Would you buy the smaller house with big garden and location or...

[Beaverfeaver2]

Or nothing really.

House prices in our area have sky rocketed.

We are moving and have sold the house we love (although small and no real garden)

A huge jump up in price gets us a gorgeous location, a huge garden, but an equally small house. It does have potential but will take a bit of saving before we can realise it.

We have seen 4 places in our budget.
All the others might be slightly larger, but not much and have no garden again and the locations are not anywhere as good.

I fell in love with the house with land a location.
It's gorgeous and I can see myself there.
We have put an offer in which has been accepted but DH is now having reservations as he think that by spending so much more we should be getting a noticibly bigger house.

He is almost at the point of saying we should stay put.

We have agreed for our sale to go through and are reviewing this house we offered on again tomorrow so he can see for sure about his reservations,
And if he then decides it's really not good enough we will rent

What would you do?

Prices are going crazy and if we rent for 6 months, it doesn't just mean a lot if extra moving hassle it also means we could end up being prices out of this area completely,

Location. Go for the location.

I agree with Expat - location all the way. If the garden is large too & there is potential to extend in the near future then I wouldn't hesitate.

Yep go for the location. Our house is tiny, I'd love a bigger house but I know if it came to it I'd choose a house the same size to get a great location.

Location every time for me. Sounds like location is very important to you too. I would agree, don't rent. We rented for six months during which time houses had gone up 10%. A year later they've gone up another 18%!

Definitely location and land - if you have space to extend later and still have a good-sized garden, then sounds like a good deal. Maybe remind DH land is valuable too?

If you think of how much moving actually costs (stamp duty, solicitors' fees, moving stress/time, additional loan re-payments, etc.,) you really want to make it worth your while - sounds as though this one is.

Good luck and hope it goes through.

We have compromised on house size for outside space. I didn't think we would and spent a long time wobbling about it (had a thread here!) but we finally completed last week and I've got to say, I'm very glad we did it.

We have the possibility of extending without spoiling the garden etc but we will probably see how we get on for a while. If we cope then we won't bother.

I'm really glad we went for location and garden rather than house.

Think of the garden as an extra room! You can make it special without too much cost and then you will use it a lot.

Location and garden every time for me!

We're in similar position... Have seen a small lower ground flat (2 bed, 1100sq ft) with huge garden in zone 2 London vs larger house (4bed, 1450 sqft) with medium sized garden in zone 3 London. Both about 5 minutes from tube, with the house costing 150k less! I think we're wavering toward house and having spare cash every month vs stretching ourselves financially. Do you have further details on the property? And anything to compare it to?

We went for the great location & the extra land.

We have a slightly smaller house than we would have liked, although it's still a decent size, but we have a huge garden & lots of space to extend if we ever want to.

It's in a fabulous location with amazing views, just outside a busy village but within walking distance.

We have no regrets about our decision.

Location and garden. We've just done it and although I am frustrated by the small hours I know we have the land and the potential now which we didn't have before.

No regrets!

Garden and location. You can always extend.