What have you prioritized when choosing a house? Share experiences here

[TremoloGreen]

At the moment, we live in London in a 2/3 bed flat with very little outside space. We want to move to a bigger place (a house) with a proper garden, hopefully without extending our mortgage. We want to have another DC, as good a work-life balance as possible (!) and for us, that means using state schools. DH has a very inflexible career path so we need to stay within commuting distance of London for now. There are a few places I could work, I'm currently self-employed and work from home.

My question: how do you prioritize factors such as schools, the town, house size/quality, the commute, anything else?

At the moment, we're thinking:
1. SCHOOLS - probably being a bit precious about this but I really want to give DC the best opportunities and also I have friends who were miserable at school and it has really affected them as adults
2. COMMUTE - shorter commute, more family time, better quality of life
3. TOWN - has to have enough to do for us and kids, don't want to walk around somewhere every day that makes me feel depressed
4. HOUSE SIZE - there are advantages to a smaller house, right??
5. HOUSE QUALITY - least important, planning to live there for long enough to do it up if necessary. Have got over any ideals about period, character etc and would gladly live in a 70s box if it meets all other criteria!

I thought we had it sorted, but now we've decided on towns and are actually looking at the houses we can afford, we're feeling a bit wobbly about house size. Mostly 3 beds with a tiny third bedroom that would be crap for an older DC. Some four beds but those have tiny gardens or weird layouts (downstairs bathroom /miserable kitchen etc) and I'm starting to wonder if we should readjust our priorities. Interested in others' experiences.

When we moved to our current house, our criteria was:

1. Schools. We wanted the house to be in an area of lots of excellent schools. The one we did choose was an OFSTED outstanding, and at the time 3 out of 4 of the local schools were rated outstanding. The house we chose had a school that has an excellent reputation (amongst teachers and parents).

1. Location. We wanted a large village / small town that was large enough to have facilities like a primary school, shop, pub etc but small enough for a community feel, safe, somewhere the children could play outside. The commute also had to be right.

1. practicality. DH and I lead busy lives, and we want to enjoy our children, so we wanted a house that was easy to maintain. For us, this meant a small garden but bigger than a postage stamp (we both hate gardening). We also wanted a house that wouldn't need too much maintenance (beyond redecorating). So we didn't want an older house that needed work. I was adamant that any house we bought would have a downstairs loo.

1. Potential. I wanted a house that we could extend in the future if we wanted to. Our current house has a very large attic that we may convert, the garage is attached, which we can convert or we could build over the top of the garage. Many of the people round here have already done this, we checked when we bought the house.

Beyond that I didn't mind. I'm not really a very materialistic person, so am not fussed about my house / car etc. Just so long as I have got somewhere to store my books things, and somewhere to sleep at night, I'm happy. But then, we downsized when we bought this house, because it is much smaller than our last house, but in the catchment area for the school I wanted, so a more expensive area.

We chose location first - where did we want DS growing up - and type of house second. Agree that visiting places and houses on foot will help you learn what's important to you.

Priorities for location:

Can afford to buy at least a 2 bed house which has parking and a small garden.

Has a school with lots of green outdoor space and felt lovely when we visited - the school open day decided it for us.

Big enough to not need to drive to do things, small enough to not need a car to get around I.e. Small town/large village

Was within an hour of both of our parents.

Commute isn't an everyday issue for us but needed to be not far from a station that goes to London within about an hour.

Then for the house -
At least 2 bedrooms.
Parking
Scope to add a bedroom in the future
Quiet location

Our priorities were (not in any particular order - these were juts our 'must haves'):

1. Had to be in north or westLondon! We are both Londoners (me north, DH west) and our work is here.

1. Commuting distance. Had to be near-ish a tube station or fast train.

1. Good sized kitchen / diner or scope to extend if not, as we are a family who live in the kitchen. Always have been, dont know why.

1. Schools. I wasn't going to get into the whole 'moving for a particular outstanding school' thing, but it was important there were a few decent schools in the area.

1. A garden of some description.

We were prepared to compromise on area, garden size, house style/period (werent fussed), no. bedrooms (ideally wanted 4 beds but looked at 3 beds, too), amount of work that needed doing (looked at show home type places, wrecks and everything in between), drive/garage/front garden (werent fussed).

We are moving next year and our list is:

1. Location (linked to commute and stuff to do)
2. The space we need - an extra room for my office. I am self employed working from home and will be upping from 3 to 4+ days a week so it can't just be a cupboard. We also need a garage for bikes as cycling and bike maintenance are our main hobby.
3. Specific schools within the general location. We have a favourite secondary school but a second we'd be happy with and 2/3 we'd consider.
4. The house itself. We will consider any remodelling required (or smaller than we'd like spaces) if we can afford it just to get 1-3 on our list.

Your priority list is pretty right to me:

1. Schools
2. Commute
3. Amenities / town (green spaces, shops, restaurants, sporting facilities etc)
4. Size (we needed to have the potential for 4 proper bedrooms- no box room-- and two reception rooms and ability to create an eat-in kitchen).
5. Quiet road
6. Condition-- we were looking for a fixer upper that we could extend.

Good luck-- there are huge advantages to living in a smaller house. They cost less money to maintain and heat and less time to maintain and clean. You can spend more of your time and money doing stuff rather than chores.

All houses in our bit of London have gardens and while I originally wanted a big one, we settled for a small and sunny one as all the housing stock near the schools and station had small gardens and I wasn't willing to go further from the station for a larger garden.

1. Schools. Catchment for outstanding primary and (choice of) secondary schools. In area now which is classed by the Sunday Times as the best place to live for education. Numerous options.

1. Location, location, location and by that I mean we wanted a nice quiet road, in the particular village, but with a great community feel. Everything (other than work) within walking distance.

1. Somewhere we could add space to (via extension when funds allowed).

Everything else was a "nice to have".
Compromised on space, price, condition.

School catchment, dining kitchen and a bit of a garden. Everything else was negotiable x

We live in a village, we prioritised:

1. Land with house for animals
2. somewhere for horses
3. size of house
4. lack of neighbours

school is local catchment school, commute makes no difference because we both have cars, house size came into it but not a lot and house quality - well we knew it was a fixer upper. as for town - we wanted to be further away so it did come into it in the opposite way from you. What about buying a house where there is a strong likelihood you could and would extend into the loft? that's always good for making rooms.