Following on from my would you pull out thread. What would you do in these 3 specific circumstances?

[CrapBag]

Previous thread was about pulling out of buying a steel house due it possibly being unsaleable in the future. I think its hard to predict exactly what they will be like in the future. As they are now, there are no problems, you can get a mortgage on them and they are sturdy solid houses (the particular street we are looking at).

So our options now are:-

1. Go to another shared ownership house (we are in one now). We can buy the share outright (on a brand new development near where we are now and near the kids school) and pay the rent. They are valued very high and we can't borrow the full amount to buy the rest to own it outright, only another small share and the rent and mortgage combined would be higher than buying outright. They look like lovely houses but we would be tied to rent for the foreseeable future, unless the mortgage rules eventually relaxed and we could borrow more, but then it would be for less time due to the time lapse in between.

2. Buy a house for less than we thought we'd be able to, pay a large deposit and take out as much mortgage as we can but this leaves us with few houses to buy. It will be in a shitty area, house will be small and possibly need some doing up.

3. Continue to buy the steel house. Mortgage was going to be very low, we were planning on paying it off early. In 5 years time, see what the market is doing and if it looks like its slowing down, sell the house (I honestly don't think it would be unsaleable in that short a time time) and buy somewhere else.

The road its in has had about 3 houses for sale recently and they have been snapped up and they are every time they come up for sale. Probably due to good size, big gardens and affordability and its in an ok area. They are also worth far more than what we are (possibly) paying. The one we were buying needs doing up but we have budgeted for that and if they were still selling at what they are now (done up) we would make some profit on it. If not a profit then we would likely get our money back.

So now more of a dilemma.

WWYD now?

Out of those, option 2 .

Could you wait a year or so and save for a bigger deposit? It may be that prices start to come down too.

If you went for option 3, how long would it take you to pay off your mortgage? Would it be feasible to let it when you want to move?

Our house has already sold (and nearing exchange) and we outgrew it a long time ago. We really do need more space, kind of on top of each other. If we did wait and save more, it wouldn't put us in a higher bracket of house to buy, just a slightly more expensive house but still in shitty areas. If we could go to 150k then that would be fine but we can't save enough that would put us up to near that amount.

Option 3, if we overpaid, after 5 years we could be left with just under 10k. We could potentially pay it off in just under 8 years. I definitely would not rent it out. I really don't want to be a LL and tied to having to look after a property, plus we couldn't get a mortgage for the amount we wanted to buy somewhere to live.

In our mind, we are leaning towards option 3 really. We were thinking this move would be our 'forever' home but all 3 of these options leaves that out really. I think if we went for option 3 then sold after 5 years or so, we would have a hefty lump sum, still have a good few years in which to have a mortgage for and hopefully these new rules would have relaxed and they would lend more. It is kind of a joke the amount they are willing to lend us given what we pay now, they won't even take that into account and say we can't afford half of that a month, when clearly we can as we have been paying it for the last 5 years!

Any and all opinions welcome.

House 3, the steel house, is what I'd go for based on what you've said - area, size, garden, school and affordability. The only thing I would say is sort out in your mind if you'd be happy to stay there longer if circumstances don't pan out as you hope and it became hard to move on again?

Your other two proposals don't seem very appealing to me.

We would be happy to stay, the idea was is this would be our forever home but we were thinking that we would probably downsize in retirement years and don't want to be stuck with a house we couldn't sell in 30 years time. Obviously we can't see the future and have no idea.

Part of me thinks they are being over cautious because it is a non standard construction. As of now they still sell very well and fast. If there start to be problems then that would be our cue I think.

The other 2 proposals don't particularly appeal to me either. I wish there was a 'perfect' solution but I don't want to live in a tiny crap house in a shitty area, neither does DH and whilst the shared ownership houses are amazing and much bigger and better than anything we could ever buy (garage, utility, separate study), we would be tied in to rent, possibly forever unless we sold that if the mortgage lending rules relaxed.