off by now. I hope that something works out for you and you’re able to pay it off sooner.

I’m not sure we necessarily need a bigger house. We always say if we could just pick up our house and move it we would.

@Sunshine1500 well I am hoping this too. Although someone has told me that once they go to school, if you need to pay for breakfast club/after school club and/or holiday clubs it can get expensive as you don’t get funding for that. So definitely something to consider

We had the forever home and We downsized and went for a cheaper option (so a bit like you but the other way round!) haven’t regretted the decision for a second - cost of living would have pushed us to the absolute limit. I’d rather have hols with the kids and not have to increase my hours at work to meet bills. I’d stay put if I were you.

@topcat2026 this is what I said to my husband!!

@ninetofiveeveryday thank you, that’s really good to know 😊 sounds idyllic!

@isthesolution this is what the other half of me is saying. I’m part time and I like being part time. I want to spend time with them and not worry about money as much. Such a hard decision.

honestly i would move. We spend a lot of time at home and in our gardens at summer time, I would hate this!

I would not push yourself to the max but try find a happy medium

If bills, food, car running costs all go up by 10% can you still afford a bigger mortgage? Prices will rise this year thanks to the middle east fiasco. Your additional mortgage payment rate is also likely to be higher than your current one. Would you be able to extend the term to reduce monthly payments?

I planned to be in my house for 5 years and am currently at 10, with no move in sight. It meets our needs, but I would love a.second bathroom.

I think it depends on what you really value or what is most important to you as a family.

One of my friends and her husband bought their forever home 2 years ago now at the absolute max of their budget, it has meant no holidays for them since then, their days out are all free things, taking packed lunches rather than buying meals out, no nights out/dinners etc and for them that has worked out really well and they are still totally happy with their decision. They love their house, it really is a beautiful house, and they are very homey people anyway so never cared much for holidays, nights out etc anyway so the loss of that doesn’t really feel like a loss to them because they really do love being at home. Great for them!

For us though we love our holidays, we like to travel, we like to go out for a coffee or for lunch, if we/the kids want something we can just buy it really, we don’t spend much time in the house really we prefer to spend our time out & about with the kids so for us maxxing the budget on a house wouldn’t be worth the loss of those things, even if it was a beautiful house, it’s still just a house to us and the majority of our lives are out of the house.

That said though I do love our current home, it’s not the 800k forever home our friends have but I really do love it so maybe I would feel differently if I was unhappy in our current house.

Is there any middle ground at all? We moved last year due to neighbours, parking (or lack of) and space. It wasn’t that we needed more space as such but the layout of the house was wrong. We had lovely neighbours but we knew they also wanted to move and having had awful neighbours previously we wanted to be in house without paper walls. However we had the same doubts about stretching ourselves to the max on a mortgage. We took the plunge and put the house in the market and found a house only a few minutes away which wasn’t what we expected at all but it just felt right. It doesn’t have the parking fix but actually the rest of the house if worth it. We both wfh so spend a lot of time in the house. I could never settle or relax in the old house when my DH was away but this house is so much more happy. It wasn’t perfect and needs some work but we are slowly making it our own. It is more expensive than the old house but not the top of our budget. Does anything like this exist?

We have just moved house as we had a 2 bed and needed more room as have a toddler and another due in a week! I'm really glad we moved, although it was the most stressful thing I've ever done! We have tripled our mortgage (it was super low before) but we are both super sensible with money and we didn't go for the complete max we could have. If it's for the long term and going to make you happy, just do it (but make sure you have savings for the unexpected costs!) I also love how peaceful it is!

I had a similar decision to make a few years ago. I'm also a part time band 6 (but top of band and not interested in going for 7s) and would rather go without than work more than I do! My DH is a teacher. At the time of us moving he had 3 more pay rises to the top of his grading.
We did it. We maxed the mortgage and had a tough 1st year juggling the finances - but with some savvy thinking and essentially re-looking at how we spend our money - it has worked out beautifully. Now my DH is at the top of his pay, and we are comfortable. I haven't gone back to how we used to live as I prefer this way (for example we don't eat out or get takeaways except for birthdays or significant special occasions - but I've lost 7.5st and am a very healthy version of me now instead!). It changed priorities for me and I am VERY glad we decided to do it.
My ex husband made it harder tbh as he quit his job and stopped paying for his children just 6 months after we moved. But even with losing that £300 a month - we still managed and had fun along side. All of us, kids included, think the sacrifice was worth it for the space we have now.